Deir el-Balah, Gaza Strip – It is bitterly cold, and people are trying to build adequate shelter to protect themselves in a new refugee camp set up in Deir el-Balah to cope with the overwhelming numbers of people fleeing in search of safety.
In the camp, which is close to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, children run from tent to tent, borrowing items, carrying messages, or looking for someone to play with because that’s what children do.
Al Jazeera spoke to five Palestinians in the camp about their hopes and fears for 2024 as the new year approaches amid Israel’s devastating war on Gaza.
It is bitterly cold in this Deir el-Balah camp, but there are few solutions [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]
Israel’s far-right finance minister says Israelis who would replace Palestinians would ‘make the desert bloom’.
Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has called for Palestinian residents of Gaza to leave the besieged enclave, making way for the Israelis who could “make the desert bloom”.
Smotrich, who has been excluded from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet and discussions of day-after arrangements in Gaza, made the comments while speaking to Israeli Army Radio on Sunday.
“What needs to be done in the Gaza Strip is to encourage emigration,” he said.
“If there are 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs in Gaza and not two million Arabs, the entire discussion on the day after will be totally different,” he said.
He added that if the 2.3 million population were no longer there “growing up on the aspiration to destroy the state of Israel”, Gaza would be seen differently in Israel.
“Most of Israeli society will say: ‘Why not? It’s a nice place, let’s make the desert bloom, it doesn’t come at anyone’s expense’.”
Sara Khairat, reporting for Al Jazeera from Tel Aviv, said Smotrich’s comments “tie into a narrative that many are starting to believe that Israel wants to re-occupy Gaza”.
“Pushing the idea that they want to push the Palestinians out”, Khairat said, would be reminiscent of scenes from the “Nakba” (catastrophe), the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in the wake of the 1948 war that accompanied the founding of the state of Israel.
Most Palestinians displaced after the Nakba ended up in neighbouring Arab states, and Arab leaders have said any latter-day move to displace Palestinians would be unacceptable.
Smotrich’s far-right agenda
Smotrich, whose far-right Religious Zionist Party draws support from Israel’s settler community, has made similar comments in the past, setting himself at odds with Israel’s most important ally, the United States.
But his views conflict with the official government position that Palestinians in Gaza will be able to return to their homes after the war.
Smotrich’s party, which helped Netanyahu secure the majority he needed to become prime minister for the sixth time almost exactly a year ago, has seen its approval ratings slump since the start of the conflict.
Opinion polls also indicate that most Israelis do not support the return of Israeli settlements to Gaza after they were moved out in 2005 when the army withdrew.
Israel withdrew its military and settlers from Gaza in 2005 after a 38-year occupation, and Netanyahu has said it does not intend to maintain a permanent presence again, but would maintain security control for an indefinite period.
However, there has been little clarity about Israel’s longer-term intentions, and countries including the US have said that Gaza should be governed by Palestinians.
Sao Paulo, Brazil – It wasn’t unusual for patients to arrive in a foul temper at the hospital emergency room in São Paulo, Brazil, where physician Batull Sleiman worked.
After all, every day brought new medical crises, new requests for urgent care. Sleiman had seen it all. But she was not expecting the level of anger she received several weeks ago.
A patient had arrived in her examination room frustrated over the time he spent waiting for a doctor’s care. Sleiman recalled his issue was “not urgent”. Still, as she treated him, he accused her of being impolite.
“You’re being rude with me because you’re not from Brazil,” Sleiman remembers him saying. “If you were in your country…”
Batull Sleiman believes one of her patients lashed out after seeing her hijab [Courtesy of Batull Sleiman]
Sleiman said she turned away rather than hear the rest. The daughter of Lebanese immigrants, she believes the man reacted the way he did because of one thing: her hijab.
“I was surprised and outraged,” Sleiman told Al Jazeera. But, she added, the atmosphere in Brazil had grown more tense since the war in Gaza had erupted. “I’ve been noticing that people have been staring more at me on the street since October.”
