The News
Israel launched strikes it said targeted Hezbollah’s financial infrastructure to further kneecap the Lebanese group in its widening conflict.
This week, it carried out airstrikes in Lebanon against a bank that Israeli authorities allege helps finance Hezbollah, and later said an attack in Syria resulted in the death of one of the Iran-backed group’s top financiers.
Israeli officials also said Hezbollah was holding hundreds of millions of dollars in gold and cash below a hospital in southern Beirut, allegations the hospital’s director denied.
The strikes come as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Israel with hopes of renewing ceasefire negotiations following the assassination of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar last week.
SIGNALS
Israel’s attacks on health care have led to a situation like in 2006
Allegations regarding Rafik Hariri University Hospital have cast a spotlight on Lebanon’s health infrastructure: Persistent Israeli attacks — which the UN has described as “indiscriminate,” an accusation Israel denies — are devastating the country’s already fragile health-care system, with at least nine hospitals shuttered or only partly functioning, The New York Times reported: The director of Rafik Hariri said a week ago that the strain was similar to that during Israel’s last invasion of Lebanon in 2006.
Israeli leaders see Sinwar’s death as a chance to push on their military campaign
US officials see the death of Sinwar as a chance to revive ailing ceasefire negotiations — Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s Middle East trip is his 11th in a year — but Washington’s influence over Israel seems to be waning with the presidential election less than two weeks away, The Washington Post reported. Israel’s hand appears to be stronger, Tortoise wrote, which could see the more “pragmatic” wing of Hamas agree to concessions in the knowledge that refusing a deal might see Israel redouble its military efforts. But that would require Israeli leaders to put forward a deal: “They’re hoping to push their success, so that makes them less keen on a ceasefire than they have been in the past,” a Middle East expert told Vox.
Senior Israeli ministers have settlement in their sights for the ‘day after’ in Gaza
Blinken will drill down on the question of the “day after” in Gaza, Reuters reported, with a focus on security, governance, and reconstruction. But ultranationalist senior Israeli cabinet members appear to have their own plans: National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir called for new settlements in Gaza at a recent event, to be partly facilitated by “encouraging [the] emigration” of Palestinians, The Times of Israel reported. A settler leader was more explicit in appearing to suggest ethnic cleansing, saying Palestinians had “lost their right” to live there. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has regularly rejected the idea of resettling Gaza in public, but the presence of his own cabinet members makes it increasingly untenable to dismiss the event as something fringe, Haaretz argued.