Paramedics transport an injured person to the American University of Beirut Medical Center in Beirut, Lebanon, 17 September 2024. (Photo: EPA-EFE / WAEL HAMZEH) 
Half of the pupils stayed away from classes at an elementary school in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Tuesday, a day after it was attacked by Jewish settlers with wooden bats in violence that has surged since the Gaza war erupted.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken would travel to Egypt on Tuesday to discuss a Gaza ceasefire and the release of hostages with Egyptian officials, the State Department said.
Hezbollah vows to punish Israel after pager explosions across Lebanon
Lebanon’s Hezbollah promised to retaliate after blaming Israel for detonating pagers on Tuesday that killed at least eight people and wounded 2,750 others, including many of the militant group’s fighters and Iran’s envoy to Beirut.
Lebanese Information Minister Ziad Makary condemned the detonation of the pagers — used by Hezbollah and others in Lebanon to communicate — as an “Israeli aggression”. Hezbollah said Israel would receive “its fair punishment” for the blasts.
The Israeli military, which has been engaged in cross-border warfare with Iran-backed Hezbollah since the start of the Gaza war last October, declined to respond to Reuters’ questions about the detonations.
A Hezbollah official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the detonation of the pagers was the “biggest security breach” the group had been subjected to in nearly a year of conflict with Israel.
Developments in Lebanon were extremely concerning, especially given the “extremely volatile” context, said UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric, adding that the UN deplored any civilian casualties.
Without commenting directly on the explosions in Lebanon, an Israeli military spokesperson said the chief of staff, Major General Herzi Halevi, had met senior officers on Tuesday evening to assess the situation. No policy change was announced but “vigilance must continue to be maintained”, he said.
Hezbollah fighters have been using pagers as a low-tech means to try to avoid Israeli tracking of their locations, two sources familiar with the group’s operations told Reuters earlier this year. A pager is a wireless telecommunications device that receives and displays messages.
The pagers were detonated in southern Lebanon, the southern suburbs of Beirut known as Dahiyeh and the eastern Bekaa valley — all Hezbollah strongholds.
Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad said 2,750 people had been wounded in the explosions, 200 of them critically.
Many of those hurt included Hezbollah fighters who are the sons of top officials from the armed group, two security sources told Reuters.
One of the fighters killed was the son of a Hezbollah member of the Lebanese parliament, Ali Ammar, they said.
“This is not a security targeting of one, two or three people. This is a targeting of an entire nation,” said senior Hezbollah official Hussein Khalil while offering his condolences for Ammar’s son.
Lebanese broadcaster Al Jadeed cited Ammar as saying what happened was Israeli aggression. “We will deal with the enemy in the language it understands,” he added.
Tuesday’s blasts added to a hefty price already paid over the past year by Hezbollah, which has lost more than 400 of its fighters in Israeli strikes, including its top commander Fuad Shukr in July. Security sources in Lebanon said two more Hezbollah fighters were killed in an Israeli strike in southern Lebanon on Tuesday.
Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, suffered a “superficial injury” in Tuesday’s pager blasts and was under observation in hospital, Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency said. Reuters could not immediately confirm the report.
There was no word from the Israeli government on the explosions.
Earlier on Tuesday, Israel’s domestic security agency said it had foiled a plot by Lebanese militant group Hezbollah to assassinate a former senior defence official in the coming days.
The Shin Bet agency, which did not name the official, said in a statement it had seized an explosive device attached to a remote detonation system, using a mobile phone and a camera that Hezbollah had planned to operate from Lebanon.
After Tuesday’s blasts, a Reuters journalist saw ambulances rushing through the southern suburbs of the capital Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold, amid widespread panic. A security source said that devices were also exploding in the south of Lebanon.
At Mt Lebanon hospital, a Reuters reporter saw motorcycles rushing to the emergency room, where people with their hands bloodied were screaming in pain.
The head of the Nabatieh public hospital in the south of the country, Hassan Wazni, told Reuters that around 40 wounded people were being treated at his facility. The wounds included injuries to the face, eyes and limbs.
Hezbollah fired missiles at Israel immediately after the 7 October attacks by Hamas gunmen on Israel that triggered the Gaza war. Hezbollah and Israel have since been exchanging fire constantly while avoiding a major escalation.
Tens of thousands of people have been displaced from towns and villages on both sides of the border by the hostilities.
On Tuesday, Israel added the safe return of its citizens forced to leave their homes near the border with Lebanon to its formal war goals.
Pupils describe attack by settlers on West Bank school
Half of the pupils stayed away from classes at an elementary school in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Tuesday, a day after it was attacked by Jewish settlers with wooden bats in violence that has surged since the Gaza war erupted.
This type of attack, which wounded seven people, according to Palestinian officials, has tested the patience of Israel’s allies, including the UA, who have called for restraint in the West Bank as the death toll climbs in Gaza and the conflict spreads in the Middle East.
A video filmed by Israeli activists and posted on social media showed a band of young men striking people who were screaming in the yard of Al-Ka’abneh school during the assault in a Bedouin area near Jericho on Monday.