But Sleiman is not alone in feeling singled out. As the war in Gaza grinds on, Brazil is one of many countries facing increased fears about religious discrimination, particularly towards its Muslim community.
A survey released last month from the Anthropology Group on Islamic and Arab Contexts — an organisation based at the University of São Paulo — found that reports of harassment among Muslim Brazilians have been widespread since the war began.
An estimated 70 percent of respondents said they knew someone who experienced religious intolerance since October 7, when the Palestinian group Hamas launched an attack on southern Israel, killing 1,140 people.
Israel has since led a military offensive against Gaza, a Palestinian enclave, killing more than 21,000 people. That response has raised human rights concerns, with United Nations experts warning of a “grave risk of genocide”.
While Palestinians are an ethnic group — and not a religious one — the University of São Paulo’s Professor Francirosy Barbosa found that the events of October 7 resulted in incidents of religious intolerance in Brazil, as Palestinian identity was conflated with Muslim identity.
She led November’s survey of 310 Muslim Brazilians. Respondents, she explained, reported receiving insults that reflected tensions in the Gaza war.
“Many Muslim women told us they are now called things like ‘Hamas daughter’ or ‘Hamas terrorist’,” she told Al Jazeera.
The survey, conducted online, also found that many of the respondents also had firsthand experience with religious intolerance.
“About 60 percent of the respondents affirmed that they suffered some kind of offence, either on social media or in their daily lives at work, at home or in public spaces,” Barbosa said.
Women in particular, the study noted, reported slightly higher rates of religious intolerance.
A Palestinian Brazilian woman holds up a sign at a protest in Brasilia on October 20 that reads, ‘Muslim women of Brazil: anti-Zionism, anti-militarism, anti-extremism’ [File: Eraldo Peres/AP Photo]
The question of Islamophobia was catapulted into the national spotlight this month when a video spread on social media appearing to show a resident of Mogi das Cruzes, a suburb of São Paulo, rushing towards a Muslim woman and grabbing at her headscarf. The video was even broadcast on news outlets like CNN Brasil.
One of the women involved, Karen Gimenez Oubidi, who goes by Khadija, had married a Moroccan man and converted to Islam eight years ago. She told Al Jazeera that the altercation involved one of her neighbours: She was upset after their children had argued.
“She came down with her brother and was very aggressive. She called me a ‘cloth-wrapped bitch’. I soon realised it was not only about the kids’ fight,” Gimenez Oubidi said.
Neighbours attempted to separate the two women. One man in the video, however, grabbed Gimenez Oubidi from behind, wrapping an arm around her throat to hold her down. Gimenez Oubidi identified him to Al Jazeera as her neighbour’s brother.
Karen Gimenez Oubidi, known as Khadija, was the subject of a viral video that raised questions about Islamophobia [Courtesy of Karen Gimenez Oubidi]
“He said a few times to me, ‘What are you doing now, terrorist?’ He didn’t say it loudly: It was just for me to hear. He knew what he was doing,” Gimenez Oubidi said. She added that the fight her son had had with the neighbour’s child was also over her hijab.
The woman who attacked Oubidi, Fernanda — she said she did not want her full name revealed for fear of a public backlash — disputed this account.
Fernanda said her son had been hit by Oubidi’s son in the playground, and while she had physically attacked Fernanda, she had not referenced her religion. “I never insulted her for her religion. That simply didn’t happen. I’d never do something like that,” she said.
A government report from July noted that religious intolerance “occurs most intensely against those of African origin, but it also affects Indigenous, Roma, immigrant and converted individuals, including Muslims and Jews, as well as atheist, agnostic and non-religious people”.
Brazil is predominantly Christian, home to an estimated 123 million Catholics — more than any other country in the world.
But it has a long-standing, if smaller, Muslim population. Academics believe Islam arrived in the country with the transatlantic slave trade, as kidnapped African Muslims continued to practice their religion in their new surroundings.
One group of enslaved Muslim Brazilians even launched a rebellion against the government in 1835, called the Malê uprising — a term derived from the Yoruba word for Muslim.
