The head of European Union diplomacy, Josep Borrell, called on Sunday in Beirut for an “immediate ceasefire” in the war between Israel and Hezbollah, at a time when the Lebanese movement fired around 250 projectiles towards Israeli territory.
The day after a day of particularly deadly Israeli bombings in Lebanon, Hezbollah announced on Sunday several drone and missile attacks against targets and military bases in the Tel Aviv region (center) and in southern Israel.
In Israel, warning sirens sounded, particularly in the large suburbs of Tel Aviv, the army said, reporting around 250 projectiles fired from neighboring Lebanon. Part of it was intercepted but damage was noted in Petah Tikva.
Shortly after, the Lebanese National News Agency (Ani) reported two Israeli strikes hitting the southern suburbs of Beirut.
“It is from buildings (in the southern suburbs) that Hezbollah (…) directs its terrorist activities to harm the citizens of Israel,” said the Israeli army, accusing the Lebanese Islamist movement of placing ” intentionally” its installations among civilians.
Ani also reported intense fighting in several southern regions, where Hezbollah claimed to have destroyed six Israeli Merkava tanks on Sunday.
For its part, the Lebanese army, which is not involved in this war, announced that one of its soldiers had been killed and 18 others wounded in an Israeli attack on their position in southern Lebanon, a stronghold of the Hezbollah borders northern Israel.
“We see only one possible path: an immediate ceasefire and the full implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701,” Borrell said after his talks with the Lebanese Prime Minister. Najib Mikati and the head of Parliament Nabih Berri.
– “On the verge of collapse” –
Resolution 1701, which ended the previous war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006, stipulates that only the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers be deployed on Lebanon's southern border. This implies a withdrawal of Hezbollah, but also that of Israeli soldiers who have been carrying out a ground offensive there since September 30.
Israel says it wants to put Lebanese Hezbollah and Palestinian Hamas, allies of Iran, its enemy, out of harm's way. He vowed to destroy Hamas after the unprecedented attack of this Islamist movement on its soil on October 7, 2023, which sparked the war in the Gaza Strip, and seeks to stop Hezbollah's rocket attacks on its territory .
On October 8, 2023, Hezbollah opened a “support front” for its Palestinian ally, the target of an Israeli retaliatory offensive in Gaza.
After a year of cross-border violence and after having weakened Hamas in Gaza, Israel moved the heart of its operations to Lebanon by launching an intense bombing campaign from September 23 on Hezbollah strongholds.
“We must put pressure on the Israeli government and maintain pressure on Hezbollah so that they accept the American ceasefire proposal,” Borrell said, stressing that the EU was ready to provide 200 million euros to help strengthen the Lebanese army.
This 13-point proposal, providing for a 60-day truce and the deployment of the army in southern Lebanon, was discussed by American envoy Amos Hochstein who visited Lebanon and Israel this week.
But no results have been announced and the pace of Israeli strikes, mainly against Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon, has even accelerated.
“In September, I came and I still hoped that we could prevent an open war by Israel against Lebanon. Two months later, Lebanon is on the verge of collapse,” Mr. Borrell added.
Lebanon's Health Ministry estimates that at least 3,754 people have been killed in the country since October 2023, most since September of this year.
He said on Sunday that 84 people had been killed in Israeli strikes in different parts of the country the day before, including 29 in a raid that targeted a working-class neighborhood in central Beirut.
On the Israeli side, 82 soldiers and 47 civilians were killed in 13 months.
– Eleven dead in Gaza –
In the besieged and devastated Gaza Strip, eleven Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes, according to local Civil Defense.
The director of Kamel Adwan Hospital, Hossam Abou Safiyeh, was seriously injured in a nighttime drone attack on the establishment in the north of the Palestinian territory, according to the same source.
This hospital is one of the last to still partially function in the Palestinian territory in the grip of a humanitarian disaster.
In response to the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, Israel launched a devastating military offensive in Gaza which left at least 44,211 dead, the majority civilians, according to data from the Hamas Ministry of Health, deemed reliable by the 'UN.
The October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official data, including hostages killed or died in captivity. That day, 251 people were kidnapped, 97 of whom remain hostages in Gaza, including 34 declared dead by the army.
Raz Ben Ami, a former hostage whose husband is still held in Gaza, said Sunday that “it was time to bring them back and as quickly as possible because no one knows who will survive the winter in the tunnels.”
