Netanyahu, Trump discuss 'Iranian threat', Hezbollah displays pugnacity against Israel

Israeli Prime Minister and US President-elect Donald Trump discussed the “Iranian threat” on the phone on Wednesday, following the Republican candidate's victory, hailed by Benjamin Netanyahu as a “powerful recommitment to the great alliance” between their two countries.

Previously, Naim Qassem, the new leader of Hezbollah, supported by Tehran, had shown his determination to continue the fight against Israel, despite the blows inflicted on his movement since the Israeli army redirected against it the war it has been waging for more than a year against the Palestinian Hamas.

The conversation between Trump and Netanyahu was “friendly and cordial,” with the two leaders “agreed to cooperate for the security of Israel” and “discussed the threat from Iran,” which also supports Hamas, according to Netanyahu's office.

He had previously welcomed “the historic return to the White House” of Donald Trump, who had made numerous gestures in favor of Israel, and was the favorite of the Israelis, according to the polls.

“Together, we will strengthen the American-Israeli alliance, bring back the hostages” – held in Gaza since the Hamas attack on Israel which triggered the war in the Palestinian territory, on October 7, 2023 – “and remain firm to defeat the axis of Evil led by Iran”, reacted on X the new Israeli Minister of Defense, Israel Katz.

“Trump will probably continue to support Netanyahu in his fighting in Gaza and Lebanon” but “without allowing him to enter into a real war against Iran,” former Palestinian minister Ghassan Khatib, a professor at Birzeit University in the occupied West Bank, told AFP.

“We just need” the future president to “give us weapons” to “end the war,” Yossi Mizrachi, a 51-year-old Israeli fruit seller in a market in Jerusalem, reacted in the morning.

“We need someone strong like Trump to end the war,” said Mamdouh Al-Jadba, a 60-year-old Gazan displaced by the fighting, in Gaza City.

– “Confronting” Israel and “Holding Firm” –

Naïm Qassem, speaking before the results of the American presidential election, affirmed that his movement was not banking on its outcome to achieve a ceasefire with Israel.

Shortly after his pre-recorded speech was broadcast, the Israeli army launched a strike, following an evacuation order, on the southern suburbs of Beirut, where it had killed his predecessor Hassan Nasrallah on September 27. The Israeli army counted 120 projectiles fired during the day by Hezbollah from Lebanon.

“We have tens of thousands of trained resistance fighters who can confront” Israel “and hold firm,” assured Naim Qassem.

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A still from Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV broadcast of a recorded speech by Hezbollah's new leader, Naim Qassem, on November 6, 2024 © Al-Manar – –

Israel, which has been waging an intensive campaign of strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon since September 23, and since September 30 a ground offensive in the south of the country targeting it, “will cry out (in pain) under the missiles and drones, no place in the Israeli entity is inaccessible,” it threatened.

The movement had previously claimed to have fired missiles targeting a military base near Ben-Gurion Airport, south of Tel Aviv, without causing damage or affecting traffic, according to the Israeli Airports Authority.

Hezbollah, whose leadership has been significantly weakened, assures that its men are repelling Israeli incursions and announces daily attacks on Israel.

– More than 2,600 dead in Lebanon –

The Israeli army also carried out strikes on Wednesday in the northeast and south of Lebanon, strongholds of Hezbollah.

Those targeting the Bekaa Valley and its capital Baalbek, in the east, killed “40 people and “They wounded 53,” the Lebanese Health Ministry announced overnight.

At least two new strikes hit southern Beirut early Thursday after the Israeli army called on residents of four Shiite neighborhoods to evacuate, according to images from AFPTV.

Israel has thrown its forces against Hezbollah after more than a year of cross-border firefights with the group, which have displaced some 60,000 residents of northern Israel. Hezbollah opened the front in support of Hamas at the start of the Gaza war.

More than 2,600 people, “mostly civilians,” have been killed across Lebanon since September 23, Health Minister Firass Abiad told AFP on Wednesday.

The Israeli army is also continuing its operations against Hamas in Gaza, particularly in the north, where it has been waging a deadly offensive for the past month. It announced Wednesday evening that it had intercepted a projectile fired from the besieged territory toward southern Israel.

Israel vowed to destroy Hamas after October 7, which left 1,206 people dead, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli data, including hostages killed or killed in captivity.

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

The Israeli offensive launched in retaliation in Gaza left 43,391 dead, mostly civilians, according to Hamas's health ministry, and caused a humanitarian disaster.

Israelis demonstrate in Jerusalem against the dismissal the day before of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, November 6, 2024 © AFP – Ahmad GHARABLI

In the midst of a war on these two fronts, Mr. Netanyahu created a surprise Tuesday evening by dismissing his Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, with whom relations had become strained over the issue of conscription of ultra-Orthodox Jews — rejected by the ministers far-right– and that of a truce with Hamas to free the hostages still held in Gaza.

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