Brazil’s Muslim population grew with waves of immigration in the late 19th and 20th centuries, particularly after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Arab immigrants, particularly from Lebanon, Syria and Palestine, came to know Brazil as their home.
The exact number of Muslims in Brazil today is unknown. The 2010 census counted 35,167 people identified as Muslim, but in the years since, other estimates have come out, setting the population as high as 1.5 million.
Some advocates, however, point to other demographic and political trends as setting the stage for tensions to rise between Muslim and non-Muslim groups.
Evangelical Christians make up the fastest-growing religious segment in Brazil today, comprising about a third of the population. Their numbers have turned them into a significant political force.
Evangelical voters were credited with helping to elect far-right President Jair Bolsonaro in 2016, with polls showing 70 percent supporting him.
During his failed 2022 re-election bid, Bolsonaro repeatedly invoked Christian imagery in his appeals to voters, framing the race as a “fight of good against evil”.
Mahmoud Ibrahim, who heads a mosque in Porto Alegre, believes that the us-versus-them mentality has translated into antagonism against his community.
A man marches in a religious freedom demonstration in 2022, holding a sign that reads, ‘I am a Muslim man. Ask me a question!!’ [File: Bruna Prado/AP Photo]
At recent protests against the war in Gaza, he said onlookers called him a “terrorist” and “child rapist”.
“Evangelicals and Bolsonarists insult us all the time. They even chased a person who was going to our demonstration the other day,” he said.
Ibrahim added that he had heard of at least one woman who was left bleeding after attackers attempted to tear her hijab off, causing the pins in the scarf to dig into her skin.
Girrad Sammour heads the National Association of Muslim Jurists (ANAJI), a group that offers legal support in cases of Islamophobia. He said the number of reports to ANAJI has always been high, but since the start of the war on October 7, it has exploded.
“There was a rise of 1,000 percent in the denunciations that we received,” he told Al Jazeera, crediting some to inflammatory remarks from far-right evangelical pastors.
But Barbosa, the survey leader, believes there are ways to lessen the hatred and suspicion directed at Muslim Brazilians. She pointed to a lack of media representation as an example.
“Few Palestinian leaders and experts in the Middle East with a pro-Palestine view have been invited by TV shows, for instance, to comment on the conflict in Gaza,” Barbosa said.
But she also encouraged Muslim Brazilians to speak up about their experiences, in order to raise awareness.
“What is not denounced doesn’t exist for the government,” she said. “Only if the authorities know what is happening will they be able to take adequate measures, like investing in education against religious intolerance.”
At least 100 killed in central Gaza, while night-time raids injure 17 in occupied West Bank – here is the latest.
Here’s how things stand on Sunday, December 31, 2023:
Latest updates and human impact:
Israeli military attacks on homes in central Gaza have killed at least 100 people and wounded 286 in less than 24 hours, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.
The continuing Israeli bombardment has now destroyed more than 70 percent of Gaza’s homes, the Government Media Office says.
The occupied West Bank saw another night of raids and drone attacks as at least 17 Palestinians were wounded in Tulkarem and Nur Shams refugee camps.
There is a growing exodus of displaced Palestinians into the far southern town of Rafah, with some 100,000 fleeing there in just a few days, according to the United Nations.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel should control the border zone between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. Egypt has rejected the prospect of ceding this territory to Israel.
Twenty-three Syrian fighters have been killed by air raids believed to be waged by Israeli forces, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, as hostilities build between Israel and Iran-aligned groups in the region.
Israel also traded strikes with Hezbollah. The Lebanese group claimed four attacks on Israeli territory over the past day, while Israeli strikes killed at least one Hezbollah fighter.
The Palestine Public Broadcasting Corporation strongly condemned Israel for reportedly hacking a local radio station and broadcasting “threatening messages” to Gaza residents already traumatised by war.
