Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) reported that a series of Israeli strikes on south Beirut caused “massive destruction” and razed four buildings on Tuesday
The Lebanese capital’s southern suburbs “are still being subjected to a series of strikes, the latest of which hit the main road at Al-Kafaat, and caused massive destruction” in several south Beirut neighbourhoods, AFP quoted NNA as saying.
The Lebanese agency said “four adjacent residential buildings collapsed in the Burj al-Barajneh area after the recent Israeli strike”.
Smoke rises over Rafik Hariri International Airport as a result of an Israeli airstrike at Dahieh in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, 08 October 2024. Photograph: Wael Hamzeh/EPA
Donald Trump claims to have visited Gaza, says it could be 'better than Monaco'
Robert Tait
US presidential candidate Donald Trump has raised eyebrows after telling Hugh Hewitt, a rightwing radio host, that he had visited Gaza, where nearly 42,000 people have been killed and the majority of buildings badly damaged or destroyed in blistering Israeli military attacks responding to last year’s 7 October attack by Hamas. The Hamas attack killed 1,200 about Israelis and took about 250 hostage.
Asked by Hewitt if Gaza could be transformed into Monaco if properly rebuilt, Trump replied:
It could be better than Monaco. It has the best location in the Middle East, the best water, the best everything. It’s got, it is the best, I’ve said it for years.
I’ve been there, and it’s rough. It’s a rough place … before all of the attacks and before the back and forth what’s happened over the last couple of years.
He went on: “
I mean, they have the back of a plant facing the ocean, you know. There was no ocean as far as that was concerned. They never took advantage of it. You know, as a developer, it could be the most beautiful place – the weather, the water, the whole thing, the climate. It could be so beautiful. It could be the best thing in the Middle East.
Hewitt did not challenge Trump’s assertion to have visited the territory, which had suffered substantial infrastructural damage in repeated clashes between Hamas, the militant group that has dominated it for years, and Israel even before the current war.
However, the New York Times said there was no record of Trump ever having gone there – either when he was president or before.
The paper quoted a campaign official, who said:
Gaza is in Israel. President Trump has been to Israel.
In fact, Gaza has never been part of Israel, although some far-right members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s current coalition government have called for its annexation.
Bob Woodward’s new book also portrays vice president Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, as a shrewd and loyal deputy to Joe Biden but not an influential voice in his administration’s foreign policy.
Excerpts in the Washington Post recount how her forceful public tone following a meeting in July with Benjamin Netanyahu– pledging that she would “not be silent” about Palestinian suffering – contrasted with her more amicable approach in private. The difference, according to Woodward, infuriated Netanyahu, who was taken aback by her public remarks.
From the Israeli viewpoint, however, Harris had little responsibility for the administration’s approach to the conflict.
“Until now, I didn’t feel that Vice President Harris had any impact on our issues,” Michael Herzog, the Israeli ambassador in Washington, is quoted as saying about the period before Harris replaced Biden on the ticket. “She was in the room, but she never had an impact.”
US vice president and presidential contender Kamala Harris has said the US must not lose hope of finding a resolution to the Israel-Gaza conflict, in an interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Harris said:
We must have a ceasefire and hostage deal as immediately as possible. This war has got to end. It has to end. We cannot lose some belief in the possibility of it. Because then, to your point, we throw up our hands instead of rolling up our sleeves.
Asked what “close” means when the public has been told Israel and Hamas were close to a deal, Harris responded:
Close means that a lot of the details have been worked out but details remain. And so there has been some progress but it is meaningless unless a deal is actually reached, so I don’t want to suggest to you that we should be applauded for getting close at times to a deal ...
We must work and the United States must work and not lose hope and not throw up our hands around the role we must play in urging and seeking and building toward a resolution. And the first thing that’s going to unlock that is we’ve got to get a deal done and we’re not going to give up.
Negotiations on a ceasefire have repeatedly stalled, with both sides accusing the other of refusing to agree to a deal. Israel also assassinated Hamas’ top negotiator, Ismail Haniyeh, in a strike on Tehran in July.
