Israel Katz Orders Strikes And Evacuations In Southern Lebanon After Hezbollah Attacks

Israel carried out three “preventive” strikes in Lebanon this weekend to deter Hezbollah from launching attacks against northern Israel in the event of a U.S. offensive against Iran, according to Les Echos.

“Once again, talk inside Israeli corridors returns to plans to deport Palestinians from the Gaza Strip under the banner of "voluntary migration," this time reemerging with moves by the new head of the Israeli National Security Council, Shmuel Ben-Ezra”

Al-Jazeera Net

The Les Echos report said the Israeli raids left 12 dead, including a Hezbollah official, and more than a dozen injured, while targeting arms and ammunition depots to minimize Hezbollah’s military capabilities.

Al-Jazeera Net

In southern Lebanon, L’Orient-Le Jour said Israeli aviation intensified on Tuesday after a ceasefire went into effect on April 16, with strikes in the Tyre district including Majdel Zoun and with evacuations ordered for residents of sixteen localities in the Bint Jbeil and Tyre districts.

L’Orient-Le Jour reported that Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz ordered, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli army to destroy all “terrorist infrastructures” in southern Lebanon “as in Gaza,” and it said the Arabic-speaking spokesman for the Israeli army, Avichay Adraee, issued an evacuation notice urging residents to head toward Sidon.

The same L’Orient-Le Jour account said airstrikes targeted the Technical School and the Higher Institute of Technical Education in Bint Jbeil, described by the Lebanese Ministry of Education as among the largest vocational-education institutions in southern Lebanon.

In Gaza, Le Monde reported that the Rafah terminal, the only border linking Gazans to the outside world, had been reopened on February 2 after being locked for twenty-one months, and that since then 1,075 people had been evacuated from the enclave.

Le Monde said that since February 28, when the joint offensive with the United States against Iran began, Israel closed the terminal again, sharply stopping evacuations and returns, and it quoted Cogat saying, “At this stage, the Rafah border crossing remains temporarily closed due to the threat of [Iranian] missiles.”

franceinfo

Al-Jazeera Net reported that an urgent Israeli meeting revived plans to evacuate Gazans under the banner of “voluntary migration,” with the discussion led by the new head of the Israeli National Security Council, Shmuel Ben-Ezra, according to Haaretz.

Al-Jazeera Net said Mossad representatives acknowledged difficulties implementing voluntary evacuation and that, during the meeting, “no country had been found willing to receive Gaza’s residents,” as quoted from Haaretz.

The Al-Jazeera Net report added that Israeli Defense Minister Yisrael Katz vowed in May that “The voluntary migration plan from Gaza will be implemented,” while a political source told Haaretz that the step “lacks political and international feasibility.”

Franceinfo described how, in Gaza, the “impossible evacuation of waste” worsens the spread of diseases, saying Israel restricted access to humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip and continued to block areas where waste used to be transferred.

“Despite the ceasefire that went into effect on April 16, Israeli aviation intensified on Tuesday its bombardments in southern Lebanon, carrying out several strikes in the Tyre district, notably at Majdel Zoun, where Lebanese soldiers were wounded”

L'Orient-Le Jour

Franceinfo quoted Oum Abdallah saying, “We suffer from skin diseases. Every morning, children light fires here, which makes it hard for us to breathe,” and it said children burn waste to recover materials and try to contain an open dump.

The Franceinfo account said Hosni Mahna, the spokesperson for the Gaza City Hall run by Hamas, told Franceinfo that Israelis blocked the transfer of waste to the Juhor ad-Dik area and that space was now saturated.

In parallel, Le Monde reported that about 20,000 patients and wounded were on lists needing care abroad due to the lack of treatment available in the Gaza Strip, and it said Rana, 42, was among the cases authorized to leave on March 1.

Le Monde also framed the renewed closure of Rafah as linked to missile threats, quoting Cogat again that the border crossing would reopen “as soon as the security situation allows,” while Franceinfo described the ongoing insecurity and bombing that it said continued after the ceasefire was only “in name.”