Clashes broke out again on the border between Israel and Lebanon. Israeli military fighter jets attacked the “terrorist infrastructure” of the Shiite Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, the Israeli army said on Telegram on Tuesday night. Night fighting was also reported in the Gaza Strip. Soldiers also shot an “infiltrator” from the Gaza Strip when he resisted arrest.
The targets of Israel’s strikes in Lebanon included Hezbollah weapons and positions. According to the army, rockets were fired from Lebanon at Israel in the previous days. There have been increasing clashes on the Israeli-Lebanese border since the start of the war in Gaza. There have been deaths on both sides. Hezbollah has links to the Islamist group Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip.
In the Gaza Strip, the Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, said it had fired on Israeli forces in the north and south on Tuesday night. The militants used machine guns and anti-tank missiles to engage in battles with Israeli forces who “entered the southern axis of Gaza”, the statement said. The militants also fired rockets at two Israeli tanks and bulldozers in the northwest of the Gaza Strip. The Israeli military initially did not comment. In any case, rocket alarms were reported in the village of Netiv Haasara and the city of Ashkelon, north of the Gaza Strip, Israeli daily Haaretz reported in its online ticker.
However, Israel Defense Forces spokesman Daniel Hagari announced on Twitter (X) on Tuesday night that an intruder from the Gaza Strip had been captured five kilometers inland and shot dead during an attempt to arrest him. The incident occurred at an intersection near Kibbutz Re’im, near which the Supernova festival massacre took place on October 7, in which around 260 party-goers were killed and many others were kidnapped as hostages in the Gaza Strip.
A new incident was also reported in the West Bank. Jewish settlers set fire to a house in a village south of Hebron on Tuesday night, Haaretz online reported. The US State Department called on Israel on Monday to stop violence by Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank against Palestinians. Measures must be taken to protect Palestinian residents.
In any case, the US does not want to join the increasingly loud international calls for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. “We do not believe a ceasefire is the right response at this time,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Monday night. Instead, “pauses” should be considered to bring humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.
At the same time, he was convinced that “in the next few days” it would be possible to bring “one hundred trucks a day” with humanitarian aid supplies to the Palestinian territory controlled by Hamas. According to the United Nations, this amount of aid is at least necessary to provide essentials to the suffering population of the Gaza Strip. This number has not yet come close to being reached.