Netanyahu and Trump discuss ‘Iranian threat’

(Jerusalem) The Israeli Prime Minister and the American President-designate Donald Trump discussed on Wednesday by telephone the “Iranian threat”, in the wake of the victory of the Republican candidate, hailed by Benjamin Netanyahu as a “powerful re-engagement in the great alliance” between their two countries.

Previously, Naïm Qassem, the new leader of Hezbollah, supported by Tehran, had displayed his determination to continue the fight against Israel, despite the blows inflicted on his movement since the Israeli army redirected the war against him that it has been waging since. more than a year against Palestinian Hamas.

The conversation between MM. Trump and Netanyahu were “friendly and cordial,” the two leaders “agreed to cooperate for Israel’s security” and “discussed the threat from Iran,” which also supports Hamas, according to Trump’s office. Netanyahu.

He had previously welcomed “the historic return to the White House” of Donald Trump, who had made numerous gestures in favor of Israel, and was the favorite of the Israelis, according to the polls.

“Together, we will strengthen the US-Israeli alliance, bring back the hostages” – held in Gaza since the Hamas attack on Israel that sparked the war in the Palestinian territory on October 7, 2023 – “and stand firm to defeat the axis of Evil led by Iran”, reacted on X the new Israeli Minister of Defense, Israel Katz.

“Trump will probably continue to support Netanyahu in his battles in Gaza and Lebanon,” but “without allowing him to enter into a real war against Iran,” former Palestinian minister Ghassan Khatib told AFP, professor at Birzeit University in the occupied West Bank.

“We just need” the future president to “give us weapons” to “end the war,” responded Yossi Mizrachi, a 51-year-old Israeli fruit seller in a market in Jerusalem, in the morning.

“We need someone strong like Trump to end the war,” said Mamdouh Al-Jadba, a 60-year-old Gazan displaced by the fighting, in Gaza.

“Confront” Israel and “stand your ground”

Naïm Qassem, who spoke before the results of the American presidential election, affirmed that his movement was not counting on its outcome to achieve a ceasefire with Israel.

Shortly after the broadcast of his pre-recorded speech, the Israeli army carried out a strike, after an evacuation order, on the southern suburbs of Beirut, where it had killed his predecessor Hassan Nasrallah on September 27. The Israeli army recorded 120 projectiles fired during the day by Hezbollah from Lebanon.

“We have tens of thousands of trained resistance fighters who can confront “Israel” and hold on,” assured Naïm Qassem.

Israel, which has been carrying out a campaign of intensive strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon since September 23, and since September 30 a ground offensive in the south of the country targeting it, “is going to shout [de douleur] under missiles and drones, no part of the Israeli entity is inaccessible,” he threatened.

The movement had previously claimed to have fired missiles targeting a military base near Ben-Gurion airport, south of Tel Aviv, without causing damage or affecting traffic, according to the Israel Airports Authority.

Hezbollah, whose leadership has been largely weakened, ensures that its men repel Israeli incursions and announces daily shots on Israel.

At least 40 dead in Lebanon

At least 40 people were killed Wednesday by Israeli strikes on eastern Lebanon, notably the town of Baalbek, where rescuers are still looking for survivors in the rubble, the Health Ministry announced in the evening.

“The series of strikes by the Israeli enemy on the Bekaa Valley and Baalbek” killed “40 people and injured 53,” the ministry said in a statement, specifying that it was a toll provisional.

The toll includes eleven people killed in the city of Baalbek, including nine in the Shikan district, a highly populated Sunni district of the Shiite-majority city, where the Iran-backed Hezbollah group holds the upper hand.

An AFP correspondent in Baalbek saw rescuers searching for survivors under the rubble after an attack on this poor neighborhood.

The city’s famous Palmyra Hotel was also damaged by the nearby strikes and the Health Ministry said two people were killed there.

An Israeli strike also killed 16 people in the village of Nasriyah, according to the ministry. “Rescue and rubble clearance operations are continuing to find the missing people,” underlined the same source.

The Israeli army has not issued an evacuation notice for eastern Lebanon. Israel intensified its air raids on Hezbollah strongholds in southern Lebanon, Beirut and the eastern Bekaa Valley from September 23, after a year of cross-border fire.

A week later, it sent ground troops into southern Lebanon. More than a year of clashes that escalated into war in September have killed at least 3,050 people in Lebanon, according to Health Ministry figures.

The Israeli army is also continuing its operations against Hamas in Gaza, particularly in the north where it has been carrying out a deadly offensive for a month. It announced Wednesday evening that it had intercepted a projectile fired from the besieged territory towards southern Israel.

Israel vowed to destroy Hamas after October 7, which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data, including hostages killed or died in captivity.

Of the 251 people then kidnapped, 97 remain hostages in Gaza, including 34 declared dead by the army.

The Israeli offensive launched in retaliation in Gaza left 43,391 dead, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health, and caused a humanitarian disaster.

In the midst of war on these two fronts, Mr. Netanyahu created a surprise on Tuesday evening by dismissing his Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, with whom relations had become strained around the question of the conscription of ultra-Orthodox Jews – rejected by the far-right ministers – and that of a truce with Hamas to free the hostages still held in Gaza.