The American president and the Israeli prime minister had a telephone conversation on Wednesday to discuss in particular the war between Israel and Hezbollah, at a time when the Israeli army is expanding its offensive against the pro-Iranian movement in southern Lebanon.
Rocket fire left two dead on Wednesday in northern Israel, bordering Lebanon, according to Israeli emergency services, while Hezbollah reported fighting and assured that it had twice repelled Israeli incursions at dawn. in southern Lebanon.
The interview between Benjamin Netanyahu and Joe Biden, in which American Vice-President Kamala Harris, candidate for the White House, participated, is the first in almost two months between the two leaders, whose relations are difficult.
According to the American site Axios, Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu must in particular discuss Israel’s plan to strike Iran, in response to an Iranian missile attack launched on 1er October against its territory.
This attack was presented by Iran, enemy of Israel and the United States, as a response to the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, killed on September 27 in an Israeli strike near Beirut, and the leader of Hamas, Ismaïl Haniyeh, killed in Tehran on July 31 in an attack attributed to Israel.
Since October 7, 2023, Israel has been leading a devastating offensive in the Gaza Strip, launched in response to the Hamas attack on Israeli soil. The war has recently spread to Lebanon and is accompanied by an escalation between Israel and Iran, which supports Hezbollah and Hamas.
“May Hezbollah have mercy”
On Wednesday, a man and a woman in their forties were killed by rocket fire in Kiryat Shmona, a town in northern Israel located two kilometers from the Lebanese border, announced Magen David Adom, the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross.
These are the first people killed in Israel by rockets from Lebanon since Israel shifted the war front to that country in mid-September.
“Around 20 projectiles” were fired at Kiryat Shmona, according to the army.
After having weakened Hamas during its land and air offensive on the Gaza Strip, Israel seeks to distance Hezbollah from the border areas of southern Lebanon and to stop its rocket fire towards northern Israel, which has been incessant for a year. , to allow the return to this region of some 60,000 displaced residents.
After a campaign of massive airstrikes launched on September 23 on Hezbollah strongholds across Lebanon, Israel has been leading a ground offensive in the south of the country since September 30, expanded this week to the coastal areas of southwest Lebanon.
Aerial bombardments continue in particular on the southern suburbs of Beirut, one of Hezbollah’s strongholds, where an AFP correspondent reported a new strike on Wednesday.
According to the Lebanese authorities, a bombing left four dead in the Chouf region, south of Beirut, which has so far been relatively spared.
On Wednesday, the army claimed its troops had destroyed “100 Hezbollah terrorist targets” in 24 hours.
Hezbollah, for its part, claimed responsibility for rocket attacks on towns and military targets in northern Israel and southern Lebanon.
Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday threatened Lebanon with the same “destruction and suffering” as the Gaza Strip.
“I don’t talk to Netanyahu because he is inhumane. We are in the 21ste century. How can we commit genocide this way? » Ahmed, a 77-year-old man, reacted in Beirut after the threats launched Tuesday by Benjamin Netanyahu.
However, he appealed to the Shiite party: “May Hezbollah have pity on the people who sleep in the streets, so that we do not have the same fate as the population of Gaza who are undergoing genocide,” he implored. .
Since October 2023 and the start of cross-border firefights between Israel and Hezbollah, more than 2,000 people have been killed in Lebanon, including nearly 1,200 since September 23, according to an AFP count based on official figures. . More than a million people have been displaced.
“An endless hell”
In the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army has surrounded the Jabalia area in the north in recent days and called for the area to be evacuated, saying Hamas was seeking to rebuild its capabilities there.
Intense bombardments targeted Jabalia and its surroundings on Wednesday, according to Civil Defense.
According to the head of UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Philippe Lazzarini, “at least 400,000 people are trapped in this area”. “Northern Gaza: endless hell,” he said on X.
“Recent evacuation orders from Israeli authorities force people to flee again and again, especially from the Jabalia camp,” he added, stressing that “many people refuse to leave because they only know that too much that there is no safe place in Gaza.”
The war has reduced entire sectors of the small, besieged territory to rubble and displaced the vast majority of the 2.4 million inhabitants.
At least 42,010 Palestinians were killed, the majority civilians, in the Israeli offensive in Gaza, according to data from the Hamas government’s Health Ministry, deemed reliable by the UN.
On the Israeli side, the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023 led to the death of 1,206 people, the majority civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures and including hostages who died or were killed in captivity. in the Gaza Strip.