Veteran journalist Bob Woodward’s new book, War, offers an unvarnished peek behind the curtains of President Joe Biden’s disagreements with Benjamin Netanyahu, even as he offered Israel support publicly in the aftermath of the 7 October 2023 attacks.
Excerpts of the book were released by Woodward’s two employers, the Washington Post and CNN.
“That son of a bitch, Bibi Netanyahu, he’s a bad guy. He’s a bad fucking guy!” Biden declared privately about the Israeli prime minister to one of his associates in the spring of 2024 as Israel’s war in Gaza intensified, Woodward writes.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L) meets with US President Joe Biden for a bilateral meeting in the Oval Office at the White House on 25 July 2024. Photograph: Samuel Corum/EPA
Biden, according to Woodward, was cautious about setting limits on Israel’s conduct lest Netanyahu blow past them. In a one-on-one call in April, Netanyahu promised Biden that the Rafah offensive would take only three weeks, a vow the American president never took seriously. “It’ll take months,” Biden replied.
To associates, Biden complained that Netanyahu was a liar only interested in his political survival. And he concluded the same of the prime minister’s associates, saying that 18 out of 19 people who work for Netanyahu are “liars.”
White House senior deputy press secretary Emilie Simons wouldn’t be drawn on the anecdotes, telling reporters Tuesday, “They have a long-term relationship. They have a very honest and direct relationship, and I don’t have a comment on those specific anecdotes.”
British foreign secretary David Lammy is to meet leaders in Bahrain and Jordan as part of efforts to prevent the conflict in the Middle East from escalating further, Reuters reports.
Lammy will arrive in the region on Wednesday and will “reaffirm the importance of working with regional partners to press the case for restraint and will demand Iran and its proxies stop their attacks,” the foreign office said in a statement. Lammy said further:
The situation is incredibly dangerous and further escalation or miscalculation in the region is in no one’s interests …
We must not waver at this critical period to achieve ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon, to get more desperately needed aid into Gaza, and secure the release of all hostages.
Abarrage of messages in the middle of the night broke the news to Ahmed Alnaouq that his family home in Deir al-Balah was not the safest place in Gaza – as he had once thought. It was on that autumn night almost a year ago that he learned that almost his entire family had been wiped out in a single Israeli airstrike.
Thousands of miles away in London, he had woken from his sleep suddenly feeling a deep unease, he says. Moments before, his father, siblings, their children and a cousin were killed – 21 relatives altogether.
“That bomb that day changed my life for ever. I live here [in London] but they’re everything I care about,” says Alnaouq.
Only a cousin and their child survived the strike, which would have been even worse had it taken place a few days earlier. More than 50 relatives had been crowded into the house because of its perceived safety, right in the centre of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza – a long way from Gaza City, which had until then been the focus of Israeli operations. But many of those relatives left just before the strike on 22 October.
Alnaouq’s experience of family members being killed in war predates the past year’s conflict. In the 2014 war in Gaza his brother was killed in another Israeli airstrike. The nature of his grief then, he says, was different. That time, he had only one brother to mourn, but this time he lost his entire family. Whenever he thought of one person, he felt his thoughts drift to another.
Al Jazeera cameraman in critical condition after Israeli strike on hospital
An Al Jazeera cameraman has been seriously injured in an Israeli strike on a hospital in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza.
Ali al-Attar, 27, suffered a skull fracture and internal bleeding in the brain, after two pieces of shrapnel hit his head in the strike, which targeted a police checkpoint inside the hospital next to the journalists’ tent, the Qatar-based broadcaster reported.
Doctors said his condition was critical especially in light of the depleted medical facilities at the hospital.
Other journalists were appealing to international humanitarian and media organisation to intervene to have al-Attar transferred for treatment outside Gaza.
Al Jazeera cameraman Ali al-Attar, who was wounded in an Israeli attack on al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
Al-Aqsa hospital is the only functioning hospital left in central Gaza and is also home to displaced people but it has been attacked by the Israeli military on multiple occasions.
Earlier this week a 19-year-old Palestinian freelance journalist, Hassan Hamad, who had contributed to Al Jazeera, was killed in an Israeli strike on northern Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp.