In Gaza, at least 21,822 people have been killed and 56,451 injured in Israeli attacks since October 7. The revised death toll from Hamas’s attack on Israel stands at 1,139.
Diplomacy:
The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation welcomed South Africa’s decision to file a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), saying that the charge is warranted because of Israel’s “indiscriminate targeting of the civilian population”.
Several genocide experts also welcomed the move, with British war crimes prosecutor Geoffrey Nice telling Al Jazeera it is a “courageous” step.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked the administration of US President Joe Biden for its continued backing during the war, including approval of a new emergency weapons sale, the second this month.
Foreign Minister Eli Cohen told Israeli media that the government bears some responsibility for failing to prevent Hamas’s attack on October 7. He called for an investigation committee to be formed to hold those who were “negligent” accountable.
Israel is prepared to let ships deliver aid to Gaza “immediately” through a proposed sea corridor from Cyprus, according to Cohen.
Commercial vessels targeted in the Red Sea:
Yemen’s Houthi rebels waged multiple attacks on a container ship owned by global shipping giant Maersk, according to the US military, prompting the firm to suspend operations in the Red Sea for 48 hours.
In the last alleged Houthi attack on the Maersk ship, US helicopters responded to and fired at attacking Houthi boats, sinking three of them and killing several crew, according to the United States Central Command.
Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Cameron said he conveyed to Iran’s foreign minister that Tehran shares “shares responsibility for preventing these attacks, given their longstanding support to the Houthis”.
I spoke to @Amirabdolahian today about Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, which threaten innocent lives and the global economy. I made clear that Iran shares responsibility for preventing these attacks given their long-standing support to the Houthis.
Activists are asking people to turn the New Year’s countdown in their countries into a countdown for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Activists have launched a global campaign asking people to turn the New Year’s countdown in their countries into a countdown for a ceasefire in Gaza, which has been under devastating Israeli bombardment since October 7.
“New Year’s Eve is a moment of celebration worldwide, and an opportunity to create resolutions for a brighter future. With nearly 30,000 civilians killed, including over 10,000 children, our only New Year’s resolution is to call for a permanent ceasefire,” Countdown2Ceasefire, a London-based grassroots campaign, said in a statement on Thursday.
“Our aim is to morph the traditional New Year’s countdown into an influential and resounding countdown for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.”
So far the campaign has successfully been embraced by activists in over 30 countries, including Switzerland, Turkiye, Malaysia, Australia, Tanzania, Mexico and Germany, according to the organisers.
While ringing in the new year, these local events calling for a ceasefire will be livestreamed across Countdown2ceasefire’s social media platforms.
Israeli bombings have destroyed more than 70 percent of Gaza homes [File: Ariel Schalit/AP Photo]
“A permanent ceasefire is the first step in ending the current deplorable situation and a tangible move towards a future where traumatised communities can rebuild and recover,” Bushra Mohammad, a campaign spokeswoman, said in a statement.
Israel’s brutal military offensive in Gaza has killed more than 21,500 people and wounded more than 55,000 others triggering a global outrage, with protesters across the world rallying to call for a ceasefire. Many have also expressed their disappointment towards politicians and countries who vetoed or abstained from voting for a ceasefire at the United Nations.
Rights organisations including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Doctors Without Borders also condemned countries vetoing a ceasefire, warning that this would result in a humanitarian disaster.
Israel has refused to stop the bombing that has destroyed more than 70 percent of Gaza homes and displaced more than 90 percent of the enclave’s 2.3 million people.
Countdown2Ceasefire pointed out how people power can make a difference.
“As we enter 2024, we look forward to it being the year that our New Year’s resolution, of a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, is fulfilled.”
Global shipping giant Maersk is suspending operations in the Red Sea for 48 hours after the attack.
The United States military says it has sunk three boats waging an attack on a container ship in the Red Sea as it continues its patrol mission to counter threats from Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
Helicopters from two US warships – the USS Eisenhower and USS Gravely – shot at the “Iranian-backed Houthi small boats” in self-defence on Sunday morning while responding to an SOS call from the Singapore-flagged vessel Maersk Hangzhou, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) said. The US helicopters sunk three of the boats, killing several of their crew, it said. A fourth boat escaped.
