Lebanon’s government is discussing disarming Hezbollah. What could happen?

Lebanese cabinet ministers are meeting in the Presidential Palace outside Beirut. On the top of the agenda is a resolution to assert the exclusivity of weapons in the hands of the state – a euphemism for disarming Hezbollah.

The meeting could represent a historic crossroad for Lebanon. If the Lebanese government officially declares that all armed groups outside the state are illegitimate, it would practically outlaw Hezbollah’s armed wings. But it remains unclear if the cabinet would force the vote on the measure absent of a consensus on the issue. Hezbollah and its close allies in the Amal Movement are represented in the government.

If the cabinet asserts that Hezbollah must give up its weapons, how would the resolution materialise?

It is possible that it would turn out to be a symbolic declaration. Hezbollah has ruled out voluntarily disarming as long as Israel continues to occupy parts of south Lebanon and pose what it says is an “existential threat” to the country.

Some of the group’s critics have floated deploying the Lebanese military to disarm Hezbollah by force. But that scenario would likely lead to a catastrophic civil war that could also break up the Lebanese Armed Forces, with Hezbollah supporters within the military defecting.

At the same time, the prospect of a renewed all-out Israeli assault continues to loom large over the country and its future.

For Hezbollah’s opponents, the time has come to build a state capable of looking after all of its citizens and ending the monopoly of one group over war and peace decisions.

But for Hezbollah and its supporters, the group’s weapons are the only defence against the expansionist aims of Israel, which have been demonstrated clearly in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and Syria.

Meanwhile, the people of southern Lebanon continue to endure near daily Israeli attacks that have gone unanswered by both the state and Hezbollah – with tens of thousands unable to return to their devastated villages or rebuild their homes.

Israeli drones drop stun grenades over southern Lebanon village

Israeli drones have flown at low altitude over several areas in southern Lebanon, dropping stun grenades near a border village in a new breach of a ceasefire with Hezbollah.

According to Lebanon’s state news agency NNA, the drones were spotted over the coastal region of Tyre and neighbouring towns, as well as the Qasmiyeh and al-Jouar areas.

Under a ceasefire agreement, Israel was supposed to fully withdraw from southern Lebanon by January 26. The deadline was extended to February 18, but Israel still maintains a military presence at five border outposts.

Hezbollah chief warns Israel against rekindling war

Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem is speaking at a memorial event for General Saeed Izadi, a commander in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) who was killed in an Israeli air strike in June, according to the Hezbollah-run Al-Manar media.

During his remarks, Qassem warned Israel against re-starting a broader war on Lebanon, saying if it does so, rockets will fall in Israeli territory.

Qassem spoke about the ceasefire with Israel, which he said Hezbollah fully respected but Israel violated “thousands of times”.

He also criticised the latest version of a roadmap pushed by US envoy Thomas Barrack for Hezbollah to disarm, saying it did not come with sufficient guarantees that Israel would halt its attacks.

“If we surrender our weapons, the aggression will not stop, and this is what Israeli officials are saying,” he said, noting that Hezbollah could not agree to the latest proposed timetable.

“If Israel decides to wage a large-scale war, missiles will rain down on it again, and all the security they’ve been working on for eight months will collapse.”

To improve stability in Lebanon, Qassem called for cooperation “within a framework of national unity” that is not beholden to “American or other tutelage”.

Israeli forces arrest at least 15 Palestinians in occupied West Bank raids

The Israeli military carried out a wave of overnight raids across the occupied West Bank, detaining at least 15 Palestinians, while homes were demolished and Israeli settlers stormed others, according to Palestinian sources.

Israeli settler seen shooting West Bank activist freed from house arrest

Israeli settler Yinon Levi, who shot and killed Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen in the occupied West Bank, was released just days after the attack.

Meanwhile, Israel continues to hold Hathaleen’s body, prompting 60 women from his village to go on a hunger strike.

Israeli soldiers destroy water tank and pipeline, seize generator near West Bank’s Tubas

Israeli forces have targeted critical infrastructure used by Palestinians east of Tubas in the northern Jordan Valley, according to the Wafa news agency.

Mutaz Bsharat, who is in charge of monitoring Israeli activities in the Jordan Valley, said forces demolished a 1,000-cubic-metre (35,314-cubic-ft) metal water tank belonging to a farmer.

Soldiers also destroyed an 800-metre-long (2,624ft-long) water pipeline owned by another resident.

