Hassan Nasrallah, second right, meets Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, second left, and assistant foreign minister Mehdi Shoushtari, left, and the deputy to Iranian ambassador to Beirut, right, in an undisclosed location in Lebanon. (Hezbollah media office via AFP)
Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has met with Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah which has traded deadly cross-border fire with Israel since the start of the Gaza war, the Lebanese movement said Thursday.
Since the Israel-Hamas war began on October 7, the border between Lebanon and Israel has witnessed escalating exchanges of fire, primarily involving Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah, along with Palestinian groups.
The clashes have raised fears of a broader conflagration.
In a statement, Hezbollah said Amir-Abdollahian and Nasrallah “reviewed the latest developments in Palestine, Lebanon and the region, and... the efforts made to end the Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip.”
Amir-Abdollahian, who warned on Wednesday that the war could spiral out of control, left Beirut for Doha after their meeting, Iran’s Nour news agency reported.
Hezbollah said on Thursday morning that it fired 48 Katyusha rockets at military base at Ein Zeitim, near the town of Safed in northern Israel, about 10 kilometers (six miles) from the border.
It said it also carried out at least 10 other attacks on Israeli positions near the frontier, and claimed to have caused casualties.
The Israeli army shelled several locations in southern Lebanon in response, said Lebanon’s National News Agency.
Hezbollah says it has been acting in support of Hamas since the Palestinian Islamist movement’s October 7 attacks on Israel, which Israeli officials say killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and saw about 240 people taken hostage.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas and its retaliatory air and ground offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed more than 14,000 people, thousands of them children, according to the Hamas government that rules the Palestinian territory.
The violence between Israel and Hezbollah has claimed at least 108 lives in Lebanon, most of them Hezbollah fighters, but also at least 14 civilians, including three journalists, according to an AFP count.
Six Israeli soldiers and three civilians have been killed on the Israeli side, according to the authorities.
The protesters were seen in the street on the parade route.
REUTERS
The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade was temporarily halted when a group of about 30 pro-Palestinian protesters ran into the street and apparently glued themselves to the pavement of the parade route in New York City.
The protesters were demonstrating along Sixth Avenue when a handful of them jumped the barricades and ran into the street along 49th Street.
In videos posted online, protesters can be seen demonstrating on Sixth Avenue near 34th Street.
They chanted "no more nickels, not another dime, no more money for Israel's crimes" and "Free free Palestine." They were also holding up Palestinian flags and papers that said "genocide then, genocide now."
The protesters are later heard yelling, "Viva, viva Palestina."
Officials said the protesters were taken into custody.
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden called into the parade to give their thanks and urged Americans to "come together."
"We have to remind ourselves how blessed we are to live in the greatest nation on the face of the earth," the president said. "Today is about coming together, giving thanks for this country we call home. And thanks to all the firefighters, police officers, first responders and our troops, some of whom are stationed abroad."
The first Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade took place in 1927. It's been a holiday tradition ever since.
Pro-Palestinian protesters have glued their hands to 6th Avenue, disrupting the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade; floats, bands and balloons are being diverted. pic.twitter.com/nYKLGyev87
As NYPD officers tried to move the group, one of the protesters cried: “I’m glued down I can’t get up.”
“We need a cease-fire,” he screeched while still being unglued and carted away. “The Palestinians deserve the right to return to their ancestral land.”
“There’s an ongoing genocide and our planet is dying,” another said.
The demonstrators continued chanting while some were placed in handcuffs. The NYPD confirmed that several were taken into custody but could not provide an exact number Thursday evening.
“It’s pissing me off,” complained a parade attendee named Greg, who was visiting from Philadelphia.
“Do it somewhere else. Not today, they’re ruining the parade. They super-glued their hands to the street. These people worked hard to be in this parade.”
Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz (D-Bronx) called the disruption “sick.
People being arrested during the incident.
FNTV
“Protesters are disrupting a parade attended by thousands of children?! It’s beyond the pale,” Dinowitz told The Post. “They are pro-Hamas and anti-Jew. They are for the terrorists.”
Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, the executive vice chairman of the NY Board of Rabbis, also condemned the demonstration.
“No one at these protests ever seems to condemn Hamas. They fault the victims, not the perpetrators,” Potasnik said.
“History has taught us that hatred starts against the Jews but doesn’t end with the Jews. These people have no boundaries. They protest on the sabbath [and now] Thanksgiving.”
A Post employee who was enjoying the festivities with his 13-year-old son outside the News Corp building in Midtown said they had to retreat into the lobby of the building when several protestors in the crowd began getting disruptive – standing atop tall planters waving large Palestinian flags and shouting “genocide” and “how can you celebrate?”
Palestinian children injured in Israeli air attacks arrive at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza's Khan Younis on November 23, 2023 [Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images]
The Israeli army continues to launch dozens of air strikes and violent artillery shelling on multiple areas of Gaza, hours before the truce and prisoner exchange agreement between Israel and Hamas begins.
Early on Wednesday, more than 30 people were killed and dozens wounded after Israeli army forces bombed 10 homes in the Shujaiya neighborhood, east of Gaza's city center, the Civil Defense Directorate in Gaza said.
According to the Palestinian News Agency, Wafa, “More than 81 people were killed, the majority of whom were children and women, and others were injured, and dozens of homes, buildings, residential apartments, and public and private property were destroyed in the ongoing Israeli occupation bombing of Gaza".
It added that Israeli army planes bombed inhabited homes in central Gaza, after midnight on Tuesday/Wednesday, “which led to the death of 41 people and the injury of dozens, and there are still missing people under the rubble.”
“At least 10 citizens were people, and a number of others were injured, when the occupation warplanes targeted two houses in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in Gaza City,” the agency adds.
Israel launches attacks across Gaza just hours before a four-day truce is set to begin at 7am local time (05:00 GMT) on Friday.
Qatar’s Foreign Ministry says the first 13 civilian captives will be released at about 4pm (14:00 GMT) and Palestinians held in Israeli jails will also be freed.
Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza says Indonesian Hospital under “intense bombardment”; Israeli attack on UN school sheltering displaced kills at least 27.
More than 14,800 people killed in Gaza since October 7. In Israel, the official death toll from Hamas’s attacks stands at about 1,200.
Children among dozen killed' in airstrike hours before truce set to begin, officials say
Doctors in Gaza have appealed for international help after the arrest of the director of al Shifa hospital by the Israeli Defence Forces.
One fellow hospital director told Sky News: "This is unbelievable and unacceptable. It is a crime."
Muhammad Abu Salmiya, who'd been a constant critical voice on media outlets about the IDF military action around Gaza's main hospital, was arrested yesterday by the Israeli military.
He was part of a convoy moving patients and relatives out of the hospital in the north to the south of Gaza.
The IDF has insisted the Hamas command and control centre was placed beneath the hospital and issued a statement saying: "In the hospital, under his management, there was extensive Hamas terrorist activity. Findings of his involvement in terrorist activity will determine whether he will be subject to further questioning."
The Israeli military has filmed its own footage and distributed it to media outlets which it claims shows a tunnel network under the hospital which was used by Hamas.
One fellow Gaza hospital director, Dr Youssef al Akkad, told Sky News from the Gaza European Hospital that he knew both Dr Salmiya and the layout of al Shifa hospital well and the claims were baseless.
"All he wants to do is save lives," he said of his fellow doctor. "Now, he is in the jail… in prison…this is unbelievable and unacceptable and I believe that all the international community should stand against this criminal and shout loudly that this shouldn't happen to the hospital and to the hospital managers and directors. This is a crime."
The bombing of al Shifa and the nearby Indonesian hospital has meant large numbers of patients have been moved to other hospitals in the south.
'Exposed brain infected with worms'
Dr al Akkad said his own hospital alone had overnight received four bus-loads of seriously injured patients and 20 ambulances packed full of wounded.
Pictures he shared with Sky News showed patients being helped down the bus steps including a young boy with both legs broken.
He said he carried some of the patients out including a three-year-old boy with horrific infected head injuries.
"His skull was broken and his brain matter was open and he was alive, can you imagine?" he said.
"We took him down to the emergency and we were trying to clear his wounds and there were worms coming out of his brain matter. We cannot, do not have the medicines to deal with these injuries anymore."
As we spoke to him by phone, he walked down the stairs from his office and into an emergency room packed with wounded children.
He struggled to hear us over the children's screams as he showed us the scene in the ward using his phone camera.
"They all have head wounds from collapsed buildings after the strikes," he said.
"They've only just come into the hospital in the last half hour."
He pointed his camera phone to one little girl with a still-bleeding head wound and told us: "She keeps crying for her mother but her mother is seriously ill in the ICU now."
"We are drowning here," he told us. "The situation is very critical now and alarming. We have triple the number of patients that we have the capacity to cope with."
The truce cannot come soon enough for the doctors.
"We are hoping it will allow us time to move some of the more seriously injured through Rafah Crossing and into Egypt," he said, "because otherwise they will die."
