Gaza Live: Israeli air strike takes out 25 members of same family
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With Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu framing the ceasefire with Hezbollah as a strategic move to pivot towards Iran’s nuclear threat, some in Tehran are bracing for an increased military threat to the country.
Several conservative Iranian voices have raised concerns that easing tensions on Israel’s northern front could embolden Iran's arch-enemy in the region. Officially, however, Iran has hailed the cessation of hostilities between Israel and Lebanon as a victory for the Lebanese group.
"When the Israeli regime declares Iran as the primary target of the ceasefire in Lebanon, it means we will inevitably face them, whether we want to or not," a conservative analyst close to the Iranian establishment told Middle East Eye.
The analyst said that as Israel shifts its focus away from the northern front, it will have greater capacity to regroup, concentrate on neutralising the Gaza front and potentially push the US towards a more aggressive stance on Iran's nuclear facilities.
READ MORE: Why Iranian conservatives are against the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire
Hamas' military wing, the Qassam Brigades, have claimed responsibility for a shooting near the illegal Israeli settlement of Ariel in the occupied West Bank.
"One of our [fighters] surprised a number of Zionist soldiers inside a bus in Ariel, wounding 9, 3 of them critically," the group said in a statement.
"All the decisions written in the ink of the extremist Zionist government, which target the West Bank, will be paid for with the blood spilled from the bodies of soldiers and settlers in all the governorates of the West Bank, God willing."
The man who carried out the attack was Samer Muhammad Ahmad Hussein, a 46-year-old from the village of Einbus, according to the Qassam Brigades.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi on Friday denounced recent rebel attacks in Syria as "a US-Zionist plan following the Zionist regime's defeat in Lebanon and Palestine", Iran's state media reported.
In a phone call with his Syrian counterpart, Araqchi reiterated Iran's support to the Syrian government, the media said.
A shooting at a bus near the illegal Israeli settlement of Ariel injured at least eight people on Friday in the occupied West Bank, an Israeli rescue service said.
Local sources and eyewitnesses told Wafa that Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian man in the south of the village of Harris after he allegedly attacked a bus carrying settlers.
At least 24 Israelis, including soldiers, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli military raids in the West Bank since 7 October, according to Israeli official figures.
During the same period, at least 747 Palestinians have been killed in the territory by Israeli military or settlers, according to an AFP count based on Palestinian official figures.
All of Israel's settlements in the West Bank are considered illegal under international law.
Lebanon is taking a cautious sigh of relief but the ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel stands on shaky ground.
While fighting may be over - or at least paused - attention now shifts to another challenge facing Lebanon and Hezbollah: internal reckoning.
While Hezbollah’s supporters, along with other segments of the Lebanese population, see the war’s outcome as a victory for the party, others have decried the bloodshed and destruction caused by a conflict they did not back.
“Hezbollah’s claim of victory holds little weight outside its core constituency,” Imad Salamey, a Middle Eastern politics expert at the Lebanese American University, told Middle East Eye.
“The war was not widely popular among the Lebanese people, many of whom are more focused on the devastating economic losses inflicted during the conflict.”
Read more: What is next for Hezbollah in Lebanon?
At least 44,363 Palestinians have been killed and 105,070 injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Palestinian health ministry said in a statement on Friday.
At least 30 Palestinians, most from the Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip, were killed in overnight strikes, the ministry reported.
Soon after Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon in October, videos began to emerge of soldiers blowing up entire Lebanese villages in the south, leaving their heritage sites and homes in ruins.
Many of these villages already suffered extensive damage from Israeli bombardment, which began a year earlier when Hezbollah opened a “support front” in solidarity with its Hamas allies in the Gaza Strip.
On Wednesday morning, a ceasefire agreed between Hezbollah, Israel and the Lebanese government came into force.
Hundreds of thousands of displaced Lebanese were able to return to the homes they were forced to flee from.
Yet in the deep south, Israeli troops continued to occupy villages they had laid waste to, firing at civilians trying to reach their homes. Below are profiles of four villages Israel has destroyed.
