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Middle East Latest: Israeli Minister Warns of Wider Strikes on Lebanon if Ceasefire Collapses
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By Associated Press
Published 3 months ago on
December 3, 2024

Barbed wires set in an area in front of a house of the Kibbutz Manara, which is located near to the border with Lebanon, in northern Israel, Monday Dec. 2, 2024. (AP/Ohad Zwigenberg)

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Israel’s defense minister warned that if the shaky ceasefire with Hezbollah collapses, Israel will widen its strikes and target the Lebanese state itself.

He spoke the day after Israel carried out a wave of airstrikes that killed nearly a dozen people in Lebanon. Those strikes came after the Lebanese militant group fired a volley of projectiles as a warning over what it said were previous Israeli ceasefire violations.

Speaking to troops on the northern border Tuesday, Defense Minister Israel Katz said any violations of the agreement would be met with “a maximum response and zero tolerance.”

He said if the war resumes, Israel will widen its strikes beyond the areas where Hezbollah’s activities are concentrated, and “there will no longer be an exemption for the state of Lebanon.”

Hezbollah began launching rockets, drones and missiles into Israel last year in solidarity with Hamas militants who are fighting in the Gaza Strip. The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 250 people hostage.

Israel’s blistering retaliatory offensive has killed at least 44,502 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many of the dead were combatants. Israel says it has killed over 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.

The war in Gaza has destroyed vast areas of the coastal enclave and displaced 90% of the population of 2.3 million, often multiple times.

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Here’s the Latest:

Palestinians Get Food Aid in Central Gaza, Some for the First Time in Months

NUSEIRAT REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip — Palestinians lined up for bags of flour distributed by the U.N. in central Gaza on Tuesday morning, some of them for the first time in months amid a drop in food aid entering the territory.

The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, gave out one 25-kilogram flour bag (55 pounds) to each family of 10 at a warehouse in the Nuseirat refugee camp, as well as further south in the city of Khan Younis.

Jalal al-Shaer, among the dozens receiving flour at the Nuseirat warehouse, said the bag would last his family of 12 for only two or three days.

“The situation for us is very difficult,” said another man in line, Hammad Moawad. “There is no flour, there is no food, prices are high … We eat bread crumbs.” He said his family hadn’t received a flour allotment in five or six months.

COGAT, the Israeli army body in charge of humanitarian affairs, said it facilitated entry of a shipment of 600 tons of flour on Sunday for the World Food Program. Still, the amount of aid Israel has allowed into Gaza since the beginning of October has been at nearly the lowest levels of the 15-month-old war.

UNRWA’s senior emergency officer Louise Wateridge told The Associated Press that the flour bags being distributed Tuesday were not enough.

“People are getting one bag of flour between an entire family and there is no certainty when they’ll receive the next food,” she said.

Wateridge added that UNRWA has been struggling like other humanitarian agencies to provide much needed supplies across the Gaza Strip. The agency this week announced it was stopping delivering aid entering through the main crossing from Israel, Kerem Shalom, because its convoys were being robbed by gangs. UNRWA has blamed Israel in large part for the spread of lawlessness in Gaza.

The International Criminal Court is seeking to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister over accusations of using “starvation as a method of warfare” by restricting humanitarian aid into Gaza. Israel rejects the allegations and says it has been working hard to improve entry of aid.

Netanyahu Vows an ‘Iron Fist’ Against Hezbollah if They Break the Ceasefire, and Thanks Trump for Tough Talk on Gaza Hostages

JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the war isn’t over against Hezbollah and vowed to use “an iron fist” against the Lebanese militant group for any perceived violations of a week-old ceasefire.

“At the moment we are in a ceasefire, I note — a ceasefire, not the end of the war,” Netanyahu said at the start of the government meeting Tuesday. He said the military would retaliate for “any violation — minor or major.”

Netanyahu also thanked U.S. President-elect Donald Trump for his recent demands for Hamas to release the remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza. Trump posted on social media Monday that if the hostages are not freed before he takes office in January there would be “HELL TO PAY.”

Netanyahu convened Tuesday’s meeting in northern Israel, where around 45,000 Israelis had been displaced by the war as of last week, according to the prime minister’s office. Netanyahu said the government was focused on getting them back in their homes and rehabilitating the area.

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