Moreover, Israeli troops stormed Khirbet Yarza village, seizing a residential tent and its contents.

A power generator that serves the Yarza Village Council was also confiscated.

Several people wounded in Israeli settler attack near Salfit

Several people have been wounded in a settler attack in the western area of Deir Ballut town, west of Salfit, in the occupied West Bank.

Wafa news agency reported that a group of settlers attacked Palestinians in the area with pepper spray, causing burns to their faces and eyes.

‘We’re seeing children with knees missing, with large chunks taken out of their faces’: British surgeon in Gaza

We’ve spoken to Victoria Rose, a British consultant plastic surgeon who has gone to work in Gaza several times since the start of the war.

Speaking to Al Jazeera from London, the doctor described her time spent at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, in May and June as “relentless”.

“When we were there, we were operating every day without a break for the 24 days; I was averaging about 12 patients a day and my colleagues had separate operating lists,” Rose said.

“The bulk of what we saw initially was all bomb blast injuries and then in the latter part of the trip we started to see a lot of the gunshot wounds from the GHF shootings,” she added.

“What we’re seeing now is that the population is displaced and everybody is living in tents and this is where the bombs are going off – so there is no protection,” Rose continued, describing the traumatic injuries caused by the bombardment as “much more severe”.

“So we were seeing children with knees missing, with feet missing, with hands missing, with large chunks taken out of their faces; really, really significant injuries that many of them didn’t survive.”


_{Aftermath of Israeli attacks on tents for displaced Palestinians in Khan Younis}

Starvation taking ‘absolutely huge’ toll on Gaza’s wounded

Asked about the long-term struggles faced by the thousands of wounded people and what care they would have, Victoria Rose replied that “there really is no way” that these patients can be rehabilitated under the current circumstances.

“There’s virtually no infrastructure left; I think 69 percent of all buildings in Gaza have been destroyed and 94 percent of all hospitals have been completely or partially destroyed – and that will include all the physiotherapy centres,” she told Al Jazeera.

Rose also said that most patients actually need secondary surgery.

“A lot of what we do when we are out there is the limb-saving injuries, so cleaning the wounds and getting them closed – but a lot of that involves shortening bones, performing operations that will need a second part to restore function.

“And that really is the worry, is that there are lots of people already waiting for those surgeries and we just don’t know where they are and we don’t have the facilities to operate on them.”

Commenting on the deepening starvation across Gaza, Rose said the toll this takes on the people trying to recover from this kind of injuries is “absolutely huge”.

“The pictures that we are seeing now are showing very late-stage malnutrition which is basically un-survivable from,” she said, explaining that infection rates “are soaring” as people suffering from malnutrition gradually lose the ability to mount immune responses.

“Coupled with the fact that aid is not getting in in any form – so not only are we not seeing adequate food supplies, we are not seeing adequate medical supplies, and certainly when we were there in June we did not have the antibiotics that we required to fight these sort of infections – so it compounds the problem.

“The malnutrition, the lack of aid – it’s making these injuries un-survivable.”

Many Palestinians too weak to travel on foot to aid sites, aid group says

The Danish Refugee Council (DRC) says that 70 percent of Palestinians in Gaza are suffering from “extreme weakness caused by starvation” making it difficult to access aid.

“The physical exhaustion is so profound that many are unable to make the long journey on foot to distribution sites or carry heavy loads even if they receive assistance,” the DRC said, as it released the findings of a survey of Palestinians in Deir el-Balah, Khan Younis, Gaza City and North Gaza.

Of the 39 people DRC interviewed between May 22 and July 27, 46 percent said they received clean drinking water twice a week at their current locations.

Twenty-eight percent said they could get a hot meal from a communal kitchen just once a week, but 31 percent said they had received no services in the month before being interviewed.

The interviewees said they “witnessed people, including family members, being deliberately targeted, shot, and killed by soldiers” when they went to access aid, at what the DRC called a “militarised backed distribution scheme”.

Because of the violence, people described the aid as “blood aid” or “aid soaked in blood”, the DRC added.

Israeli forces kill nine Palestinians in attacks across Gaza

Israeli forces have killed at least nine Palestinians in early morning attacks across the Gaza Strip, medical sources have told our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic.

In Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, Israeli forces bombed a tent, killing at least five people, according to sources at Nasser Hospital. Al-Awda Hospital reported that two Palestinians were killed by Israeli artillery shelling north of the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza. Two Palestinians were also killed and others were injured when Israeli forces bombed an apartment, northwest of Gaza City, staff at al-Shifa Hospital said.

Israeli forces kill 3 Palestinians waiting for food in southern Gaza

Our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic are reporting that three Palestinians have been killed and several injured while waiting for food aid north of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip.

Gaza in grip of ‘unprecedented’ military escalation

In the southern part of the Strip, we can see that the Israeli ground operations are concentrated around the eastern and central parts of the city of Khan Younis. Palestinian armed factions and Israeli ground forces are trading fire there.

Israel’s ground campaign is accompanied by very heavy fire from its air force and also from Israeli artillery units that continue to pound the al-Mawasi area, where families were told to go to in order to get away from Israel’s bombardment.

We understand that a makeshift tent was targeted in that area, and at least five Palestinians were killed in that attack.

Overnight, we heard both targeted and sporadic gunfire coming from the eastern part of the central Gaza Strip.

Israel is still deepening its operations in Gaza City. This comes amid reports that Israel might carry out a wide-scale military incursion into the entire Gaza Strip to reoccupy it again.

This has triggered huge concerns among Palestinians, who are suffering not just from the repeated displacement and bombardment, but also from the ongoing deterioration of their humanitarian conditions.

Red Crescent says volunteer killed by Israeli fire while searching for food

The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) says a volunteer was fatally shot by Israeli forces as he searched for food amid growing hunger in Gaza.

In a statement posted on X, the PRCS said 28-year-old Abdel Majeed Adnan Salamah, a volunteer in Khan Younis for the past seven years, “worked tirelessly with PRCS ambulance teams, risking his life to rescue the wounded and injured” since the war began.

“Two days ago, he left in search of food in the so-called ‘US-Israeli aid zone’ west of Rafah. There, Israeli forces targeted him – along with other starving civilians. He never made it back. Abdel Majeed was killed while simply trying to survive,” the organisation said.

The PRCS added that its teams are facing extreme hunger across Gaza, yet “despite the exhaustion, they continue their life-saving work, committed to easing the suffering of others.”

The group renewed its call for all border crossings to be opened immediately, calling the unrestricted flow of aid “a matter of life and death”.

The statement comes days after an Israeli strike hit the PRCS headquarters in Gaza, killing one worker and injuring three, according to the organisation.

Children in Gaza injured by Israeli attacks face severe malnourishment

Mosab al-Dibs has been receiving treatment at Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital for about two months after a severe injury to his head when an Israeli air attack struck his family’s tent in May.

The 14-year-old is largely paralysed and severely malnourished because the facility no longer has supplies to feed him.

“Mosab does not suffer from anything or any disease. Mosab suffers from severe malnutrition. He suffers convulsions as a result of a hit that affected his brain,” his mother, Shahinaz al-Dibs, told Al Jazeera.

Hunched over his emaciated frame and gaunt face, she lovingly strokes his cheek, soothing him as she tells him he is going to be OK.

The UN says the effect of hunger building over this time is quickly worsening, especially in Gaza City and the northern region, and doctors are struggling to provide care.

“There are not enough nutritional supplements. We have some children that we keep in the hospital to observe due to extreme malnutrition,” Dr Suzan Marour, a doctor at the Friends of the Patient Society Hospital in the Remal neighbourhood in Gaza City, said.


_{Nine-year-old malnourished Palestinian girl Mariam Dawwas sits on the floor with her mother in Remal neighbourhood in Gaza City on August 2}

Eight more Palestinians die from forced starvation in Gaza

Gaza’s Ministry of Health says hospitals in the besieged territory have recorded eight new deaths due to famine and malnutrition over the past 24 hours, including one child.

This brings the total number of victims of famine and malnutrition in the Gaza Strip since Israel’s war began to 188, including 94 children.

Gaza death toll rises

At least 79 Palestinians, including 52 aid seekers, have been killed and 644 injured in Israeli attacks across Gaza in the past 24 hours, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry.

The count includes eight people – one child and seven adults – who starved to death in the past 24 hours, it said, raising the hunger-related death toll to 188, including 94 children.

Eight bodies were also recovered from the rubble of previous Israeli attacks, the ministry statement said on Telegram.

Israel’s war on Gaza has killed a total of 61,020 Palestinians and injured 150,671 since October 7, 2023, the ministry added.