Maersk Hangzhou issued its distress call after it was fired at by the Houthi boats, which came as close as 20 meters and also tried to board it, CENTCOM said in a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter.
As the US helicopters responded, they were also shot at by the Houthi boats, prompting them to return fire, added the CENTCOM statement.
Iranian-backed Houthi small boats attack merchant vessel and U.S. Navy helicopters in Southern Red Sea
On Dec. 31 at 6:30am (Sanaa time) the container ship MAERSK HANGZHOU issued a second distress call in less than 24 hours reporting being under attack by four Iranian-backed… pic.twitter.com/pj8NAzjbVF
It was the second alleged Houthi attack on the Maersk Hangzhou in less than 24 hours. Late on Saturday night, CENTCOM said it shot down two ballistic missiles fired by the Houthis as it responded to a separate missile strike on Maersk Hangzhou.
In the wake of the attacks, global shipping giant Maersk, which owns the vessel, said it was suspending its operations in the Red Sea for 48 hours, highlighting the continued threat to commercial vessels in the region.
The Houthi group has yet to comment on the incidents.
Red Sea attacks
Amid Israel’s war on Gaza, Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis have repeatedly targeted vessels they believe are linked to Israel travelling in the Red Sea, pushing major global shipping companies, such as Maersk, to abandon the waterway. The Houthis have said they will continue their strikes until Israel’s attacks on Gaza stop.
The US on December 19 formed a global naval task force to safeguard shipping in the contentious waters, through which some 12 percent of global trade passes.
The presence of the US-led coalition at first seemed to restore some confidence in the route, with several large firms announcing plans to resume operations there.
However, Houthi attacks on passing vessels have continued, with the group increasingly using antiship ballistic missiles to target vessels, US Vice Admiral Brad Cooper told The Associated Press news agency.
“We are clear-eyed that the Houthi reckless attacks will likely continue,” Cooper said.
The Houthi strikes come as anger grows throughout the Middle East over the devastation in Gaza, where at least 21,822 Palestinians, including 8,800 children, have been killed by Israel military attacks in under three months.
The war began when Hamas carried out a shock cross-border attack on Israeli territory on October 7 that killed about 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to Israel.
The US, which has provided staunch military and diplomatic backing to Israel throughout the conflict, has seen its assets targeted as well, facing more than 100 attacks from Iran-backed groups in Syria and Iraq since the outbreak of the war.
Are communications cables safe?
Amid concerns that Yemen’s Houthis could next target crucial submarine communications cables running under the Bab al-Mandeb strait that power internet networks, Yemen’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it is committed to protecting these networks.
“Yemen’s decision to prevent the passage of Israeli enemy ships does not concern ships belonging to international companies licensed by Maritime Affairs – Sanaa to execute marine cable works,” the ministry said.
However, it added that ships “executing submarine cable works” should “obtain the necessary permits and approvals”.
Israel’s relentless bombardment of Gaza for nearly three months has destroyed 70 percent of the homes in the besieged Palestinian enclave, according to the Government Media Office.
No further details were provided but an earlier report said more than 200 heritage and archaeological sites were destroyed in the Israeli bombardment considered the most destructive in modern history.
About 300,000 out of 439,000 homes have been destroyed in Israeli attacks, a Wall Street Journal report said. Analysing satellite imagery, the report added that the 29,000 bombs dropped on the strip have targeted residential areas, Byzantine churches, hospitals and shopping malls and all civilian infrastructure has been damaged to an extent that they cannot be repaired.
“The word ‘Gaza’ is going to go down in history along with Dresden [Germany] and other famous cities that have been bombed,” Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago who has written about the history of aerial bombing, told WSJ.
In nearly two months, the offensive has wreaked more destruction than the razing of Syria’s Aleppo between 2012 and 2016, Ukraine’s Mariupol, or, proportionally, the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II. It has killed more civilians than the United States-led coalition did in its three-year campaign against the ISIL (ISIS) group.