“Half of the students today did not come to school because of the state of fear and terror they experienced yesterday because of the settlers’ attack on the school,” Ahmed Nasser, an official at the Palestinian Ministry of Education, told Reuters.
Violence against Palestinian villages was on the rise even before the outbreak of the Gaza war, as settlement building has spread unchecked across the West Bank.
Since 7 October, such attacks by Israeli settlers have increased. Figures last month from the UN humanitarian agency Ocha showed them running at around four per day.
“We were studying as usual in class, then they started saying that settlers attacked the schools, I was able to gather my siblings so that nothing happens to them,” said student Aya Mlehat. “I was able to gather them in a classroom, and the settlers started banging on the class trying to open it against our will.”
Palestinians and rights groups regularly accuse Israeli forces of standing by as attacks take place and sometimes even joining in themselves. Legal action against violent settlers is rare.
“The army came along with the settlers. We ran and hid in a class with a teacher, and did not go back to the class... He told us to stay low under the tables, we stayed under the table and he told us to be quiet,” said student Malak Mlehat.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Countries including the US have begun imposing sanctions on individuals and face pressure to do more and to curb the expansion of settlements on land the Palestinians want as the core of a future independent state, a key part of the two-state solution favoured by Western countries.
At the same time, the West Bank has witnessed almost daily sweeps by Israeli forces that have involved thousands of arrests and regular gun battles between security forces and Palestinian fighters.
More than 703 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since 7 October, including fighters and unarmed civilians, according to the Palestinian health authorities.
In the same period, about 40 Israeli troops and civilians have been killed in attacks by Palestinians or in clashes with fighters, according to figures from Israel’s domestic security agency.
Most countries deem Jewish settlements built on land Israel occupied in a 1967 Middle East war as illegal, and their expansion has for decades been among the most contentious issues between Israel, the Palestinians and the international community. Israel cites biblical, historical and political ties to the area.
Blinken to travel to Egypt to discuss Gaza ceasefire
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken would travel to Egypt on Tuesday to discuss a Gaza ceasefire and the release of hostages with Egyptian officials, the State Department said.
Washington and mediators Qatar and Egypt have for months sought to reach a deal between Israel and Hamas to halt the war and release Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners.
The two biggest obstacles now are Israel’s demand to keep its forces in the Philadelphi corridor to maintain a buffer between Gaza and Egypt and the specifics of an exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Blinken would discuss efforts to reach a deal “that secures the release of all hostages, alleviates the suffering of the Palestinian people, and helps establish broader regional security”, said the State Department.
The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on 7 October when Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent assault on the Hamas-governed enclave has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, according to the local health ministry, while displacing nearly the entire population of 2.3 million, causing a hunger crisis and leading to genocide allegations at the World Court that Israel denies.
Israel business leaders urge Netanyahu to keep defence chief
Israel’s Business Forum on Tuesday urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to not fire his defence minister, saying it would create more division and weaken the country after reports of an imminent political shake-up rattled the country.
Israel’s leading television channels and news websites have reported that Netanyahu, under pressure from far-right coalition partners, was contemplating firing Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and replacing him with a former ally turned rival, Gideon Saar, who is currently a member of the opposition.
The forum, which consists of 200 heads of Israel’s largest companies that employ many private sector workers, said Netanyahu should stop “messing around with petty politics” during a war.
“Immediately stop the process of replacing [Gallant],” the forum said in a statement. “The firing of the minister weakens Israel in the eyes of her enemies, and will further deepen the division in the people of Israel.”
Such a move would be a shock to the political and security landscape, especially as the war with Islamist group Hamas in Gaza rages on and with the looming threat of an all-out war between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Netanyahu denied that he was in negotiations with Saar, though he did not refer to his plans for Gallant. Saar denied that he was negotiating with some members of the coalition.
Palestinian poll finds big drop in support for 7 October attack
A majority of Gazans believe Hamas’ decision to launch the 7 October attack on Israel was incorrect, according to a poll published on Tuesday pointing to a big drop in backing for the assault that prompted Israel’s devastating Gaza offensive.
The poll, conducted in early September by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR), found that 57% of people surveyed in the Gaza Strip said the decision to launch the offensive was incorrect, while 39% said it was correct.
It marked the first time since 7 October that a PSR poll found a majority of Gazan respondents judging the decision as incorrect. It was accompanied by a drop in support in the West Bank for the attack, though a majority of 64% of respondents there still thought it was the correct decision, the poll found.
PSR’s previous poll, conducted in June, showed that 57% of respondents in Gaza thought the decision to be correct.
PSR said it surveyed 1,200 people face-to-face, 790 of them in the West Bank and 410 in Gaza, with a 3.5% margin of error.
PSR said the poll released on Tuesday marked the first time since 7 October that its findings had shown simultaneously in the West Bank and Gaza a significant drop in the favorability of the attack and in expectations that Hamas would win the current war.
Overall, the poll found a majority of 54% of respondents in Gaza and the West Bank thought the decision was correct.
The poll showed a drop in the number of respondents in Gaza who said they supported Hamas to 35% from 38%. But the Islamist movement remained more popular than Fatah, led by President Mahmoud Abbas, in Gaza and the West Bank. DM
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