Hezbollah official: Ceasefire must not violate Lebanon’s sovereignty

Mahmoud Qmati says that any US-brokered ceasefire deal between the group and Israel must end fighting swiftly and preserve Lebanon’s sovereignty, an apparent reference to Israel’s stance that it will keep striking Hezbollah even with a truce in place.

Speaking to Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV, he said he was neither overly optimistic nor overly pessimistic about the prospects of a truce.

Yesterday, he told Al Jazeera that he expects Israel to do everything it can to continue its assault on Lebanon. “The Zionist enemy has sabotaged attempts at a political solution in Gaza, and we expect the same to happen in Lebanon,” he said.


‘Ball in Israel’s court’ after US envoy’s Lebanon visit

Amos Hochstein did not want to divulge any details about the discussions he’s been having over the past 24 hours. This is the second time Hochstein has met with Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri in two days. Berri is of course negotiating indirectly with Israel through the United States and on behalf of Hezbollah.

Hochstein did confirm he would be heading to Israel for additional discussions. This is the start of the process. We were never under any illusion that a ceasefire deal was imminent.

Lebanese officials have expressed cautious optimism. They say the ball is now in Israel’s court. We know that Israel has been saying it will not accept the pre-October 7 status quo. It wants a change. It wants a new reality along the border. It wants Hezbollah to pull back from the border and for the Lebanese state to extend its authority along the border. It also wants an enforcement mechanism it can trust, it claims.

A US role in enforcing this, if indeed Lebanon accepts it, is likely to be accepted by Israel. But we also know that Israel wants the ability to act when it believes it is under threat from Hezbollah. So there are many major sticking points but there’s no doubt that there has been some progress.

Israel says any Lebanon deal must grant it ‘freedom to act’ against Hezbollah

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar says any ceasefire with Lebanon must ensure Israel has the “freedom to act” against Hezbollah.

“In any agreement we will reach, we will need to keep the freedom to act if there will be violations,” he told foreign ambassadors before US envoy Amos Hochstein’s expected arrival in Israel to discuss a truce.

This comes just after the leader of Hezbollah said any deal for a ceasefire must protect “Lebanon’s sovereignty”.

Explosions heard near Palmyra: Syrian state media

Syrian state TV has blamed Israeli air attacks for the explosions heard in the centre of the country.

It said initial reports indicate that residential buildings were hit.

Death toll in Israeli attack on Palmyra rises to 11

A monitor of Syria’s war has said 11 people were killed in Israeli strikes on Palmyra in the centre of the country.

The strikes killed “four non-Syrian fighters from pro-Iran groups and seven of Syrian nationality” and wounded “dozens including at least seven civilians”, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in a statement.

Israeli attack on Syria’s Palmyra kills 36 people: Report

An Israeli attack on Syria’s historic city of Palmyra killed 36 people and wounded more than 50 after it hit residential buildings and an industrial zone, the Syrian state news agency SANA reports.

Israel has been carrying out strikes against Iran-linked targets in Syria for years but has ramped up such raids since the October 7, 2023.

Palmyra’s ancient city is a UNESCO World Heritage site. It was seized by militants from the group known as ISIL (ISIS) in 2015 and partially destroyed before it was recaptured by the Syrian army.

Dozens of Pro-Palestinian activists arrested at the US Senate


_{Dozens of activists staged a protest inside the US Hart Senate Building, calling for the United States to stop funding Israel’s war on Gaza, on Tuesday}

_{The protest came as the Senate prepared to vote on ‘historic’ resolutions of disapproval of a $20bn weapons deal with Israel put forward by Senator Bernie Sanders}

_{The Anadolu news agency reported that 50 people were arrested at the protest}

Microsoft employee fired for pro-Palestine vigil

In late October, two employees of the tech giant were sacked after holding a demonstration for Palestinians killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza. The employees were part of a group called No Azure for Apartheid, which demands Microsoft end its cloud computing contracts with Israel.

One of the employees, Abdo Mohamed, told Al Jazeera that he believes their dismissal is a backlash against their activism and that the company has cultivated an anti-Arab culture

“Microsoft will claim policy violation, but we know that the real policy violation is happening because Microsoft is complicit in that genocide,” said Mohamed. “They are violating their own human rights statement.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/02/microsoft-workers-fired-gaza-vigil

How a lack of independent reporting is helping prolong Israel’s war on Gaza

This week in Gaza began – as so many have – with more massacres of Palestinians.