Between 1942 and 1945, the Allies attacked 51 major German cities and towns, destroying about 40-50 percent of their urban areas, Pape told The Associated Press news agency.
“Gaza is one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history,” said Pape. “It now sits comfortably in the top quartile of the most devastating bombing campaigns ever.”
Corey Scher of the CUNY Graduate Center and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University told the AP, “Gaza is now a different colour from space. It’s a different texture.”
Deadliest in recent history
The Israeli military campaign in Gaza, experts say, also now sits among the deadliest in recent history, killing more than 21,500 people and wounding 55,000. More than 1,000 children had their limbs amputated in the Israeli attacks since October 7.
The Israeli army claims it has been targeting Hamas fighters, who carried out a deadly attack inside Israel on October 7. Some 1,200 people were killed in that attack which triggered the current phase of the conflict.
Hamas says its attack was in response to continued Israeli blockade of Gaza and expansion of settlement in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. Palestinians see the Israeli settlements – which are considered illegal under international law – to be the biggest hurdle in the realisation of their future state.
The level of destruction is so high because “Hamas is very entrenched within the civilian population”, Efraim Inbar, head of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, a think tank, told the AP.
But experts have criticised Israel for bombing Gaza – which is one of the most densely populated areas in the world housing 2.3 million people on 365sq km (141sq miles) of land.
Media reports and rights groups say an overwhelming majority of those killed are civilians – more than 70 percent of them children, women and elderly. More than 90 percent of the enclave’s population is now displaced, with aid groups warning of hunger and outbreaks of disease. Delivery of aid has been restricted by Israel worsening the crisis.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military has said little about what kinds of bombs and artillery it is using in Gaza. From blast fragments found on-site and analyses of strike footage, experts are confident that the vast majority of bombs dropped on the besieged enclave are US-made. They say the weapons include 2,000-pound (900kg) “bunker-busters” that have killed hundreds in densely populated areas.
US news network CNN reported on December 14 that about half of all the Israeli munitions dropped on Gaza were imprecise “dumb” bombs, which pose a greater threat to civilians.
Earlier this week, an Israeli military official admitted that the high death toll from a Christmas Eve attack on a refugee camp in central Gaza was the result of the use of improper munitions, highlighting military tactics that have created high numbers of civilian casualties.
The Israeli news outlet +972 also previously reported that the Israeli military has loosened its standards regarding acceptable civilian harm from attacks, resulting in a higher portion of civilians killed than in previous rounds of military assaults.
Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of using banned white phosphorous. Israel has denied the claims.
The Israeli army has reiterated that every strike is cleared by legal advisers to make sure it complies with international law.
“We choose the right munition for each target – so it doesn’t cause unnecessary damage,” said the army’s chief spokesman, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari.
The Israeli prime minister also predicts the war in Gaza and on other regional fronts would last many months.
The border zone between the Gaza Strip and Egypt should be under Israel’s control, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said, as he predicted the war in the Palestinian enclave and on other regional fronts would last many months.
As Israel entered the 13th week of its war in Gaza on Saturday, Netanyahu held a news conference where he renewed his promise to eliminate Hamas and bring home all Israelis held captive in Gaza.
“The Philadelphi Corridor – or to put it more correctly, the southern stoppage point [of Gaza] – must be in our hands. It must be shut. It is clear that any other arrangement would not ensure the demilitarisation that we seek,” he said.
Israel has said it intends to destroy Hamas in Gaza and demilitarise the territory to prevent any repeat of the October 7 cross-border killing and kidnapping spree by the armed group.
“The war is at its height. We are fighting on all of the fronts. Achieving victory will require time. As the [Israeli army] chief of staff has said, the war will continue for many more months,” Netanyahu said.
He also added a rare threat to attack Iran directly over the near-daily exchanges of fire across the Israel-Lebanon border.
