Middle East Crisis

Israel-Hezbollah
Nine Dead in Major Israeli Attacks on Lebanon

Nine people have been killed in Israeli attacks on Lebanon on Saturday, AFP reports.

This makes the attacks the deadliest since the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah was escalated in June.

Israel claims that they attacked targets linked to terrorist-classified Hezbollah, but this is denied by Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, who believes that those killed were civilians.

– Israel must stop this escalation, he says.

West Bank
Analysis: The government is clearly behind the settlers

The attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank are carried out primarily by Israeli settlers, but they are not the isolated radical group that the authorities like to portray them as. This is what AP's Joseph Kraus writes in an analysis.

“In reality, they are the spearhead of a much larger movement, supported by successive Israeli governments and given turbo-speed under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”

According to Kraus, the goal is nothing less than complete control of the West Bank and the impossibility of a Palestinian state.

In Haaretz, Shani Cohen writes that although the government, police and military are apparently allowing the settlers to stay, support for the movement is not as solid as it may seem. The settlers’ strong support from the government is in fact their Achilles’ heel, she says.

“Their settlements and agriculture are not a success story, as they constantly need new government support to stay afloat,” she writes, pointing out that all it takes to break the settlers’ power over the West Bank is a single government that does not look between its fingers.

Abu has been locked in his house for a week: “The military is not interested”

A week after Israeli settlers began a blockade of three Palestinian homes in Qusra in the occupied West Bank, the military has still not removed them. The New York Times writes.

– The army is not interested in removing them. If they wanted to do it, they would have done it in an hour, says Abu Raida, who has been locked in his house in the village since Sunday.

The Israeli military has described the blockade of Palestinian homes as “illegal, reprehensible and unacceptable”, but no explanation has been given as to why the settlers were still there late on Friday. According to the NYT, soldiers have been seen praying and drinking coffee with the settlers over the past week.