Read more: A short history of the ancient Lebanese villages destroyed by Israel
Israeli military strikes killed at least 30 Palestinians overnight in the Gaza Strip, most of them in the Nuseirat camp at the centre of the enclave, medics said on Friday after some tanks pulled back from an area they had raided.
Medics said they had recovered 19 bodies of Palestinians killed in the northern areas of Nuseirat, one of the enclave's eight long-standing refugee camps.
Some tanks remained active in the western area of the camp and the Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said teams were unable to respond to distress calls from residents trapped inside their houses.
Meanwhile, the Israeli authorities released around 30 Palestinians whom it had detained in Gaza in the past months. The released people arrived at a hospital in southern Gaza for medical checkups, medics said.
The supreme court of the Netherlands, the country's highest court, was advised on Friday by its advocate general to uphold the ruling saying the Dutch state must put an end to export of F-35 components to Israel.
In February, The Hague Court of Appeal ordered the government to block those exports over concerns they were being used to violate international law during Israel's war on Gaza, prompting the government to then say it would go to the Supreme Court.
"According to the advocate general of the supreme court, the Court of Appeal was justified in finding that there is a clear risk that Israel's F-35 fighter jets are being used to commit serious violations of international humanitarian law in the Gaza Strip," the court's adviser said.
Israel’s military has warned the public to stay away from evacuated areas near the Lebanon border in the northern Galilee region in a statement.
“Unexploded ordnance poses a danger to life,” the military said, warning that the public should “refrain from entering restricted areas and allow the security forces to continue carrying out their missions.”
The Israeli military renewed attacks across Gaza on Friday, killing at least six people, Al Jazeera reported.
An Israeli attack killed one person and injured two others at an intersection west of the city, while further south, another Israeli attack killed five family members in their home in Khan Younis.
The Israeli military opened fire in the southern Lebanese village of Al-Khiyam during a funeral for one of the village’s residents, Lebanon’s National News Agency reported. It is yet unclear if anyone was injured or killed.
Earlier this morning, the Israeli army told residents of several southern Lebanese villages, including Al-Khiyam, not to return home.
Israeli forces detained four Palestinians early Friday morning during a raid in the town of Beit Furik in the Nablus governorate, in the occupied West Bank, Wafa news agency reported.
According to local and Palestinian security sources, several Israeli military vehicles and jeeps stormed the village, conducting raids on several homes, the agency reported. The forces searched the properties, ransacked their contents, and detained four individuals.
The Israeli troops also confiscated three vehicles, gold jewellery, and some cash during the raid.
The Israeli military has published a summary of its military operations against the Lebanese armed group since October 2023, as a fragile peace deal with Hezbollah enters a third day.
Israel hit more than 12,500 Hezbollah targets during the period, including 1,600 command centres and 1,000 weapons depots, the military claimed.
At least 2,500 Hezbollah members and senior officials were killed, the military added.
The Israeli military’s Arabic spokesperson Avichay Adraee announced a list of southern Lebanese villages where civilians are prohibited from returning “until further notice.”
In a post on X, Adraee shared a map highlighting the exclusion zone in southern Lebanon, marked by a line, along with the names of numerous settlements.
“The Israeli military does not intend to target you, but you are currently prohibited from returning to your homes south of this line until further notice,” he stated.
Both Hezbollah and Israel have been accusing one another of violating the terms of a ceasefire that came into effect on Wednesday.
🔴بيان #عاجل إلى سكان #لبنان
— افيخاي ادرعي (@AvichayAdraee) November 29, 2024
⭕️حتى إشعار آخر يحظر عليكم الانتقال جنوبًا إلى خط القرى التالية ومحيطها: شبعا، الهبارية، مرجعيون، أرنون، يحمر، القنطرة، شقرا، برعشيت، ياطر، المنصوري
⭕️جيش الدفاع لا ينوي استهدافكم ولذلك يحظر عليكم في هذه المرحلة العودة إلى بيوتكم من هذا الخط جنوبًا… pic.twitter.com/84UdCZDRxs
