Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told U.S. envoys on Thursday that Israel’s ability to counter threats to its security from Lebanon and return displaced people to the north were key elements of any ceasefire deal with Lebanon.
He was speaking shortly after a Hezbollah attack on northern Israel’s town of Metula killed five people, including an Israeli farmer and four foreign workers, while two more civilians were killed from shrapnel near the town of Kiryat Ata, Israeli authorities said.
Meanwhile, officials in Beirut said a series of Israeli strikes had killed six health workers in southern Lebanon.
“The main issue is not the paperwork of this or that agreement, but Israel’s ability and determination to enforce the agreement and thwart any threat to its security from Lebanon,” Netanyahu’s office cited him as telling the two U.S. envoys.
Brett McGurk and Amos Hochstein were in Israel on a new push to secure ceasefires in both Lebanon and Gaza.
Sources previously told Reuters that talks were centred on a 60-day pause to allow for the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which would entail Hezbollah withdrawing its armed presence from south of the Litani River.
The diplomatic push comes amid intensifying fighting between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah, which has run in parallel to Israel’s war in Gaza against Hamas militants that has left the tiny enclave in ruins and has caused a humanitarian crisis.
Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister accused Israel of perpetrating a form of “genocide” with its grinding assault on northern Gaza — a charge Israel denies — and called on Lebanon to solve its long-running political crisis.
Palestinian civilians fleeing Isreali strikes against Hamas targets in northern Gaza are running out of food and places to shelter as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken tries to restart ceasefire negotiations on his 12th Middle East trip since the war began.
Israel bombarded areas around the eastern city of Baalbek on Thursday for a second consecutive day after issuing evacuation notices. On Wednesday it had conducted heavy airstrikes targeting Hezbollah in and around the city, which is famed for its Roman temples.
Dozens of cars could be seen speeding out of the area after Thursday’s warning, with wafts of black smoke emanating from the town of Douris, where an Israeli strike the previous day destroyed Hezbollah fuel stocks, according to the Israeli military and a Lebanese security source.
Thousands fleeing the violence have sought shelter in the nearby Christian-majority town of Deir al-Ahmar, where local official Jean Fakhry said authorities were struggling to cover even a fraction of needs and some people had spent the night in their cars.
“We cannot continue this way,” he said.
178 health workers killed in Lebanon
The killing of six Lebanese health workers and the wounding of four others in three separate strikes across south Lebanon on Thursday brought the total toll of health workers killed and wounded in over a year of Israeli strikes to 178 and 279, respectively, the Lebanese Health Ministry said.
Hezbollah said it had launched several rocket and artillery attacks against Israeli forces near the southern town of Khiyam on Thursday. It marked the fourth straight day of fighting in and around the strategic hilltop town, which is home to one of the largest Shia communities in southern Lebanon.
The mayor of the Lebanese border town of Wazzani, south of Khiyam, said he had pleaded with authorities to evacuate more than 20 people, most of them women and children, who were stuck in the crossfire of fighting but Lebanese authorities said Israel had not responded to his appeal.
“We keep asking for them to be helped but it’s like we’re in a jungle. No one listens,” Mayor Ahmed Mohammed told Reuters.
Hezbollah aims to keep Israeli forces out of the town to prevent them from detonating homes and buildings, as has happened on a large scale in other border towns, a source familiar with the group’s thinking told Reuters. The group says its fighters have prevented Israel from fully occupying or controlling any southern villages, while Israel says it is carrying out limited ground operations aimed at destroying the group’s infrastructure.
Hospital hit in northern Gaza
At least 30 Palestinians were killed in Israeli military strikes across the Gaza Strip on Thursday, mostly in the north, where one attack hit a hospital, torching medical supplies and disrupting operations, the enclave’s health officials said.
Israel’s military has accused the Palestinian militant group Hamas of using Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya for military purposes and said “dozens of terrorists” have been hiding there. It has not provided any evidence. Health officials and Hamas deny the charge.
Northern Gaza, where Israel said in January it had dismantled Hamas’s command structure, is currently the main focus of the military’s assault in the enclave. Earlier this month, it sent tanks into Jabalia, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya to flush out militants it said had regrouped in the area.
Eid Sabbah, director of nursing at Kamal Adwan, told Reuters some staff had suffered minor burns after the Israeli strike hit the third floor of the hospital.
Medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said on Thursday that one of its doctors at the hospital, Mohammed Obeid, had been detained last Saturday by Israeli forces. It called for the protection of him and all medical staff who “are facing horrific violence as they try to provide care.”
At least 93 Palestinians were killed or are missing, and dozens were wounded in an Israeli strike on a residential building in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya on Tuesday, the Gaza health ministry said. The U.S. State Department called the incident ‘horrifying.’
There were no reports of any casualties at the hospital, which Israeli forces stormed and briefly occupied last week. Israel said it had captured around 100 suspected Hamas militants in that raid. Israeli tanks are still stationed nearby.
The health ministry in the Gaza Strip called for all international bodies “to protect hospitals and medical staff from the brutality of the [Israeli] occupation.”
The Gaza war began after Hamas-led militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians and reduced most of the enclave to rubble, Palestinian authorities say.