The total number of aid seekers killed since May 27, when Israel introduced a new aid distribution mechanism through the controversial GHF, has reached 1,568, with more than 11,230 injured, the statement said.

Israeli forces kill 6 aid seekers at GHF site in central Gaza

There has been a very disturbing development that took place this morning near an aid point run by the GHF located near the Netzarim Corridor.

Six Palestinians were killed in the attack, while nine others were reported injured, and they were taken to Gaza’s nearby hospitals, including al-Awda Hospital and Al-Aqsa Hospital in northern Gaza.

They sustained different kinds of injuries in the upper and lower parts of their bodies, and witnesses describe chaotic scenes unfolding near the controversial aid centre, confirming that Israel has sporadically opened fire on them, forcing everyone to flee the area after a very short period in which aid seekers could attempt to grab some food boxes.

This has been a scenario that has repeated every single morning, not just in the central part of Gaza, but also in the southern areas.

‘We are witnessing what is a tragic ongoing genocide’

We’ve spoken to Laila Baker, the regional director for Arab states at the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), about the situation Palestinians are finding themselves in after 22 months of war, in addition to decades of systematic population abuse under Israeli occupation.

Here’s what she said:

“We are witnessing what is a tragic ongoing genocide that continues to devastate the lives of Palestinians in Gaza, but also elsewhere in the region, including the West Bank.

“This is not a failure of capacity; it is essentially a failure of will, access and accountability of the international community in allowing the United Nations to do its job, to be able to provide for the people on humanitarian assistance.

“And more importantly, that the Israeli government as an occupying force including since 1967 in Gaza has the primary responsibility for protecting and providing for the people who are under its occupation.

“To say that there’s been a gross failure of and a breach of that covenant is to underestimate the situation on the ground.

“At UNFPA, we are exceedingly worried about the entire community of two million Palestinians who have been trapped, assaulted, displaced and starved under the Israeli assault since October of 2023.”

‘Inconceivable anyone with a beating human heart can stand by and watch this’

We have some more lines from our interview with Laila Baker, the regional director for Arab states at the United Nations Population Fund.

Speaking to Al Jazeera from Cairo, she highlighted how women in particular have been bearing the brunt of Israel’s war on Gaza, citing the continuous displacement, the breaking down of protection mechanisms and the destruction of the social fabric, as well as women’s inability to have any sort of confidentiality, privacy and personal hygiene.

“It baffles me how that will not have a long-lasting impact on the confidence, on the fertility and on the mental wellbeing of the women in Gaza,” Baker told Al Jazeera.

“They are not only the providers; they are not only the protectors of themselves and trying to survive as individual human beings – but for many women and girls in Gaza, they are the primary caretakers of their family,” she said.

“Thus, they have to go and fend for food and fight off being a … deliberate target while they are trying to get the most meagre means for survival,” Baker continued.

“I find it almost inconceivable that anyone with a beating human heart can stand by and watch this – it must come to a grinding halt.”

Israel violates international law in Gaza daily: Norwegian charity chief

Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, has told our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic that his charity expects Norwegian investments to be withdrawn from Israeli companies that contribute to Israeli international law violations in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

Here are some of the other points he made:

Hamas backs ‘Freedom to Report’ initiative calling for access to Gaza for foreign journalists

Senior Hamas official Izzat al-Risheq says the armed group “appreciate the ‘Freedom to Report’ initiative launched by 200 prominent journalists from around the world, in which they demanded immediate and uncensored access for foreign journalists to the Gaza Strip”.

The initiative started by photographer Andre Liohn has started a petition, in which it states that what is happening in Gaza is “not just a humanitarian blackout, it is an information blackout that undermines the public’s right to know and journalism’s democratic function to hold power accountable”.

It calls Israel’s strategy in Gaza as coming from the “very playbook of authoritarianism: Control the narrative, silence independent voices, and sever the link between reality and public understanding”.

In a statement published on Telegram, al-Risheq said Hamas “affirms that the occupation’s policy of preventing foreign journalists from entering Gaza represents a clear violation of press freedom and a prevention of conveying the truth to international public opinion. It reveals its fear of exposing its aggression and terrorism.”

The Israeli military has killed more than 200 reporters and media workers since its bombardment of Gaza began, including several Al Jazeera journalists and their relatives.