“If [the Iran-backed Lebanese armed group] Hezbollah expands the warfare, it will suffer blows that it has not dreamed of – and so too Iran,” Netanyahu said without elaborating.
The war has triggered fears of a regional conflagration amid rising tensions with other Iranian-aligned groups in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
Israel’s relentless bombing and ground offensive on Gaza since October 7 has killed at least 21,672 people, most of them women and children, with thousands of others buried under the rubble.
The military operation has also displaced almost the entire 2.3 million population of the besieged territory.
About 1,140 people were killed by Hamas in Israel in the October 7 attacks.
Syrian defence ministry says the ‘aerial aggression’ came from the Mediterranean and hit a number of places.
Israel has targeted Iranian military positions in Syria’s Aleppo with an air raid, causing some material damage, according to the Syrian Ministry of Defence.
“Israel carried out an aerial aggression from the direction of the Mediterranean Sea, west of Latakia, targeting a number of points south of the city of Aleppo,” the statement said on Saturday.
The Syrian state media, citing a military source, said “the Israeli enemy carried out an air attack… targeting a number of points south of the city of Aleppo” at about 5:20pm (14:20 GMT) on Saturday.
Pro-government radio station Sham FM said the attacks were near Aleppo’s airport, but did not damage it.
“It seems these attacks in Aleppo were conducted from the sea,” Al Jazeera’s Ali Hashem reported from Naqoura in southern Lebanon.
“Warplanes were situated over the Mediterranean when they launched the missiles towards several targets in the city of Aleppo.”
During more than a decade of war in Syria, Israel has launched hundreds of air raids on its territory, primarily targeting Iran-backed forces including Lebanese Hezbollah fighters, as well as Syrian army positions.
But Israel intensified its attacks since its military operation in Gaza began on October 7, causing tensions across the Middle East.
Hashem said the Aleppo attack was “not unprecedented”.
“On several occasions, there were attacks on Aleppo, on Damascus, and yesterday [Friday] there was an attack on Albu Kamal, an area on the border between Syria and Iraq,” he said.
“It seems this is part of a pattern, because the group that was linked to Albu Kamal was linked to the Iranian IRGC commander who was killed in Damascus just days ago,” he added.
On Monday, an Israeli air raid outside the Syrian capital Damascus killed a senior adviser in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Sayyed Razi Mousavi was responsible for coordinating the military alliance between Syria and Iran.
Tit-for-tat on Israel-Lebanon border
The attack on Aleppo came after another Israeli air raid on a border town in southern Lebanon earlier on Saturday.
The attack followed Iran-backed group Hezbollah claiming responsibility for three attacks on Israeli military bases on the border, Al Jazeera’s Hashem reported.
“There were several Israeli air raids mainly on the town of Bint Jbeil … According to reports, there are no casualties,” he said.
“Another town closer to the border of Israel was also hit by an Israeli attack in a residential area. This raises the risk of civilian casualties on a daily basis,” he said.
Israel and Hezbollah, along with a handful of smaller armed groups that operate in southern Lebanon, have settled into a steady rhythm of tit-for-tat exchanges since the Gaza assault began.
At least 21,672 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been killed in Gaza in nearly three months of Israeli operation, which has also displaced nearly the strip’s entire 2.3 million population.
The attacks in Syria and Lebanon also come amid fears that Israel’s war in Gaza could expand into a wider regional conflict.
David Frum, writer for The Atlantic magazine and pro-Israel commentator, says Palestinian statehood is not the solution.
David Frum, staff writer for The Atlantic magazine and a pro-Israel supporter, tells host Steve Clemons that Israel and the United States should “avoid solution-ism” for the Palestinians and focus on day-to-day necessities, like food and water.
The way Israel has responded to the Hamas attack of October 7 was “inevitable”, Frum says, adding that “Israel has never been allowed this much scope to act”, by the US, United Kingdom and European Union.
Join this wide-ranging conversation on the internal debates within Israeli society, and how Israel envisions the future of the region, including rapprochement with Saudi Arabia.
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