Lebanon’s health minister: Israeli attacks on medics constitute a war crime

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Updated 28 September 2024
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Lebanon’s health minister: Israeli attacks on medics constitute a war crime

Lebanon’s health minister: Israeli attacks on medics constitute a war crime
  • Dr. Firass Abiad says Monday’s airstrikes created “environment of terror,” spurring mass flight from targeted areas
  • He made the comments during an appearance on the Arab News current affairs program “Frankly Speaking”

DUBAI: Dr. Firass Abiad, Lebanon’s minister of public health, has strongly condemned Israeli attacks on healthcare workers and medical infrastructure, describing them as war crimes under international humanitarian law.

“Do we consider this a war crime? Of course, we consider this a war crime,” said Abiad, adding that this was not just the view of the Lebanese government but echoed by international legal bodies.

“When we listen to the International Court of Justice, these are the experts on what is international humanitarian law and whether it has been violated. So, these are the experts telling us that what Israel is doing constitutes war crimes.”

Abiad made the comments during an appearance on the Arab News current affairs program “Frankly Speaking” amid escalating violence between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia, which now threatens to spill over into a major regional war.




Abiad told Frankly Speaking that the Lebanese government had established 400 public shelters, which currently house about 70,000 people, amid the Israeli bombardment. (AN Photo)

On Saturday, Hezbollah confirmed that its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in an Israeli strike on the group’s Dahiyeh stronghold in Beirut. The attack follows days of Israeli strikes across Lebanon, which have left 1,030 people dead — including 156 women and 87 children.

Hezbollah began rocketing northern Israel last October in solidarity with the Palestinian militant group Hamas, whose Oct. 7 assault on southern Israel triggered the war in Gaza. Israel retaliated by mounting strikes on Hezbollah targets, including its leadership.

In early September, the tit-for-tat suddenly escalated when Hezbollah communication devices, including pagers and walkie-talkies, suddenly exploded simultaneously in a sophisticated coordinated attack blamed on Israel.

Since then, Israeli strikes on Hezbollah targets across the country have rapidly escalated, with significant collateral damage to residential areas. Health workers and medical infrastructure have not been spared amid the carnage.

“This is something that did not start these past few weeks,” Abiad told “Frankly Speaking” host Katie Jensen. “This is something that we have seen from the start of the hostilities, since last October.

“Even before the detonation of communication devices, we had recorded 25 healthcare professionals who had been killed, whether they were paramedics or whether they were healthcare professionals. And unfortunately, in the past two weeks, we have seen that number rise to almost 40 healthcare workers who have been killed in the atrocious attacks.”

The ongoing conflict has created a massive humanitarian crisis, with widespread displacement across the country. According to the Lebanese government’s estimates, nearly 500,000 people have been forced to flee their homes due to escalating violence.

Abiad explained the magnitude of the displacement. “Before the attacks, the number released by the disaster management side was 130,000 displaced,” he said.

“Remember that by that time, there was an escalation of hostilities by Israel, and the populations were internally displaced still into southern areas.”

However, last Monday’s airstrikes, which saw the killing of approximately 600 people, including nine healthcare workers and two UN staff, in the single deadliest day in Lebanon since the 2006 war, was a watershed moment in the long-running crisis.

“That created this environment of terror, and really, this is where we saw people leave en masse from the targeted areas,” said Abiad.




A man walks on the rubble of damaged buildings in the aftermath of Israeli air strikes on Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon Sept. 28. (Reuters)

Lebanese highways were quickly overwhelmed with people fleeing their homes, causing massive traffic jams. Many spent up to 18 hours on the road, desperately seeking safety.

Abiad said the Lebanese government has established 400 public shelters, which currently house about 70,000 people. However, he said the total number of displaced people is far higher.

“We estimate that usually, from our past experience in the 2006 war, the number of people, whether they are living with friends, family, in homes they rented, or even across the border into neighboring countries, is four to five times as many as there are in shelters,” he said.

“And that’s why we really believe that the tally of people who have been displaced is probably around 400,000 to 500,000.”