But those scenes of mass murder and forced displacement fail to make headlines on most Western news channels, and certainly not in Israeli media. The government in Israel has tight control over the news narrative and has barred journalists from operating independently.

This means what the Israelis see on their screens is often a distorted version of the war – one that amplifies Israeli victimhood and silences Palestinian suffering.

Israeli weapons firm reports ‘substantial growth’, record orders

Elbit Systems, one of Israel’s biggest defence contractors, has tracked a 14.4 percent increase in third-quarter revenue year on year as Israel’s military demands more products for its wars on Gaza and Lebanon.

The Haifa-based firm’s order backlog has “hit a record high of over $22 billion” providing “stability and resilience for the company for years to come,” CEO Bezhalel Machlis said in a statement.

Elbit supplies weapons and equipment to Israel’s Defence Ministry, including surveillance and attack drones, artillery, munitions and high-powered lasers.

An Elbit Hermes 450 drone was used in an attack that killed seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen in the central Gaza Strip in April this year, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.

_{A protester holds a sign saying ‘Elbit’s business: blood’ at a protest outside a weapons sales fair in Melbourne, Australia on September 12}

Rights group slams ‘escalating sanitation catastrophe’ in Gaza

The Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, in a statement to mark World Toilet Day, condemned Israel for its deliberate destruction of water and sanitation services in Gaza.

The Palestinian group said the sanitation crisis was particularly dire for displaced Palestinians in the so-called humanitarian zones in Deir el-Balah, az-Zawayda and al-Mawasi. These zones are “neither safe nor humane”, it said. Israel’s attacks and policies have turned the designated zones into “unsanitary areas, where sewage floods streets, roads, and tents housing” displaced people, it said.

As of September this year, Israeli forces have destroyed or damaged nearly all of Gaza’s 87 sewage treatment facilities as well as up to 100km (124 miles) of sewage pipelines. The crisis has been deepened due to severe fuel shortages needed to operate pumps and treatment plants, it said.

“This dire reality has led to the rapid spread of diseases, including skin infections, respiratory illnesses, and documented cases of polio and meningitis,” Al Mezan said. “Those who survive Israel’s relentless bombings are left to endure disease, starvation, or untreated illness, with little hope of relief.”

COP29: Palestinian delegation warns against environmental impacts of war

The Palestinian delegation at COP29 has warned against the climate impacts of the Israeli war on Gaza.

In a speech during the high-level session, Palestinian chairperson for the Environmental Quality Authority, Nisreen Tamimi, said protection of the environment is a basic right, which was being made more difficult by the Israeli war in the besieged coastal enclave.

She also said the war had polluted water sources and spread rubble filled with dangerous material. Tamimi added that the rebuilding efforts would release an estimated 30 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.

UNSC set to vote on Gaza ceasefire resolution

The vote will take place at 10am local time in New York (15:00 GMT) today.

The latest resolution – put forward by the 10 elected members of the UNSC – demands “an immediate, unconditional, and permanent ceasefire” between Israel and Hamas. The supporting members are Algeria, Ecuador, Guyana, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, South Korea, Sierra Leone, Slovenia and Switzerland.

The text could still be blocked by the US, one of five non-elected members with the power to veto resolutions, according to Security Council Report, a media outlet which monitors the UN council’s work.

The council has already voted on 11 resolutions related to the war in Gaza since October last year. Only four of those resolutions were adopted.

US vetoes UN Security Council resolution on Gaza ceasefire

The Security Council vote on the Gaza ceasefire resolution has ended with 14 votes for it and one vote against.

UNRWA chief: Gaza has become a graveyard for children

The head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, has used the occasion of World Children’s Day to make a plea on X for Palestinian children.

He reminded people that the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted by the UN General Assembly more than three decades ago today, in 1989.

“Today, the rights of Palestinian children are violated day in, day out,” Lazzarini continued. “[In Gaza,] they are being killed, injured, forced to flee and deprived of safety, learning and play.”

“In the occupied West Bank, children live in fear and anxiety. Since October last year, more than 170 were killed there while others are losing their childhood in Israeli detention centres.”

Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 17,400 children since last October.

