Lebanon’s Hezbollah launched more than 200 rockets and drones at Israeli army positions on Thursday, escalating tensions between the two adversaries as the Israel-Hamas war rages in Gaza.
After months of deadlock in Gaza ceasefire efforts, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to send a delegation for talks aimed at securing the release of hostages seized in Hamas’s October 7 attack, which sparked the war.
A source familiar with the talks said an Israeli delegation led by spy chief David Barnea was travelling to Doha for discussions with the Qatari prime minister “aiming to bring the parties closer to a deal in Gaza”.
The United States welcomed the developments, which came after a phone call between Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden, following Hamas’s indication it had “ideas” on halting the nearly nine-month conflict.
It was described as a “pretty significant opening” by a senior US official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The Biden administration has waged a diplomatic offensive to persuade Hamas to accept a ceasefire plan laid out by the president whose support for Israel has alienated parts of his support base ahead of an election in November.
Israel launched a military offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip on October 7, in response to an unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist militant group on its territory.
The next day Hezbollah, in support of its ally Hamas, opened a front on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, and the two sides have since exchanged near-daily cross-border fire.
Hezbollah said it fired more than 200 rockets and “explosive drones” at army positions in northern Israel and the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights in retaliation for an Israeli strike that killed one of the Iran-backed group’s commanders.
Air raid sirens blared across northern Israel in the morning, and an AFP correspondent witnessed rockets crossing the frontier that were mostly intercepted by Israeli air defences but sparked wildfires.
A military source said later a soldier was killed by a rocket fired into northern Israel.
– Fighting in Gaza City –
The Gaza war broke out after Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
The militants also seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza including 42 the army says are dead.
In response, Netanyahu vowed to “crush” Hamas and Israel’s military launched an offensive that has killed at least 38,011 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said seven people were killed in Israeli strikes on Thursday, including five in a school in Gaza City, in the north of the besieged territory.
Fighting raged in the city’s Shujaiya neighbourhood and in Rafah, on the southern border with Egypt, where an Israeli evacuation order raised fears of a major new offensive.
Since the order was issued on Monday, tens of thousands of Palestinians have fled eastern areas of Rafah and nearby Khan Yunis.
The United Nations says 1.9 million people are thought to be displaced in Gaza, and that around nine in every 10 people in the territory have been uprooted at least once since the war broke out.
“Behind these numbers, there are people… that have fears and grievances. And they had probably dreams and hopes; the less and less, I fear today, unfortunately,” said Andrea De Domenico, head of the UN humanitarian office in the Palestinian territories.
“People who in the last nine months have been moved around like pawns in a board game.”
– Evacuation order –
The United Nations says up to 250,000 people were affected by Israel’s order to evacuate 117 square kilometres (45 square miles) — equivalent to one-third of Gaza’s territory.
The Israel-Hezbollah border clashes have killed at least 496 people in Lebanon, most of them fighters but also including 95 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
Israeli authorities say at least 16 soldiers and 11 civilians have been killed on their side of the UN-patrolled border.
The Gaza war at the heart of the violence has meanwhile raged on, with gun battles, air strikes and shelling rocking Gaza City for an eight straight day.
Israeli troops “destroyed tunnel routes in the area and eliminated dozens of terrorists in close-quarters combat with tank fire, and in aerial strikes,” the military said.
– ‘Maelstrom of human misery’ –
Israel has faced an international outcry over the soaring civilian death toll, punishing siege and mass destruction in Gaza.
The UN humanitarian coordinator for Gaza, Sigrid Kaag, this week called for an end to the “maelstrom of human misery”.
Netanyahu has insisted Israel will destroy Hamas and bring home the remaining hostages.
Biden, under growing domestic pressure over Washington’s support for Israel, in late May outlined a roadmap for a six-week truce and exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners.
There has been little progress since, but Hamas said Wednesday it was communicating with officials in Qatar and Egypt as well as Turkey with an eye to ending the conflict.
Hamas said its Qatar-based political chief Ismail Haniyeh had “made contact with the mediator brothers in Qatar and Egypt about the ideas that the movement is discussing with them with the aim of reaching an agreement”.
Netanyahu’s office said Wednesday that “Israel is evaluating the (Hamas) remarks and will convey its reply to the mediators”.
The main stumbling block so far has been Hamas’s demand for a permanent end to the fighting, which Netanyahu and his far-right coalition partners strongly reject.
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