Blinken in Israel to push for Gaza ceasefire, Israel pounding Hezbollah in Lebanon

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Israel on Tuesday for a new tour of the Middle East aimed at advancing a ceasefire in Gaza and containing the military escalation in the region, at a time when Israel is stepping up its operations in Lebanon against Hezbollah, an ally of Iran.

This eleventh diplomatic mission by Mr. Blinken since the start of the devastating war in Gaza, triggered by the unprecedented attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023 in Israel, comes nearly a month after the conflict expanded to Lebanon, with the start of massive Israeli strikes against Hezbollah.

Thirteen people were killed, including a child, and 57 injured in an Israeli strike Monday evening near the country's largest public hospital in Beirut, the Lebanese Ministry of Health announced Tuesday.

The search continues among the rubble for victims, an AFP photographer noted.

The Israeli army said it struck several Hezbollah military installations overnight, including a “central base of the movement's naval unit” in Beirut.

Hezbollah claimed responsibility for rocket attacks on several positions in Israel, including a naval base and a military intelligence base near Tel Aviv, and said it targeted an Israeli tank in southern Lebanon.

Mr. Blinken is to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at midday. But two weeks before the US presidential election, the White House stressed that it was unable to say whether “negotiations will resume” with a view to a truce in Gaza.

The Secretary of State also intends to dissuade the Israelis, who are preparing a response to Iran's October 1 missile attack on the country, from any action that could further inflame the region, according to a US official accompanying him.

– “300 targets” hit –

Smoke rises from the southern suburbs of Beirut after an Israeli strike, October 21, 2024 © AFP – Fadel ITANI

Before his arrival, US envoy Amos Hochstein assured Monday in Beirut that Washington was working to resolve the conflict in Lebanon “as quickly as possible.”

The Israeli army then announced that it had struck around 300 Hezbollah targets in 24 hours, after expanding its offensive against the powerful Islamist group by targeting its financial system.

It announced the death in Syria of a senior official in charge of “Hezbollah fund transfers” and claimed to have targeted a bunker of the Shiite group containing “tens of millions of dollars.”

It is also continuing strikes that began Sunday near Beirut and in the south and east of the country against the financial institution Al-Qard al-Hassan, which is close to Hezbollah.

The UN condemned the “considerable damage to civilian installations” caused by these raids.

Subject to American sanctions, this financial institution is part of the network of associations, schools and hospitals set up by Hezbollah to strengthen its influence within the Shiite community.

At least 1,489 people have been killed in Lebanon since September 23, when Israel began pounding Hezbollah there, according to an AFP count based on official data. By mid-October, the UN had counted nearly 700,000 displaced people in the country.

The Israeli army has been conducting ground operations in the south since September 30 against Hezbollah to allow the return of approximately 60,000 inhabitants of northern Israel displaced by its incessant rocket fire for a year.

– Humanitarian aid to Gaza in question –

According to Mr. Hochstein, the United States wants to rely on UN Security Council Resolution 1701 to resolve this conflict, which had declared the end of the previous war between the two belligerents in 2006, and stipulates that non-state armed forces must withdraw from southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah has maintained its presence.

Palestinians flee Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip, the scene of an Israeli offensive, on October 22, 2024 © AFP – Islam AHMED

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned again on Tuesday that “Iran will respond in an equivalent manner” in the event of an Israeli attack.

The Pentagon has meanwhile announced the “establishment” in Israel of a new American anti-missile defense system.

After Israel, Antony Blinken is due to travel to Jordan on Wednesday to discuss humanitarian aid in the devastated and besieged Gaza Strip, according to the American official accompanying him.

The Israeli army has been continuing an offensive against Hamas in the north of the Palestinian territory since October 6, where at least four Palestinians were killed in bombings on Monday, according to the Civil Defense.

Tens of thousands of Gazans are fleeing the area. “There were smoke bombs and stun grenades, we fled with our children without taking anything,” Shaima Naseer, a thirty-something refugee in Gaza City, told AFP.

The Palestinian Islamist movement, in power since 2007 in Gaza, has affirmed that it will continue to fight despite the death of its leader, Yahya Sinwar, mastermind of the attack of October 7, 2023, killed on September 16 by the Israeli army.

Hamas will be temporarily led by a committee based in Qatar before the election of a successor, two sources within it reported on Monday.

The October 7, 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data, including hostages killed or who died in captivity.

Of the 251 people kidnapped at the time, 97 remain hostages in Gaza, including 34 declared dead by the army.

At least 42,603 ​​Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed in the Israeli retaliatory offensive in Gaza, according to data from the Hamas government's Health Ministry, deemed reliable by the UN.

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