The head of American diplomacy, Anthony Blinken, today called on all actors in the Middle East to avoid escalation, his spokesman said, in the shadow of fears of an almost certain attack by Iran on Israel, after the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.
"It is important that all parties do what is necessary in the coming days to avoid escalation and calm tensions," State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters, adding that Iran's possible response "would not serve the interests of the Iranian people and the region as a whole." .
Anthony Blinken spoke today with the Prime Minister of Qatar and the Foreign Minister of Egypt, two countries that are heavily involved in the Israel-Hamas negotiations.
Haniyeh, the political leader of the militant Palestinian movement Hamas, was killed on July 31 in Tehran, the capital of Iran.
Iran today issued an urgent warning to foreign civilian aircraft to avoid its airspace, which is being interpreted as preparation for an attack on Israel. "The message we keep sending is: don't do it. You don't have to do it, it's pointless and you're just putting the whole region at risk," Miller said, adding: "Every time there's an escalation cycle, there's a risk that the parties will make a mistake , undertake actions that are beyond their control or may have undesired consequences".
Diplomatic maneuvers intensified today to try to avoid a military escalation in the Middle East between Iran and its allies on the one hand, and Israel on the other.
Many countries are urging their citizens to leave Lebanon, where the Iran-backed Hezbollah organization operates in an increasingly intense conflict with Israel since the war between the Jewish state and Hamas broke out.
(BETA)
Violence, extreme hunger, humiliation and other abuses against Palestinian prisoners have been normalized throughout Israel's prison system, with the abuse now so systematic that human rights group B'Tselem says it must be considered a policy of 'institutionalized abuse', the Guardian reports.
Former prisoners described abuses ranging from severe beatings and sexual violence to starvation, denial of medical care and deprivation of basic necessities, including water, daylight, electricity and hygiene, including soap and sanitary napkins for women.
In a months-long investigation, B'Tselem interviewed 55 former prisoners housed in 16 Israeli Prison Service prisons and detention centers run by the Israeli military, mapping the scale and nature of the abuse. The highly regarded Jerusalem-based group concluded that Israeli prisons should now be labeled "torture camps".
"When we started the project, we thought we would find sporadic evidence and extreme cases here and there, but the picture that emerged was completely different. We were shocked by the scale of what we heard. It is an embarrassing situation for an Israeli-Palestinian organization to say that Israel runs torture camps. But we realized that this is what we see," said Juli Novak, executive director of the organization.
The Israeli army has said it completely rejects allegations of systematic abuse of prisoners in detention facilities and that it is acting "in accordance with Israeli law and international law". The statement stated that allegations of abuse have been thoroughly investigated. It is added that conditions for prisoners improved significantly during the war.
Nearly half of Hamas' military battalions in Gaza have regained some of their combat capabilities, according to a CNN special report, despite Netanyahu's claims that Israeli forces are close to achieving their goal of eliminating Hamas.
Speaking before Congress on July 24, Netanyahu said "victory is in sight." However, analyzes by the American Enterprise Institute's Critical Threat Project, the Institute for the Study of War and CNN show that despite the heavy bombing of the Gaza Strip, at least eight battalions remain combat effective. Thirteen more have been downgraded but are capable of sporadic, though mostly unsuccessful, guerrilla attacks, while three are completely out of action, the analysis said.
"The Israelis would say they cleared a place, but they didn't completely clear those areas, they didn't defeat those fighters at all," said Brian Carter, Middle East portfolio manager at the Critical Threat Project (CTP), which led the joint research with the Institute. for the Study of War (ISW) on patterns of military activity by Hamas and Israel.
"Hamas is ready to fight and wants to fight," he added.
Iran has summoned foreign ambassadors based in Tehran to warn them of the country's moral duty to punish Israel for what it sees as its "adventurism and lawlessness" in the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in the Iranian capital a week ago, the Guardian reports.
Tehran has also secured an emergency meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Wednesday where it will try to pressure Arab states to support its right to take retaliatory action against Israel.
Many Gulf leaders are ready to condemn Israel's actions, but have called on Iran to exercise restraint. The meeting will be held at the OIC headquarters in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Previous efforts by the late Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi to get Gulf states to support military action or direct economic sanctions have failed.
It is possible that Iran will wait for the outcome of the OIC meeting to launch planned retaliation, but US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has indicated that he expects Iran to launch a series of coordinated strikes from Monday.
President Joe Biden is scheduled to meet with his national security team in Washington at 14:15 p.m. local time, which is about 22 p.m. in Tehran, by which time it will likely be clear whether Iran plans to launch an attack that night.
"We all have a moral duty and responsibility not to remain silent in the face of the occupation, displacement and genocide of the Palestinian people. Indifference and appeasement in the face of evil and injustice is a type of moral negligence and causes the spread of evil," said the Acting Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ali Bagheri in a meeting with foreign diplomats.
