Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (Photo: EPA-EFE / Alessandro DI Meo) 
At least 39 Palestinians were killed in Israeli military strikes across the Gaza Strip on Thursday, mostly in the north where one attack hit a hospital, torching medical supplies and disrupting operations, the enclave’s health officials said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told US envoys on Thursday that Israel’s ability to counter threats to its security from Lebanon and return displaced people to the north were key elements of any ceasefire deal with Beirut.
Iran preparing hit Israel from Iraq, Axios reports
Israeli intelligence suggests Iran is preparing to attack Israel from Iraqi territory in the coming days, possibly before the US presidential election on 5 November, Axios reported on Thursday, citing two unidentified Israeli sources.
The attack is expected to be carried out from Iraq using a large number of drones and ballistic missiles, the Axios report said.
The report said that carrying out the attack through pro-Iran militias in Iraq could be an attempt by Tehran to avoid another Israeli attack against strategic targets in Iran.
At least 39 Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes, hospital hit — Gaza ministry
At least 39 Palestinians were killed in Israeli military strikes across the Gaza Strip on Thursday, mostly in the north where one attack hit a hospital, torching medical supplies and disrupting operations, the enclave’s health officials said.
Israel’s military has accused the Palestinian militant group Hamas of using Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya for military purposes and said “dozens of terrorists” had been hiding there. Health officials and Hamas deny the charge.
Later on Thursday, an Israeli airstrike on two houses in the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza Strip killed at least nine Palestinians, medics told Reuters.
Northern Gaza, where Israel said in January it had dismantled Hamas’s command structure, is currently the main focus of the military’s assault in the enclave. Earlier this month it sent tanks into Jabalia, Beit Hanoun, and Beit Lahiya to flush out militants it said had regrouped in the area.
Eid Sabbah, director of nursing at Kamal Adwan – which is in Beit Lahiya – told Reuters some staff had suffered minor burns after the Israeli strike hit the third floor of the hospital.
There were no reports of any casualties at the hospital, which Israeli forces stormed and briefly occupied last week. Israel said it had captured around 100 suspected Hamas militants in that raid. Israeli tanks are still stationed nearby.
The health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip called for all international bodies “to protect hospitals and medical staff from the brutality of the (Israeli) occupation”.
The Israeli military has said its forces are operating in the hospital area based on intelligence.
“During the operation, it was found that dozens of terrorists were hiding in the hospital, with some even posing as hospital staff,” said the military in a statement following Thursday’s strike.
Medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said on Thursday that one of its doctors at the hospital, Mohammed Obeid, had been detained last Saturday by Israeli forces. It called for the protection of him and all medical staff who “are facing horrific violence as they try to provide care”.
The Gaza war began after Hamas-led militants attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians and reduced most of the enclave to rubble, Palestinian authorities say.
Netanyahu clarifies key elements of any Lebanon ceasefire deal
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told US envoys on Thursday that Israel’s ability to counter threats to its security from Lebanon and return displaced people to the north were key elements of any ceasefire deal with Beirut.
He was speaking shortly after a Hezbollah attack on northern Israel’s Metula killed five people including an Israeli farmer and four foreign workers, while two more civilians were killed from shrapnel near the town of Kiryat Ata, Israeli authorities said.
Meanwhile, Beirut said a series of Israeli strikes had killed six health workers in southern Lebanon.
“The main issue is not the paperwork of this or that agreement, but Israel’s ability and determination to enforce the agreement and thwart any threat to its security from Lebanon,” Netanyahu’s office cited him as telling the two US envoys.
Brett McGurk and Amos Hochstein were in Israel on a new push to secure ceasefires in both Lebanon and Gaza.
Sources previously told Reuters that talks were centred on a 60-day pause to allow for the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which would entail Hezbollah withdrawing its armed presence from south of the Litani River.
The diplomatic push comes amid intensifying fighting between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah, which has run in parallel to Israel’s war in Gaza against Hamas militants that has left the tiny enclave in ruins and has caused a humanitarian crisis.
Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister accused Israel of perpetrating a form of “genocide” with its grinding assault on northern Gaza – a charge it denies – and called on Lebanon to solve its long-running political crisis.
Israel bombarded areas around the eastern city of Baalbek on Thursday for a second consecutive day after issuing evacuation notices.
On Wednesday it had conducted heavy airstrikes targeting Hezbollah in and around the city, which is famed for its Roman temples.
Dozens of cars could be seen speeding out of the area after Thursday’s warning, with wafts of black smoke still visible emanating from the town of Douris, where an Israeli strike the previous day destroyed Hezbollah fuel stocks, according to the Israeli military and a Lebanese security source.
Thousands fleeing the violence have sought shelter in the nearby Christian-majority town of Deir al-Ahmar, where local official Jean Fakhry said authorities were struggling to cover even a fraction of their needs and some people had to spend the night in their cars.
“We cannot continue this way,” Fakhry said.
The killing of six Lebanese health workers and wounding of four others in three separate strikes across south Lebanon on Thursday brought the total toll of health workers killed and wounded in over a year of Israeli strikes to 178 and 279 respectively, the Lebanese health ministry said.