Lebanon army fires at Israel in first after soldier’s death

Lebanon army fires at Israel in first after soldier’s death
Updated 27 sec ago
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Lebanon army fires at Israel in first after soldier’s death

Lebanon army fires at Israel in first after soldier’s death
“A soldier was killed after the Israeli enemy targeted an army post in the Bint Jbeil area — in the south, and the personnel at the post responded to the sources of fire,” the army said
This was the first response to Israeli fire since last October because the post had been “directly” hit

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s army said it returned Israeli fire for the first time Thursday in nearly a year of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, after a second soldier was killed by Israeli fire in a day.
“A soldier was killed after the Israeli enemy targeted an army post in the Bint Jbeil area — in the south, and the personnel at the post responded to the sources of fire,” the army said in a statement.
A military official, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, told AFP this was the first response to Israeli fire since last October because the post had been “directly” hit.
It was the third such killing of a Lebanese soldier since the start of the escalation between the Iran-backed group and Israel on September 23.
Earlier Thursday, the army had said “a soldier was killed and another was wounded as a result of an aggression by the Israeli enemy during an evacuation and rescue operation with the Lebanese Red Cross in Taybeh village.”
The Lebanese Red Cross said four of its volunteers were wounded.
Hezbollah earlier said it fought off three bids by the Israeli army to infiltrate Lebanese territory, including one not far from Taybeh.
The Iran-backed militant group said it “repelled with artillery fire an attempt by enemy Israeli forces to advance at Fatima’s Gate” — a point on the cement and barbed wire wall running along the border.
Hezbollah also said it set off “four explosive devices” against Israeli ground forces attempting to “infiltrate” near the towns of Maroun Al-Ras and Yaroun.
It said it fired a barrage of rockets including at the Israeli city of Tiberias and a base for military industries in the Acre area, in response to the Israeli bombardment of Lebanese “towns, villages and civilians.”
On Monday, a Lebanese soldier was killed in an Israeli strike targeting a motorcycle at a checkpoint in the Wazzani area.

Foreigners flee Lebanon as Israeli offensive intensifies

Foreigners flee Lebanon as Israeli offensive intensifies
Updated 8 min 3 sec ago
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Foreigners flee Lebanon as Israeli offensive intensifies

Foreigners flee Lebanon as Israeli offensive intensifies
  • Dozens of Greeks and Greek Cypriots boarded a Greek military aircraft at Beirut airport
  • The plane dropped off 38 Cypriots at Larnaca airport in Cyprus and continued on to Athens, where 22 Greek nationals disembarked

ATHENS/LARNACA: A growing number of countries evacuated citizens from Beirut on Thursday as Israel’s bombing of the Lebanese capital intensified and governments worldwide urged their citizens to get out.
Israel has sent its troops into southern Lebanon after two weeks of intense airstrikes, in an escalating conflict that has drawn in Iran and risks drawing in the United States.
Israel’s military bombed the heart of Beirut on Thursday, after Israeli forces suffered their worst losses on the Lebanese front in a year of clashes with the Iran-backed group.
Dozens of Greeks and Greek Cypriots boarded a Greek military aircraft at Beirut airport, many of them children clutching soft toys and school bags. In the cramped conditions onboard, some played with glow sticks, while others slept on their parents’ laps as the plane left behind the smoking city below.
The plane dropped off 38 Cypriots at Larnaca airport in Cyprus, about 200 km (124 miles) west of Lebanon, and continued on to Athens, where 22 Greek nationals disembarked.
“We were trapped, there was no other way to leave because Middle East aeroplanes are full and the earliest flight you can get is in ten days,” Giorgos Seib told Reuters on the runway at an airport outside Athens after landing.
“Every day the situation gets worse and we don’t know what will happen tomorrow.”
Expatriates in Lebanon have been scrambling to leave and governments from China to Europe have drawn up plans to get their citizens out.
Russia organized a special flight from Beirut on Thursday for the family members of Russian diplomats. Australia said it has organized hundreds of airline seats for its citizens to leave.
This week, life in Lebanon became too traumatic for many as Israel’s military urged residents of more than 20 towns in the south to evacuate their homes immediately. Nearly 2,000 people have been killed over the past year, including 127 children, the country’s health minister Firass Abiad said on Thursday.
“It was very hard, very traumatic I’ve never lived through anything like that before,” Clea Rita Barsamian, a 21-year-old hospitality management student who had been studying in Lebanon for two years, said shortly after landing in Larnaca.