Supreme Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hossein Salami, repeated the group's threat that Israel "will be punished at the appropriate time," adding that Israel is digging its own grave.
Israel handed over 80 unidentified Palestinian bodies to Gaza's civil protection agency, according to Gaza officials.
"We received 80 bodies in 15 bags, with more than four shaheeds (martyrs) in each bag, each wrapped in one kafin (white cloth in which the dead are wrapped)," Gaza civil protection director Yamen Abu Suleiman told AFP.
Abu Suleiman said no information was provided with the bodies, so it was unclear where they came from.
"We don't know if they were killed in Gaza or prisoners from Israeli prisons," he added.
The bodies were buried in a Turkish cemetery near Khan Younis, the capital in southern Gaza, AFP reporters said.
Yair Lapid, the Israeli opposition leader, has criticized Benjamin Netanyahu's government for its handling of the threat of attack from Iran.
At a meeting of the centrist party he leads, Yesh Atid, Lapid said there is no "deterrence and no government".
"I would like to ask the Israeli government, is what we are seeing in recent days a new standard? Is it acceptable to you that for five days the whole country sits and waits to be bombed? Is this a new standard that the people of the north will not even get a hint from government, when can they return home?", he asked.
Israel is preparing for an attack from Iran after the leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in Tehran. According to Axios, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said at the G7 meeting on Sunday that the attack could begin within 24 to 48 hours.
"This government will fall when the Knesset returns from the most unnecessary and miserable vacation in the country's history," Lapid said, according to the Guardian.
Nasser Kanani, a spokesman for Iran's foreign ministry, said that Tehran is not seeking an escalation of tensions, but that the punishment is necessary in response to the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in the Iranian capital and to prevent further instability, the Guardian reports.
"No one has the right to doubt Iran's legal right to punish the Zionist regime," Kanani said.
Iran's Ministry of Foreign Affairs invited ambassadors and heads of missions in that country to a meeting with Acting Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Khani, to warn them of Iran's readiness to respond to Israel, reports Reuters.
Iranian President Masud Pezeshkiyan also said that the murder of Haniyeh in Tehran was "a big mistake of the Zionist regime that will not go unanswered." The Secretary of the Russian Security Council, Sergei Shoigu, has arrived in the capital of Iran, and will talk to Pezeshkian, the Russian news agency Interfax reports.
Iran today issued an urgent warning (NOTAM) to all aircraft to avoid its airspace and to change course.
It is assumed that a threatened attack on Israel will follow soon, the Jerusalem Post reports.
Meanwhile, the Guardian reports that Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant met with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to inform him of the readiness of the Israeli army to defend the country against potential threats posed by Iran and its allies.
Israel's Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said it was "justifiable and moral" to let two million civilians in Gaza starve to death unless the Israeli hostages were returned, the Guardian reports.
Speaking at a press conference in Israel, Smotrich complained that international pressure means the government "has no choice" but has to bring aid to Gaza.
The right-wing politician claimed that the main factor prolonging the war is the aid that, according to him, sustains Hamas. He said that the Israeli authorities must take full control over what enters Gaza. He criticized Defense Minister Yoav Galant and the military for their willingness to allow aid to be delivered to the besieged territory, adding that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should intervene and force a change in policy.
"I don't know if the prime minister doesn't want to or if he can't control them," he said.
"No one will allow us to cause the death of two million civilians from starvation, although it could be justified and moral until our hostages are returned. Humanitarian for humanitarian sake is morally justified, but what can we do? Today we live in a certain reality, we need an international legitimacy for this war," said Smotrič.
Two people were killed in southern Lebanon as a result of an Israeli attack, the Lebanese Ministry of Health said
One of the dead was a paramedic who went to check the scene of the earlier attack for casualties, Ali Abbas, a rescuer, told AFP.
He went "to see if there were any civilians or people [in the area]... and the second attack happened right after," Abbas said.
The attack took place in Mais Al-Jabal, a village less than two miles from the Israeli-Lebanese border. Most residents were evacuated from the village to avoid the exchange of fire between Hezbollah and Israel, which has occurred almost daily since the Gaza war began in October.
The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah hit northern Israel with a drone strike in response to what it called "attacks and assassinations" carried out by Israel in several villages in southern Lebanon. The Israeli army says the attack wounded two soldiers and caused a fire, the Guardian reports
The attack came amid fears of an all-out war following the killing of a senior Hezbollah commander in Lebanon and the political leader of Hamas in Iran.
The Hezbollah attack seems more in line with the ongoing border skirmishes than a direct response to political killings.
The Israeli military said fire services were working to put out a fire that broke out as a result of the attack in Ajlet HaShahar in the Upper Galilee.
Bonus video:
