Hezbollah-allied official: Lebanon won’t start war with Israel

BEIRUT — A prominent Lebanese Christian politician allied with Hezbollah said Tuesday that Lebanon would not initiate a war with Israel but would defend itself if attacked.

The comments by Gebran Bassil, head of the Free Patriotic Movement of former President Michel Aoun, came as sporadic clashes continue on the Lebanese border with Israel between Hezbollah and armed Palestinian groups in Lebanon on one side and Israeli forces on the other.

“No one can drag us into war unless the Israeli enemy attacks us, and then we will be forced to defend ourselves,” Bassil said after a meeting with Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, another Hezbollah ally. Bassil also spoke by phone to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Monday. “All the Lebanese agree that they do not want war, but that does not mean that we should allow ourselves to be attacked without a response.”

There has been widespread speculation as to whether and under what circumstances Hezbollah and its arsenal of an estimated 150,000 rockets and missiles would fully enter the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. The ongoing clashes on the border and anxieties about a wider conflict have internally displaced 19,646 people in Lebanon, according to the International Organization for Migration.

Hezbollah is a proxy of Iran, which has vowed to destroy Israel.

Qatar becomes intermediary

JERUSALEM — The gas-rich nation of Qatar has become a key intermediary over the fate of some 200 hostages held by Hamas terrorists after their unprecedented attack on Israel, once again putting the small Arabian Peninsula country in the spotlight.

The negotiations have also thrust Qatar into a delicate international balancing act as it maintains a relationship with those viewed as terrorist groups by the West while trying to preserve its close security ties with the United States.

Under arrangements stemming from past Hamas cease-fire understandings with Israel, the emirate of Qatar has paid the salaries of civil servants in the Gaza Strip, provided direct cash transfers to poor families and offered other kinds of humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza.

Qatar has also hosted Hamas’ political office in its capital of Doha for over a decade. Among officials based there is Khaled Mashaal, an exiled Hamas member who survived a 1997 Israeli assassination attempt in Jordan that threatened to derail that country’s peace deal with Israel. Also there is Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ supreme leader.

The U.S. sanctioned Mashaal in 2003 for being “responsible for supervising assassination operations, bombings and the killing of Israeli settlers.” Washington sanctioned Haniyeh in 2018, saying he had “close links with Hamas’ military wing and has been a proponent of armed struggle, including against civilians.”

US warns ships in the Red Sea

JERUSALEM — The U.S. is issuing a new warning to ships traveling through the Red Sea after a drone and missile attack launched from Yemen during the Israel-Hamas war.

The U.S. Maritime Administration warning on Tuesday urged vessels to “exercise caution when transiting this region.”

The U.S. Navy says it shot down missiles and drones believed to have been launched by Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in recent days amid wider tensions across the Middle East over the war.

Airstrikes kill Hamas commanders

RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Israel said Tuesday that it had launched 400 airstrikes over the past day, killing Hamas commanders, hitting terrorlists as they were preparing to launch rockets into Israel and striking command centers and a Hamas tunnel shaft. The previous day, Israel reported 320 strikes.

Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been under increasing bombardment and are running out of food, water and medicine since Israel sealed off the territory following the devastating Oct. 7 attack by Hamas terrorists on towns in southern Israel that killed more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and saw more than 200 people abducted and held hostage in Gaza. Israel has vowed to continue the siege until the hostages are released.

Witnesses and health officials said many of the airstrikes hit residential buildings, some of them in southern Gaza where Israel had told civilians to take shelter.

Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry said the attacks killed at least 704 people over the past day, including 305 children and 173 women. The ministry claims more than 5,700 Palestinians have been killed in the war, including some 2,300 minors. That includes the disputed toll from an explosion at a hospital last week.

Hamas deliberately conducts terrorist operations in civilian areas, and when Israel was warning Palestinians to evacuate from north Gaza, Hamas was ordering people to stay in their homes.