Three decades ago, the world made a commitment to respect & uphold children’s rights by adopting the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Today, the rights of Palestinian children are violated day in, day out. #Gaza has become a graveyard for children. They are being killed,… pic.twitter.com/XeRJSKDJbq

— Philippe Lazzarini (@UNLazzarini) November 20, 2024

UK legislator likens Israel’s targeting of Gaza’s children to a ‘warped video game’

Patricia Ferguson told the UK parliament that hearing the testimony of British surgeon Nizam Mamode, who had volunteered at a hospital in Gaza, “was something that I do not think any of us who were present will ever forget”.

She said Mamode had “demonstrated the symmetrical puncture wounds on a dead child’s body – wounds in the region of the body’s major arteries that were too precise to have been the work of a human sniper. They were the work of drones targeted at innocent civilians, and in this case, a child”.

She added, “For me, it was the cold calculation of using machines to kill children, as though it was some kind of warped video game, that was the most disturbing aspect of Professor Mamode’s presentation.”

The legislator from the governing Labour Party went on to say she hoped the UK would support an upcoming UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DCV7cz6MZUS

(Video not available in Canada at least, can't see it)

Israel discussing plans for a US company to oversee aid in north Gaza: Reports

Israeli media outlets are reporting that Netanyahu’s cabinet is discussing plans to bring in a private US company to oversee the distribution of aid in besieged northern Gaza, in an operation that could see Israel’s military stay in the region for three more months.

The Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation said the plan was proposed during discussions on distributing aid in Gaza, where a UN-backed committee has warned of imminent famine. It said the plan envisages the US firm providing protection and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) managing the distribution area.

The Israeli Army Radio meanwhile reported that Israel’s ongoing siege of Jabalia in northern Gaza, currently in its 46th day, was for “cleaning and sanitising the area – for the benefit of the plan to introduce humanitarian aid through a private American company that will operate in the area under Israeli auspices”.

The Israeli military had previously said it was re-entering the area to prevent Hamas from regrouping there.

The station said that under the proposal, Israel’s military will stay in northern Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp for at least three more months.

UN officials have described conditions in northern Gaza as “apocalyptic” with tens of thousands of trapped civilians subjected to daily Israeli bombardment and cut off from access to food, water and medicine. Israeli troops have also forced hospitals shut in the area, destroyed all remaining ambulances and prevented emergency workers from carrying out rescue operations.

Only more misdirection for stalling purposes or worse, just like the US aid pier...

Cleaning and sanitizing, wtf.

Eight Palestinians killed in Israeli attack on north Gaza

Our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic are reporting that an Israeli air attack on Jabalia al-Balad killed at least eight people and wounded several others. The Israeli aircraft targeted the home of the Jouda family, AJA added.

The attack comes shortly after Israeli bombardment in the neighbouring Beit Lahiya project killed at least eight Palestinians.


_{A child sits with the bodies of Palestinians killed in an Israeli attack on the Jabalia al-Baled area on November 10}

Al Jazeera journalist wounded in Israeli attack

We are getting reports that Hossam Shabat was lightly injured while he was reporting in the Sabra neighbourhood of Gaza City. The correspondent for Al Jazeera Mubasher was hit while at the site of a previous Israeli attack that killed a Palestinian Civil Defence worker. Shabat was wearing a press jacket at the time of the attack.

The Wafa news agency reported that several Palestinians were killed and wounded in the earlier Israeli attack, which targeted a home opposite the Sultan Bakery in the Sabra neighbourhood.

Shabat took to X to recount what happened.

“Tonight, I was deliberately targeted by Israeli forces. After receiving word of a nearby bombing, I jumped into my car to report. Upon arriving at the house packed with terrified people, I could hear their desperate screams for help from the second floor. The moment I stepped inside, the house was bombed again, and dismembered body parts of the wounded flew around me,”

“Rubble crashed down on me and my colleagues; One first responder was killed, and while my colleague and I were injured, many others did not survive.”

اللحظات الأولى لقصف طائرات الاحتلال طواقم الدفاع المدني خلال أداءا مهامهم في انتشال الإصابات في حي الصبرة بمدينة غزة pic.twitter.com/4t1ebf4zru

— المركز الفلسطيني للإعلام (@PalinfoAr) November 20, 2024

Death toll from Israel’s attack on Gaza’s Jabalia rises

Our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic are reporting that the death toll from Israel’s attack on Jabalia al-Balad has now risen to 12.

_{Several young children were injured in the attack}

Israeli soldier killed in northern Gaza

Israel’s military says 21-year-old Roi Sasson, a sergeant in the largest infantry brigade, has been killed in northern Gaza. He was from the town of Mevaseret Zion, west of Jerusalem.

Sasson is the 799th Israeli soldier to be killed since the Gaza war started, according to military figures.

More casualties found near Gaza’s Rafah, Nuseirat

The bodies of two people killed by Israeli military attacks have been found near Rafah, report our colleagues on the ground. The bodies were recovered in the Khirbet al-Adas and al-Jnaina areas, they said. Meanwhile, in central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp, Israeli drone fire injured two more Palestinians, according to our colleagues’ reports.

Eighty-five patients at risk as Kamal Adwan Hospital under Israeli attack: Director

We’ve been reporting for nearly a day on Israel’s assault on Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, North Gaza. The hospital has been under direct Israeli fire, damaging its facilities and endangering the patients remaining inside.

The hospital’s director, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, has been giving us regular updates on the situation there.

Palestinians killed in Israeli raid on Gaza City

An Israeli raid targeting a house in the city’s Zeitoun neighbourhood has killed at least two people, our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic report. A number of people were also wounded in this attack.

Israel sees West Bank as its ‘big prize’

More than a year into the war on Gaza, Israel’s government is increasingly shifting attention to the occupied West Bank, which it is openly discussing annexing and where Israeli settler attacks have become a “daily routine”, says Tamer Qarmout, an assistant professor in public policy at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.

“Gaza has been turned to ruins with this ongoing genocide … for them [the Israeli government], it is not an issue any more,” he told Al Jazeera. “The West Bank is the big prize. This is what they’re looking at. They want to annex the West Bank and it’s official now.”

While the US government, which claims to oppose illegal Israeli settlements, has imposed sanctions on some far-right Israeli settlers, the effect has been “very marginal”, Qarmout said.

“[The US is] going after the most radical groups, but the real elephant in the room is the Israeli government,” he added. “I think if the US is sincere about stopping settlement expansion it should target the Israeli government. Stop providing funding to Israel that goes into settlements.”

Clashes, explosions as Israeli forces raid West Bank’s Jenin

Israeli forces stormed the city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank earlier, triggering clashes with Palestinian fighters, according to Al Jazeera Arabic. Fighting is ongoing and witnesses there are reporting hearing explosions.

Footage published by the Palestinian Information Center shows the moment of a large explosion in the city.

تفجير عبوات ناسفة خلال العدوان المستمر على جنين ومخيمها pic.twitter.com/S64bTyisTJ

— المركز الفلسطيني للإعلام (@PalinfoAr) November 19, 2024

• The city of Hebron
• The city of Halhul, north of Hebron
• The Fawwar refugee camp, south of Hebron
• The cities of Ramallah and el-Bireh
• The towns of al-Mughayyir and Silwan, north of Ramallah
• The Jalazone refugee camp, north of Ramallah
• The village of Osrin, south of Nablus.

Israeli settlers torch Palestinian vehicles in West Bank: Report

The Palestinian Information Center is reporting that Israeli settlers set fire to the cars in the village of al-Mazraa al-Gharbiya in the occupied West Bank. It also published footage of the burning vehicles on Twitter.

⬅️ شاهد ..
مستوطنون يحرقون مركبات الأهالي في بلدة المزرعة الغربية شمال رام الله pic.twitter.com/ETqZGlHy91

— المركز الفلسطيني للإعلام (@PalinfoAr) November 20, 2024

Child among seven Palestinians arrested by Israeli forces in occupied West Bank: Report

Israeli forces have carried out a wave of arrests in the occupied West Bank, rounding up seven Palestinians in the governorates of Ramallah, el-Bireh and Bethlehem, according to the Wafa news agency.

Among those arrested are a father and 11-year-old son in the farm town of Mazari al-Nubani, near Ramallah, said Wafa.

While carrying out arrests in the town of Abu Falah, northeast of Ramallah, Israeli forces also confiscated a vehicle and vandalised property while raiding local homes, according to Wafa.

Aftermath of Israeli settler attack on al-Mazraa al-Gharbiya near Ramallah