In the face of the ongoing suffering of the Palestinian and Lebanese people amid Israel's wars in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon, Ahram Online provided you with live updates of the most recent developments across the Middle East on Thursday, 14 November, as they unfolded.
23:15 Lebanon's health ministry said eight people were killed in an Israeli strike on the main eastern city of Baalbek on Thursday, most of them women, revising an earlier toll of three dead.
"The Israeli enemy strike on the Al-Shaab neighbourhood in Baalbek killed eight people including five women" and wounded 27 others, a ministry statement said.
22:15 Lebanon's Health Ministry’s Public Health Emergency Operations Center reported that an Israeli airstrike targeted a recently established site of the Islamic Health Organization-Civil Defense in Arab Salim, South Lebanon, killing six people, including four medics.
Smoke rises from the site of an Israeli airstrike that targeted Beirut's southern suburbs neighbourhood of Ghobeiry. AFP
22:00 The United States wants action rather than words by Iran on its nuclear program, after President Masoud Pezeshkian promised to resolve doubts ahead of Donald Trump's return to the White House, the State Department said Thursday.
"Ultimately, what we want to see from Iran is actual behavioral change and action, not just signs of something or indications of something," said State Department spokesman Vedant Patel, part of the outgoing administration of President Joe Biden.
"We want to ensure that Iran never has a nuclear weapon, and we're going to continue to use a variety of tools to pursue that goal, and all options remain on the table," Patel told reporters.
Pezeshkian made the comments during a visit to Tehran by the head of the UN nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi.
21:15 The US ambassador to Lebanon submitted a draft truce proposal to Lebanon's speaker of parliament, Nabih Berri, on Thursday to halt fighting between Hezbollah and Israel, two political sources told Reuters, without revealing details.
The US has sought to broker a ceasefire that would end the Israeli war on Lebanon, but efforts have yet to yield a result.
21:00 The United States voiced concern Thursday after ally Israel struck Hezbollah sites in the Beirut suburbs, saying it opposed attacks in densely populated parts of Lebanon.
"Certainly, we would have concerns," State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said when asked about the Israeli strikes.
"You've heard us say time and time again that we do not want to see these kinds of (military) operations in Beirut, especially as it relates to densely populated areas."
20:00 Nearly 90 congressional Democrats are calling on President Joe Biden to impose sanctions on two far-right Israeli government officials for their roles in inciting settler violence in the West Bank, the CNN reported.
“Violent settlers, fueled by the inflammatory rhetoric and incitement to violence by members of the Israeli cabinet, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, and empowered by extremist organizations like Regavim and Amana, have carried out over 1,270 recorded attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank, averaging more than three violent attacks per day,” the lawmakers wrote in their letter to the US President.
“Given their critical roles in driving policies that promote settler violence, weaken the Palestinian Authority, facilitate de facto and de jure annexation, and destabilize the West Bank, we urge you to sanction Finance Minister (Bezalel) Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir,” they wrote.
The letter was signed by a significant number of Democrats – 17 senators and 71 members of the House of Representatives – and was sent at the end of October, before the US election which Donald Trump won. It was made public on Thursday in order to pressure Biden to take action during his final months in office as frustration grows from within Biden’s own party about his administration’s seeming unwillingness to hold the Israeli government to account.
“We’ve not yet gotten a response from the White House, and we think the clock is ticking in the aftermath of the election,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, one of the lead lawmakers who signed the letter. “We do think that there’s a pretty short window, obviously, for the Biden administration to take this action.”
“We see President-elect Trump’s nominations, and we think it’s more important than ever that President Biden right now state that the United States is not going to be a rubber stamp to the Netanyahu government’s extreme actions on the West Bank,” he said.
19:00 The Israeli army announced that a platoon commander from the 51st Battalion of the Golani Brigade was killed, and an officer was seriously injured in fighting in southern Lebanon, according to Israeli media.
Since the start of the war, 192 officers have been killed, with one in every four casualties being a commander, the Israeli army stated, citing Israeli media reports.
18:00 The UN peacekeeping chief whose force monitors Lebanon's south said redeploying Lebanese troops there is crucial for any solution to more than a year of Hezbollah-Israel clashes that escalated into war in September.
"The redeployment of the Lebanese armed forces is an absolutely central element to any durable settlement," Under Secretary-General for Peace Operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix told reporters during a briefing in the Beirut area.
17:45 More than a year of clashes that recently escalated into war have cost Lebanon more than $5 billion in economic losses and damaged nearly 100,000 homes, the World Bank said on Thursday.
Since September 23, Israel has ramped up its air attacks in Lebanon, later sending in ground troops following almost a year of limited, cross-border exchanges with Hezbollah over the Israeli genocidal war in Gaza.
The World Bank report provided estimates for damage between October 8, 2023, and October 27, 2024, saying "the conflict has caused $5.1 billion in economic losses", with damage to physical structures amounting to "at least $3.4 billion" on top of that.
The losses are "largely concentrated in the commerce and tourism and hospitality sectors... as well as in the agriculture sector", the report said.
"The final cost of damage and losses for Lebanon associated with the conflict is expected to significantly exceed those presented in this assessment," the report said.
The conflict has also "damaged an estimated 99,209 housing units" -- mainly in Lebanon's war-torn south near the border with Israel -- totalling $2.8 billion in damages, it said.
Eighty-one percent of damaged and destroyed houses are located in the Tyre, Nabatiyeh, Saida, Bint Jbeil and Marjayoun districts.
The World Bank estimates that the conflict cut Lebanon's real GDP growth for 2024 by at least 6.6 percent.
Lebanon had already been reeling since 2019 from an intense economic crisis that pushed most of the population into poverty.
"This compounds five years of sustained sharp economic contraction in Lebanon that has exceeded 34 percent of real GDP, losing the equivalent of 15 years of economic growth," the World Bank said.
17:00 In a statement on its official Telegram channel, Israel’s military has said that as of (1 pm GMT), “approximately 25 projectiles” had been fired from Lebanon into Israel. It blamed them on Hezbollah. There were no reports of any casualties.
16:30 Syria's defence ministry said twin Israeli air strikes on Thursday killed 15 people in the upscale Mazzeh district of Damascus and in the outskirts of the capital.
"The Israeli enemy launched an air aggression from the direction of the occupied Syrian Golan (Heights), targeting residential buildings in the Mazzeh neighbourhood of Damascus and the Qudsaya area in the Damascus countryside, killing 15 people and injuring 16 others," the ministry said, adding that the toll was preliminary and could rise.
15:55 The European Union's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has urged the bloc to suspend a political dialogue with Israel over human rights concerns in Gaza, AFP reported.
Borrell raised his proposal during a meeting of ambassadors on Wednesday and is expected to formalise it when European Union foreign ministers gather in Brussels early next week, four involved diplomats told AFP.
The foreign policy chief has written to member states to ask them to suspend the EU's political dialogue with Israel, part of a wider agreement governing trade ties, "over alleged abuses" in the Gaza conflict, one diplomat said.
"It is forcing people to talk about the issues," said the diplomat, adding that "the widespread expectation is that it will not be agreed," considering that EU foreign policy decisions require unanimity among the 27 member states.
15:20 Several people have been killed and others injured in Israeli attacks that targeted two residential buildings in suburbs of the Syrian capital Damascus on Thursday, Syrian state news agency SANA said.
Citing SANA, Reuters reports that one building was located in Damascus suburb of Mazzeh and the other in Qudsaya, west of the capital.
Israeli army radio claimed the targets of the attack in Damascus were assets and the headquarters of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad.
14:20 Secretary-General of the League of Arab States Ahmed Aboul-Gheit has urged the US administration and the European Union to intervene to safeguard the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) from an Israeli right-wing scheme aimed at “systematically eroding” the agency.
Aboul-Gheit detailed the significant risks posed by undermining UNRWA's mission in the Palestinian territories in two separate letters sent to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell, according to an Arab League statement on Thursday.
The move came two weeks after the Israeli Knesset approved a bill banning UNRWA from working in Israel, following years of harsh Israeli criticism for UNRWA that has increased since the start of the Israeli war on Gaza in October 2023.
“The new Knesset legislation threatens the humanitarian framework in Gaza, where residents are on the brink of famine,” Aboul-Gheit added in his letters, noting that the league has long regarded UNRWA as a stabilizing force within Palestine and across the entire region.
14:00 The health ministry in Gaza said that at least 43,736 people have been killed in more than 13 months of war between Israel and Palestinian militants.
The toll includes 24 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry, which said 103,370 people have also been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the Israeli war on Gaza began.
Earlier on Thursday, Gaza's civil defence agency said at least 10 people were killed in "several air strikes" by the Israeli occupation army on the Palestinian territory.