TRAUMA
At Turkiye’s southern Tasucu port in Mersin, Gretchen, an American citizen who lived in Beirut for five years, said she arrived on a regular commercial ferry because flights in Beirut were canceled over the last few days.
“We are continuously hearing artillery and shelling and it was just too much,” she said after disembarking. “I just wanted to leave immediately.”
Many hope to return to Lebanon, where they have built their lives. Others are too traumatized to say.
Gigi Khalifa, a Libyan Cypriot, moved to Lebanon four years ago so her two children could learn Arabic.
“The bombing was very close, it was very traumatic,” she said, her voice breaking in the arrivals hall of Larnaca airport.
“I just feel bad, you know? For all those people left behind. My friends, my kids’ friends. I don’t know if we will ever see them again.”


Israel says kills Palestinian involved in soldier murder

Israel says kills Palestinian involved in soldier murder
Updated 41 min 6 sec ago
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Israel says kills Palestinian involved in soldier murder

Israel says kills Palestinian involved in soldier murder
  • Abdelaziz Salha was killed when an Israeli strike hit a tent in a displacement camp in central Gaza’s Deir Al-Balah early on Thursday
  • Salha in 2004 was sentenced to life for his part in the killing of Israeli soldier Vadim Norzich in the West Bank

JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said a strike on Gaza on Thursday killed a Palestinian who had waved his blood-stained hands at a crowd after a deadly attack on Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank more than two decades ago.
The civil defense agency in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip confirmed Abdelaziz Salha’s death, saying he was killed when an Israeli strike hit a tent in a displacement camp in central Gaza’s Deir Al-Balah early on Thursday.
Salha in 2004 was sentenced to life for his part in the killing of Israeli soldier Vadim Norzich in the West Bank city of Ramallah four years earlier, in an incident caught on camera by an Italian television crew and broadcast across the globe.
A second soldier, Yossi Avrahami, was also killed in the October 2000 attack.
The widely shared footage — one of the most well-known images from the start of the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising — showed Salha standing in an upstairs window of the Ramallah police station, waving his blood-stained hands at a crowd.
Announcing his death in an air strike, the military said that since his release from prison in 2011 and “over the past few years, Salha was involved in terrorist activity” in the West Bank.
The army statement said he was “involved in Hamas terrorist activity to this day.”
Salha was sent to Gaza by Israeli authorities after being released from jail, one of 1,027 Palestinians freed in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit who was taken hostage by Gaza militants in 2006.


Israel’s hawkish Yoav Gallant driving war in Lebanon

Israel’s hawkish Yoav Gallant driving war in Lebanon
Updated 03 October 2024
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Israel’s hawkish Yoav Gallant driving war in Lebanon

Israel’s hawkish Yoav Gallant driving war in Lebanon
  • The hawkish politician has repeatedly stressed that Israel must take the fight to Lebanon
  • The near-daily exchanges of fire since early October 2023 have displaced an estimated 60,000 people on the Israeli side