Hezbollah said it had launched several rocket and artillery attacks against Israeli forces near the southern town of Khiyam. It marked the fourth consecutive day of fighting in and around the strategic hilltop town, which is home to one of the largest Shi’ite communities in southern Lebanon.
The mayor of the Lebanese border town of Wazzani, south of Khiyam, said he had pleaded with authorities to evacuate more than 20 people, most of them women and children, who were stuck in the crossfire, but Lebanese authorities said Israel had not responded to his appeal.
“We keep asking for them to be helped but it’s like we’re in a jungle. No one listens,” Mayor Ahmed Mohammed told Reuters.
Hezbollah aims to keep Israeli forces out of Khiyam to prevent them from detonating homes and buildings, as has happened on a large scale in other border towns, a source familiar with the group’s thinking told Reuters.
Hezbollah says its fighters have prevented Israel from fully occupying or controlling any southern villages, while Israel says it is carrying out limited ground operations aimed at destroying the group’s infrastructure.
EU Council chief warns of ‘consequences’ of Israel’s UNRWA ban
The European Council President warned on Thursday that Israel’s decision to ban the key UN aid agency for Gaza could result in the annulment of a deal establishing Israeli trade relations with Brussels.
Israel passed a law on Monday banning the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA from operating in the country, raising concerns about its ability to provide relief in Gaza after more than a year of war between Israeli forces and Hamas-led militants.
“The decision made by parliament in Israel, if implemented, to ban UNRWA in Israel is absolutely not acceptable and I cannot imagine that there would be no consequences on the EU side,” Charles Michel told reporters in Geneva.
“I can observe that more and more voices, including at the political level, the highest political level of the EU, are considering that the time will come to put on the table the Association Agreement between Israel and the EU,” he said.
Ireland has previously called for a review of the deal on human rights grounds, which are cited in the terms of its provisions.
The deal, which entered into force in 2000, provides the legal basis for trade between the two parties. An EU website showed that the EU is Israel’s biggest trade partner, accounting for 28.8% of its trade in goods in 2022, while Israel is the EU’s 25th-biggest trade partner.
Israel claims it downed drone smuggling weapons from Egypt
Israel’s military said on Thursday it shot down a drone smuggling weapons from Egyptian territory to Israel on Wednesday.
However, two Egyptian security officials dismissed the claim, stating that Egyptian border patrols had reported no evidence of weapons smuggling into Gaza or Israel on Wednesday.
Israeli officials have said during the war in Gaza that Hamas used tunnels running under the border into Egypt’s Sinai region to smuggle arms.
Egypt says it destroyed tunnel networks leading to Gaza years ago and created a buffer zone and border fortifications that prevent smuggling.
Earlier in October, the Israeli military also said it foiled a weapons smuggling attempt from Egypt after downing a drone carrying firearms and bullets.
Israeli Cabinet set to approve austerity budget
Israeli Cabinet ministers were to start voting later on Thursday on a long-awaited wartime budget for 2025 that will rein in spending and raise a host of taxes to pay for the military conflicts that have engulfed the country.
The wars in Gaza and Lebanon have cost Israeli coffers tens of billions of shekels on spending for defence –on equipment and manpower after hundreds of thousands of citizens were called into reserve duty – and in compensation for those impacted.
“Our security also depends on the economy. We cannot have a strong military if we have no way of financing it,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the outset of the Cabinet meeting before the budget vote, which could run into the night.
“There is no economy without restrictions. If you give to one place, you unfortunately need to take from another,” he said.
Israel’s economy has taken a hit since the 7 October 2023 attack by Hamas. There has been zero growth but supply issues have pushed up inflation, and the cost of living for Israelis – already emotionally drained by the more than one-year war – has soared.
All three major credit ratings have cut Israel’s credit rating this year due to the wars, raising financing costs, and stubborn inflation of 3% has forced the central bank to keep interest rates high with no respite from rate cuts in sight.
On top of all that, the 2025 budget imposes austerity, with some 40 billion shekels ($10.8 billion) of proposed spending reductions and tax increases aimed at bringing down the budget deficit from a current 8.5% of gross domestic product – above a 2024 target of 6.6% – to 4% of GDP.
Among the tax hikes, value-added tax will rise in 2025 to 18% from 17%.
The military in 2025 will not have an unlimited budget, said Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, although its spending will be 102 billion shekels next year.
In all, budgetary spending will be 744 billion shekels in 2025, with 161 billion shekels going to service the country’s debt.
“It is important that we transmit stability and control and a hand on the wheel of the economy so that all our partners in the economy ... will move the economy forward,” Smotrich said at the Cabinet meeting.
“Now, the economy serves security. We will end the war with victory and bring security and with it also a good economy.”
Economic growth is forecast at 0.4% in 2024 and 4.3% in 2025.
“We are in the longest and most expensive war in Israel’s history,” Smotrich said. “In the last year, we have demonstrated an amazing ability to withstand all the efforts of the war and its costs. There is great resilience in the economy.”
After the Cabinet approval, the budget will head to parliament for an initial vote. Smotrich expects final parliamentary approval in January.
Failure to pass the budget by 31 March 2025 would trigger new elections. DM
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