The agency's spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that "around 30 people, all civilians" were wounded in the strikes on Gaza City, the northern town of Jabalia and the southern city of Rafah.
13:00 Israel's warfare practices in Gaza "are consistent with the characteristics of genocide," the UN Special Committee to investigate Israeli practices said, pointing to the "mass civilian casualties and life-threatening conditions intentionally imposed on Palestinians there."
The statement comes as families displaced from northern Gaza seek shelter in central Gaza's Deir el-Balah, where they are forced to live in overcrowded makeshift shelters and unsanitary conditions, Al Jazeera reported.
The displaced also face a dire lack of medication, insufficient food, and unclean water, exposing them to threats such as weight loss, insect-borne diseases, and epidemics as winter approaches.
The worsening conditions come as the death toll from Israeli attacks on Gaza has risen to 43,736 people, mostly women and children, according to the territory's health ministry.
More than 1.9 million people, or nearly 80 percent of the population are internally displaced and have been forced to evacuate several times within the Gaza Strip.
10:00 Air strikes hit the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Thursday, AFPTV images showed. A plume of grey smoke rose over the area.
Israel carried out two strikes on Ghobeiry and a large one on Shouaifat al-Omrousiya, which lies on the southern outskirts of Beirut, the state-run National News Agency reported.
NNA also reported heavy Israeli bombardment of the southern town of Bint Jbeil on Thursday.
Several blocks of flats in the town barely three kilometres (two miles) from the Israeli border were destroyed by air strikes or shelling, it said.
Smoke plumes rise after an Israeli airstrike on the Chouaifet neighborhood in southern Beirut. AFP
9:30 The UN Security Council (UNSC) condemned attacks in recent weeks on the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon (UNIFIL), calling on all parties to respect the safety of members of that force.
"They urged all parties to take all measures to respect the safety and security of UNIFIL personnel and premises. They recalled that peacekeepers must never be the target of an attack," the UNSC said in a statement, noting in particular attacks on October 29, November 7 and November 8.
9:10 Human Rights Watch said in a report released Thursday that Israel's repeated evacuation orders in Gaza amount to the "war crime of forcible transfer", and to "ethnic cleansing" in parts of the Palestinian territory.
"Human Rights Watch has amassed evidence that Israeli officials are... committing the war crime of forcible transfer," the report said.
"Israel's actions appear to also meet the definition of ethnic cleansing" in the areas where Palestinians will not be able to return, HRW added.
Nadia Hardman, an HRW researcher, noted the 172-page report's findings are based on interviews with displaced Gazans, satellite imagery, and public reporting conducted until August 2024.
Systematically rendering large parts of Gaza uninhabitable... in some cases permanently... amounts to ethnic cleansing," Ahmed Benchemsi, spokesman for HRW's Middle East division said in a press briefing.
The HRW report pointed in particular to the Philadelphi and Netzarim corridors, running along the Egyptian border and cutting Gaza along its east-west axis respectively, which have been "razed, extended, and cleared", by Israel's army to create buffer zones and security corridors.
9:00 Israeli warplanes carpet bombed Beirut's southern suburbs for the second consecutive day, flattening half a dozen buildings in Dahiyeh and killing at least eight people in Dawhit Aramoun, a densely packed village south of the capital, Al Jazeera reported late Wednesday.
Among the dead were three women and three children, according to the Lebanese health ministry. The ministry also reported that at least 3,365 people have been killed and 14,344 wounded in Israeli attacks on Lebanon since October of last year.
Israel's military waged a war on Lebanon in September following nearly a year of cross-border fire with the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, which has long defended Lebanon's southern border from Israeli incursions.
The latest strikes come as Lebanese negotiators awaited a potential new ceasefire proposal from Washington.
On Wednesday, the Israeli army announced that six of its soldiers had been killed in clashes with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Since Israel launched its ground invasion, at least 47 Israeli troops have been killed, according to an Al Jazeera tally.
Hezbollah, meanwhile, said in a statement that it had fired ballistic missiles at the Israeli army’s headquarters, which also houses the defence ministry.
Earlier, the group claimed to have targeted the same site with explosive drones and later launched a salvo of missiles at another site near Tel Aviv.
Hezbollah identified the second target as a facility owned by Israeli Weapons Industries (IWI), a major arms manufacturer that supplies the Israeli military, Al Jazeera reported.
Hezbollah also claimed responsibility for firing missiles at "enemy army forces" in northern Israel just before midnight.
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