Fears of a wider conflict in the Middle East mounted Friday after Israel bombed Lebanon and the occupied Gaza Strip in the early hours of the morning, an assault that followed two consecutive nights of violent raids on the Al-Aqsa mosque compound.
The raids spurred global condemnation and retaliatory rocket fire from southern Lebanon and Gaza, prompting Israel’s latest barrage of airstrikes.
While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to the rocket fire with hawkish rhetoric, vowing to “extract a heavy price from our enemies,” other Israeli officials and Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati cautioned against further violence.
“Nobody wants an escalation right now,” an Israeli army spokesman told reporters. “Quiet will be answered with quiet, at this stage I think, at least in the coming hours.”
Najib Mikati, Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, similarly said his government “categorically rejects any military escalation,” adding that an investigation into the rocket attacks that originated in southern Lebanon was ongoing.
The Associated Press reported Friday that “no faction in Lebanon claimed responsibility for the salvo of rockets,” the largest such attack since the deadly 2006 war between Israeli and Lebanon.
“A Lebanese security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to media, said the country’s security forces believed the rockets were launched by a Lebanon-based Palestinian militant group, not by Hezbollah,” the outlet noted.
No injuries or deaths have been reported in the wake of the Israeli airstrikes, which damaged homes, buildings, and other infrastructure in Lebanon and Gaza. One 19-year-old was lightly injured by shrapnel from the rocket fire into Israel, according to Israeli authorities.
The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) said in a statement Friday that while Israeli and Lebanese officials have “both said they do not want a war,” the “actions over the past day are dangerous and risk a serious escalation.”
“We urge all parties to cease all actions across the Blue Line now,” UNIFIL added.
Israeli forces’ raids on the Al-Aqsa mosque compound and attacks on Palestinian worshipers this week have been vocally denounced by governments and human rights organizations. In 2021, Israeli raids of Al-Aqsa and responses from the Gaza Strip led to a devastating 11-day assault on the besieged enclave.
Heba Morayef, Amnesty International’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement Thursday that “these orchestrated attacks demonstrate just how far Israeli authorities will go to maintain their cruel system of apartheid.”
“Shocking footage from the past two days shows Israeli security forces beating men, women, and children, and dragging them out of the mosque where they had gathered to spend the night in peaceful prayer and reflection,” said Morayef. “Once again, Israeli security forces have shown the world what apartheid looks like.”
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We’re presently working to find 1500 new monthly donors to Truthout before the end of the year.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy