US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has criticised a pro-Israel lobby group for spending the “most in primary history” to unseat Jamaal Bowman, a progressive Democrat who has been critical of Israel’s war in Gaza.

The spending showed why US representatives give “unconditional vote support for nearly any Israeli government action” because they are “terrified” the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) could push to have them replaced with another candidate, Ocasio-Cortez said in a post on X.

The United Democracy Project, a group affiliated with the powerful AIPAC, reportedly spent 61 percent of a total of $23m on advertising ahead of the primary election for the seat currently held by Bowman, the tracking firm AdImpact said.

AIPAC responded with its own post, claiming the “overwhelming majority of Congress votes with their constituents who support the [United States-Israel] relationship.”

Ocasio-Cortez countered, asking why the lobby group needed to spend so much money on advertising if its positions were as popular as it claimed.

An unspoken secret in Congress is that much of the reflexive, blind, unconditional vote support for nearly any Israeli gov action isn’t from actual agreement.

It’s from fear.

Reps are terrified of this ⬇️. Of AIPAC. So they don’t vote their conscience. They vote their fear. https://t.co/0MmZnUtBTH

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 19, 2024

When it comes to Israel-Palestine, true naivety is believing in endless war

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/6/20/when-it-comes-to-israel-palestine-true-naivety-is-believing-in-endless-war

Retired Israeli General Israel Ziv says strains between Netanyahu and Israeli military leaders over the aims of war in Gaza are worse than ever. The Israeli military and security echelons, he said, feel they have “exhausted the purpose of the war”, reaching a “tactical peak”.

“We are getting close to finishing the job defined by the government and we’ll reach a point when we’re just fighting guerrilla warfare, and that could take years,” Ziv was quoted as saying by US media.

The divide between Netanyahu and Israel’s military played out yesterday when Israel’s military spokesman Daniel Hagari said Hamas could not be rooted out because it is “an ideology”, undermining Netanyahu’s stated goal of fully defeating it.

Number of Palestinian detainees killed in Israeli prisons rises to 54: Commission

UN experts say firms sending arms to Israel could be complicit in abuses

Activists tell UK weapons makers they may face criminal liability: Report

Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary, reporting from Deir el-Balah, says Israeli air strikes have been concentrated in Rafah and central Gaza.

In Rafah, Israeli forces have razed agricultural lands along the eastern boundary and have blown up houses. In the heart of the southern city, intensive fighting is taking place between Palestinian fighters and Israeli soldiers, she said.

“There have also been targets on people sheltering in tents. They say they are trapped and unable to leave that area,” Khoudary said, adding that at least two Palestinian women were killed in an apartment in Nuseirat in central Gaza.

Hezbollah says it targeted a gathering of Israeli soldiers inside the Samaka site as well as the Ruwaysat al-Alam area in the occupied Lebanese Kfar Shouba hills. It said it also “achieved a direct hit” when it shelled the Zabadin site in the occupied Lebanese Shebaa Farms with artillery.

‘Any threat to Cyprus is a threat to the EU’

Addressing family members of the remaining captives held in Gaza, Netanyahu says Israeli forces “will not leave the Gaza Strip until all the kidnapped return”, Israeli Army Radio reports.

Netanyahu reiterated that Israel “will eliminate Hamas’s military and governmental capabilities”.

Hamas has called on “human rights organisations and the UN to work on following up on the conditions of Palestinian detainees” in Israeli prisons.

“We emphasise the need to document these crimes as war crimes, a violation of all international treaties and conventions, and an escalation in the campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing,” it said in a statement.

As of mid-April, about 9,500 Palestinians from Gaza and the occupied West Bank had been jailed by Israel, according to estimates from the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, a rights group based in the West Bank city of Ramallah that supports Palestinian prisoners.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) urged the US government to probe “growing reports of the systematic torture of Palestinian detainees by Israeli forces”.

It cited allegations by Mohammed Saber Arab, a correspondent for Al Araby TV. He was detained at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City in March by Israeli troops. Detainees are blindfolded and handcuffed 24 hours a day and subjected to continuous torture, physical and sexual abuse and humiliation, said Arab.

“Because the Biden administration is complicit in the far-right Israeli government’s genocide, forced starvation and ethnic cleansing, it is also complicit in the torture of Palestinian detainees,” said Nihad Awad, CAIR’s national executive director, in a statement.

“A nation that receives billions of American taxpayer dollars cannot engage in torture or any other of the war crimes Israeli forces commit on a daily basis.”

The Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, says on its official Telegram channel that it has attacked an Israeli army “command and control position” in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood with mortar fire.

It said the attack caused casualties and its fighters observed Israeli army medical evacuation teams landing to extract the “dead and wounded”.

The Israeli army says two of its soldiers from the 401st Brigades have been “seriously injured” in southern Gaza. “The fighters were evacuated to receive medical treatment at a hospital,” it added in a post on X.

More than 300 Israeli soldiers have been killed and thousands wounded since the ground invasion of Gaza began in late October.

‘Powerful’ roadside bomb blows up Israeli Merkava tank in Rafah: Hamas

Palestinian journalist killed in Israeli attack on Gaza

The Palestinian Health Ministry says Israeli forces have shot and killed a Palestinian teenager in the occupied West Bank. Naeem Abdullah Samha, 15, was killed “by occupation [Israeli] bullets” in the city of Qalqilya, the ministry in Ramallah said in a statement.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment.

The Palestinian news agency Wafa, citing local sources, reported that Samha was shot in the chest. He was rushed to hospital but was pronounced dead there, the agency said. It reported no reason for the shooting.

Many Lebanese say they’re resigned to a possible escalation with Israel. “Of course we don’t want to go into a war with them, but if that’s in solidarity with the people in Gaza, then so be it,” said designer Tara Tabet, 32.

She said it’s “stressful” to live with so much uncertainty but she’s trying to carry on “as if there’s nothing. All of Beirut is like that.” Already, about 90,000 Lebanese have fled their homes in the south because of cross-border fighting between Hezbollah and Israel.

“You’re not happy because you don’t know at any point. We have our passports ready. We have a suitcase ready. We have some food stocks ready,” said Sami Masri, 38, a businessman from the south.

Shopkeeper Qassem Qarram says he is extremely worried. “Of course everyone is afraid, and those who tell you they are not afraid will be lying to themselves,” he said.

People on Cyprus have reacted with incredulity to warnings from Lebanon’s Hezbollah that the island could be targeted if tensions with Israel blow up into a full-fledged war.

Cyprus is the European Union’s easternmost member and is less than 200km (125 miles) from Lebanon. The threat worried some people in Cyprus. “Last night when I heard about the news, yes, I was worried,” resident Filios Christodoulou, 84, said.

Others were unfazed. “We have nothing to do with this war,” Stella Patatini, 62, said. “On the contrary, we are helping peace in the region and assistance to the Palestinians, so I feel safe in Cyprus.”

Lebanon’s government appeared to try to contain any fallout from Nasrallah’s comments. Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib contacted Cypriot President Christodoulides.

“Cyprus is not involved, nor will it become involved, in any military conflicts,” government spokesperson Konstantinos Letymbiotis told state radio.

Cyprus has traditionally allowed Israel to use its airspace for air drills, but never during active conflict – and it doesn’t look like it will start now.

After Hezbollah’s threat, Cyprus announced it would remain neutral and not get involved in any war. However, the United Kingdom has bases in Cyprus, which it uses to conduct military operations in the region.

The UK allegedly used those bases to launch attacks against the Houthis in Yemen, and they’ve reportedly been used to arm Israel in its war on Gaza and southern Lebanon.

Israeli minister Benny Gantz says on X that he held a phone call with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier to discuss the Gaza war and the potential of escalation in the north of Israel against Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

“I emphasised to him that the reality where Hezbollah and the Iranian axis of terror continue to threaten the citizens of Northern Israel and the entire region’s stability is simply irreconcilable,” Gantz wrote.

“I will support any responsible and effective military or political decision to remove the threat from outside the government,” he added.

Israel has become a ‘pariah state’: Jordan

Hezbollah-Israel: ‘This would not be a conventional war’

Hezbollah last went to war with Israel in 2006. Since then, it “has robustly expanded the size and the quality of its arsenal”, says Dina Arakji, an associate analyst at Control Risks consultancy.

“The group in 2006 reportedly had about 15,000 rockets while unofficial estimates in recent years suggest this number has multiplied by almost 10 times.”

The armed group “reportedly acquired more advanced weaponry, particularly precision-guided missiles”, Arakji noted. “Hezbollah is unlikely to have used its most sophisticated weaponry yet.”

Military analyst and retired Lebanese army general Khalil Helou said Hezbollah has Iranian ballistic missiles it has yet to launch into Israel. Those include the Fateh 110 – a precision-guided missile with a range of about 300km (186 miles) – more than sufficient to reach Tel Aviv and Jerusalem from Lebanon.