JERUSALEM: Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, a former general who has shaped Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, is a prominent force behind the expansion of the nearly year-long military campaign into Lebanon.
The hawkish politician, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s party who at times clashed with him over policy issues, has repeatedly stressed that Israel must take the fight to Lebanon, where Iran-backed Hezbollah militants have launched cross-border attacks after Palestinian ally Hamas’s October 7 attack.
The near-daily exchanges of fire since early October 2023 have displaced an estimated 60,000 people on the Israeli side, and officials like Gallant have called to push the Lebanese militant group away from the border to allow their safe return.
Military action was “the only way to ensure the return of communities in northern Israel to their homes,” Gallant told visiting US envoy Amos Hochstein last month.
And on September 18, the Israeli minister declared that “the center of gravity” of Israel’s military campaign was “shifting north,” calling it “the beginning of a new phase of the war, which requires courage, determination and perseverance.”
This week Israel announced its ground troops had begun raids against Hezbollah inside Lebanon, after a spate of attacks that had decimated the powerful group’s leadership.
“Gallant was one of the first to support the idea that Israel needed to take the initiative in the north, just days after the October 7 attacks,” said Michael Horowitz, a geopolitical expert at the Middle East-based security consultancy Le Beck.
Calev Ben-Dor, a former analyst at Israel’s foreign ministry, said the “reasoning was that in a war, it is preferable to fight the more powerful foe first, and Hezbollah’s strength far outweighed Hamas’s.”
Now, according to Horowitz, Gallant is seen “rightly or wrongly, as having been prescient, betting on Israel’s ability to regain the initiative.”
A former naval commando, military adviser to late prime minister Ariel Sharon and senior military commander who led Israel’s invasion of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip in 2008-2009, Gallant has established himself as a “responsible” politician, said Ben-Dor.
“He is considered to be focused on winning the war and the perceived national interest, rather than playing petty politics,” giving him credit even among Israelis “who do not necessarily share his political views,” added the former analyst.
Gallant, 65, faces accusations of war crimes over Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza, which has killed at least 41,788 people, the majority of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The UN has described the figures as reliable.
Israel had launched its campaign in retaliation for Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack, which resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.
In May, International Criminal Court prosector Karim Khan laid out charges against Netanyahu and Gallant including war crimes, crimes against humanity and intentionally killing and starving civilians, requesting arrest warrants which have yet to be granted.
Gallant has frequently disagreed with Netanyahu, including over controversial judicial reforms that sparked a wave of protests since early 2023 and Gaza truce negotiations.
Horowitz said that the defense minister, who has survived at least one attempt to sack him, is seen as a more “unifying” national figure than the abrasive prime minister and his far-right allies.
Gallant, a father of three, joined Netanyahu’s Likud party in 2019, several years after entering politics with center-right party Kulanu.
Horowitz said that Gallant believes he had been denied a crushing victory against Hamas during the 2008-2009 Gaza war, when he served as the military’s Southern Command chief.
“This has contributed to his image as a strong military leader, who in retrospect was right, especially after the October 7 attacks.”
But during the current war, Gallant was quoted in August by Israeli media as having dismissed Netanyahu’s stated war aim of “total victory” against Hamas in Gaza as “nonsense.”


Lebanon state media says new Israeli strikes hit south Beirut

Lebanon state media says new Israeli strikes hit south Beirut
Updated 03 October 2024
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Lebanon state media says new Israeli strikes hit south Beirut

Lebanon state media says new Israeli strikes hit south Beirut
  • “Enemy aircraft launched three strikes on (Beirut’s) southern suburbs,” NNA reported
  • A source close to the group said the strike “targeted a building housing Hezbollah’s media relations office“

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s state-run media said three Israeli air strikes hit Hezbollah’s south Beirut stronghold on Thursday, the latest raids following a night of intense bombardment.
“Enemy aircraft launched three strikes on (Beirut’s) southern suburbs,” the official National News Agency (NNA) reported.
A source close to the group told AFP the strike “targeted a building housing Hezbollah’s media relations office,” which had already been “evacuated.”
This week, Israel announced that its troops had started “ground raids” into parts of southern Lebanon, a stronghold of Hezbollah, after days of heavy bombardment of areas across the country where the militant group holds sway.
After nearly a year of low-intensity cross-border fighting, Israel has shifted the focus of its operation from Gaza to Lebanon, where heavy bombing has killed more than 1,000 people and forced hundreds of thousands to flee.
Last week, Israel killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in the group’s southern Beirut bastion, a densely packed residential area before residents fled the violence.