Islamic Jihad 'Destroys' 11 Israeli Military Vehicles In RPG Attacks; IDF Bombs Gaza Ahead Of Truce
Fighting in Gaza strip continues with Islamic Jihad militants claiming to have carried out multiple attacks on Israeli military vehicles in the Palestinian enclave while there was no letup in the IDF bombardment ahead of the expected Israel-Hamas truce. Watch the video for more details.
Israeli forces extended their raids to towns across the occupied West Bank, leading to further casualties. An incident in Tulkarem resulted in the death of six Palestinians, as reported by the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Health. More than a month since the initial Hamas attack on Israel, the region remains on high alert for a potential escalation in the conflict, with thousands of casualties on both sides of the Israel-Gaza border. The Israeli Prime Minister’s office reports that over 1,200 people have been killed in Israel, including 383 Israel Defense Forces soldiers since the ground campaign began.
On Nov 22, Israel’s Cabinet approved a deal for a four-day pause in fighting, allowing for the release of at least 50 hostages, predominantly women and children. The agreement, negotiated between Hamas, Israel, Qatar, and the United States, was a breakthrough that could facilitate the release of hostages held by militants, as well as Palestinians jailed by Israel, and usher in a significant influx of aid to the besieged territory. However, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, stated that Israel would resume the war after the truce, vowing to fight until all objectives are achieved, including the destruction of Hamas’s combat and governance capabilities and the return of all hostages.
President Joe Biden's support for Israel is undermining America's diplomatic standing in the Middle East, with regional players increasingly turning to Russia and China for alternative leadership, Syriana Analysis founder Kevork Almassian told Sputnik's New Rules podcast.
The US is losing its grip amid the Palestine-Israel conflict and alienating Mideast powers by failing to prevent Tel Aviv from bombing Gaza into the Stone Age.
Recently, the Biden administration tried to steal the show by taking the whole credit for the four-day humanitarian pause in the strip. Still, if truth be told, it was Qatar, not the US, who negotiated the truce on the ground.
"The United States has lost all credibility now as a mediator, and nobody in the Arab world at the current moment sees the United States as a mediator," Kevork Almassian told Sputnik.
"The United States is part of this war with Israel against the Arab people. And because of the shift of balance of power that happened, especially after the Ukraine war, the regional powers have become emboldened. Iran has become emboldened. Saudi Arabia has become emboldened. The UAE has become emboldened. Countries are challenging the United States. It's not like the situation 10 years or 15 years ago."
The Americans played the mediator role in the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s, trying to broker deals between Arab countries and spread their influence across the region in the wake of the USSR's collapse. However, the Syrian war became the watershed when Russia stepped in and changed the course of the conflict together with Iran, according to Almassian.
"And since then, this was, I think, the first setback for the American Empire that their project militarily has failed. And then we saw what happened in Ukraine," the Mideast expert continued. "I think it will end up again miserably for the Ukrainians and fortunately so, because the Ukrainians have been used in this conflict and became a cannon fodder in this very long conflict, and now they call it a stalemate. It's not a stalemate, it's a failure. (...) It's a failure for the America-led counteroffensive and the trying to convert the country into a pro-NATO or NATO country, let's say. So, all these developments lead into one result, [which] is that the Americans have lost their status as the absolute hegemon, and the rising powers such as Russia and China, and they're cooperating together closely, and the regional powers like Saudi Arabia and Iran, they have become closer together after the Chinese mediation, and they restored ties and now they're coordinating the current affairs in the region with Egypt, with Syria, with Iraq, and the rest of the of the countries."
The US squandered their unilateral momentum after the collapse of the USSR by setting the Middle East on fire, Almassian noted. This conduct was rooted in the US economic model, which is based on war, according to him. In contrast, the Russians and the Chinese are interested in peace and stability in the Middle East, which would in turn contribute to Eurasia's security and economic development. To illustrate his point, Almassian referred to Beijing's Silk Road initiative, which includes ambitious infrastructure projects interconnecting Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. This endeavor cannot be accomplished unless there is peace and stability in the region, the scholar stressed.
"The United States, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, they have been acting like a bulldog, barking at everyone, intimidating everyone, occupying their resources, killing people without any consideration of any law or international law. Millions of people perished because of the America-led wars in these regions. So, that is why I think in order for the people of the Middle East to restart their development process, they need the Americans to get out of the region and ask for the Chinese and the Russians to come and fill the vacuum. We see that they're playing increasing roles. Russia has stabilized Syria, and is mediating between Turkiye and Syria, and the Chinese mediated between the Iranians and the Saudis. This is how respective powers act as the superpower, unlike the United States," Almassian concluded.