Just 95 aid trucks entered Gaza on Monday: Media Office

Gaza’s Government Media Office has warned of an intensifying humanitarian catastrophe, accusing Israel of deliberately restricting aid and causing instability in the besieged territory.

Only 95 aid trucks entered Gaza on Monday, the office said in a statement, far below the minimum 600 trucks per day needed to meet basic humanitarian needs, according to UNRWA.

The statement said most of the limited aid was looted due to “security chaos being sowed by the Israeli occupation as part of a systematic policy of engineering chaos and starvation”.

“We condemn the continued systematic starvation, closure of crossings, and denial of aid entry, and hold the occupation and its allies fully responsible for the worsening humanitarian disaster affecting more than 2.4 million people,” the office said.

It also called on the international community to act urgently to reopen crossings and ensure the safe, sustained delivery of food, medicine and baby formula to civilians in Gaza.

Aid deliveries average just 85 trucks per day into Gaza

The Government Media Office in Gaza has shared updated figures with Al Jazeera on the number of aid trucks that have entered the Strip since Israel announced it would partially lift restrictions on humanitarian aid deliveries starting on July 27.

Despite that pledge, experts say the total number of trucks over the nine-day period remains far below what Gaza needs to prevent a deepening starvation crisis and the collapse of its devastated healthcare system.

15% of what's needed, far from enough to halt starvation let alone get on the path of recovery. Air drops add(ed) 2-4 trucks at most.
22,000 trucks waiting outside the border.


Mothers plea for food for hungry children in Gaza: Oxfam

Ghada Alhaddad, Oxfam International’s media and communications officer, has told our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic from Gaza City that the global charity is receiving “pleas from mothers in Gaza to provide food for their hungry children”.

Here are some of the other points she made:

‘This aid is stained with humiliation and blood’: Gaza aid seeker

Thousands of Palestinians crowded against aid trucks entering the Gaza Strip through the southern Morag Corridor on Monday, attempting to get whatever food they could amid an Israeli-engineered starvation crisis.

Mohammed Qassas from Khan Younis in southern Gaza said his children are so hungry that he is forced to storm aid trucks.

“I have young children, how am I supposed to feed them? No one has mercy. This resembles the end of the world,” he said. “If we fight, we get the food. If we don’t fight, we don’t get anything,” he told AP.

As the trucks drove away, men climbed onto them, scrambling for any remaining scraps.

“Some people go home with some 200 kilogrammes (441 pounds), and others go home with only one kilogramme (35 ounces). It is a mafia-like system,” Qassas said.

Yusif Abu Mor from Khan Younis said the trucks’ aid system is akin to a death trap.

“This aid is stained with humiliation and blood,” he told the news agency, adding that aid seekers run the risk of being killed by shootings or run over by aid trucks surrounded by crowds of hungry Palestinians.

Gaza war has turned into ‘war of starvation, annihilation’: Egyptian leader

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi says that “the war in Gaza is no longer a war to achieve diplomatic objectives or to free hostages – it has become a war of starvation, annihilation, and the elimination of the Palestinian cause”.

At a media conference in Cairo with Vietnamese President Luong Cuong, el-Sisi added that “history will hold many countries accountable for their stance on the war in Gaza, and the global human conscience will not remain silent for long”.

Egypt “will not be a gateway for the displacement of the Palestinian people”, he added.

The Egyptian leader highlighted that more than 5,000 aid trucks are on Egyptian territory ready to enter Gaza.

Palestinians in Gaza burning waste as fuel runs dry: OCHA

Gaza’s worsening fuel crisis is pushing Palestinians to burn tyres, rubber and waste to power tuk-tuks and motorbikes, creating what United Nations officials warn are hazardous methods to generate energy.

“People are burning anything they can find to produce low-grade fuel,” said Olga Cherevko, of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). “This is contributing to massive environmental damage and public health risks.”

Fuel shortages have also crippled essential services. “Ambulances cannot run, hospitals cannot operate, water trucks also cannot be delivered,” she said.

OCHA says its aid convoys are regularly delayed by Israeli-imposed restrictions. “Our missions sometimes last 18 hours or longer. The routes we’re given are often impossible and very dangerous,” Cherevko said.

In a post on social media, OCHA also warned: “People are resorting to dangerous methods … Our work is being systematically obstructed.”

Cherevko said the UN can no longer deliver aid at scale using its normal community-based systems. “We need it very, very urgently,” she said.