The Times of Israel is liveblogging Thursday’s events as they unfold.
Australia confirms Hezbollah claim of citizen killed in Israeli strike in Lebanon
Australia on Thursday confirmed two of its citizens were killed in an Israeli airstrike in south Lebanon late Tuesday, and said it was looking at Hezbollah’s claims that one of the Australian citizens killed had links to the Lebanese terror group.
“We will continue to make inquiries about this particular person, with whom Hezbollah has claimed links,” Acting Foreign Minister Mark Dreyfus said during a media briefing.
“Hezbollah has claimed this Australian as one of its fighters. Our inquiries are continuing.”
Hezbollah is a “listed terrorist organization” in Australia and it is an offense for any Australian to provide it with financial support or fight in its ranks, Dreyfus said.
A Lebanese-Australian man, his wife, and his brother, who was a member of Hezbollah, were killed in the attack, attributed to Israel, on a home in the southern city of Bint Jbeil, Lebanese security and local sources told Reuters on Wednesday.
According to Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency, the bodies of Ibrahim Bazzi, his wife Shorouk Hammoud, and Ibrahim’s brother, Ali Bazzi, were pulled from the rubble of their destroyed home.
Ibrahim Bazzi was identified by one of his relatives as a Lebanese-Australian dual citizen. Although family members in the village alleged that Ali Bazzi was a civilian, Hezbollah put out a statement announcing his death as a “martyr on the road to Jerusalem,” as it typically does when one of its fighters is killed.
Ibrahim Bazzi was said to have lived in Sydney and was only in Lebanon to visit his wife, who just recently received a travel visa for Australia and so was not yet living with her husband.
At the funeral procession in Bint Jbeil on Wednesday, an AFP photographer saw three coffins draped in Hezbollah flags.
Dreyfus said the Australian government had reached out to Israel about the attacks but declined to disclose what was discussed.
He urged Australians in Lebanon to leave the country while commercial flight options remained available.
Bint Jbeil is a Hezbollah stronghold and large parts of it were destroyed during the 2006 war between Israel and the Iran-backed terror group.
Asked about the incident, the Israeli military said one of its jets had struck a Hezbollah military site overnight in Lebanon.
Emmanuel Fabian and AFP contributed to this report.
Police arrest suspect for desecrating Jerusalem Muslim cemetery with donkey head
Israeli police on Wednesday said they had arrested an Israeli suspected of having desecrated a Muslim cemetery in annexed east Jerusalem’s Old City by hanging a donkey’s head.
Describing the 35-year-old as “unbalanced,” police said he was arrested after they were alerted that a man had “broken the law and disrupted public order by hanging the head of a donkey” at the cemetery.
Israeli settlers storm the Bab al-Rahma cemetery in occupied Jerusalem and hang a "donkey's head" on a grave. pic.twitter.com/dmwf2LnBge
— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) December 27, 2023
Photographs circulating on social media showed the head of a donkey hanging from a fence of the cemetery.
Police said the man was carrying an axe at the time of his arrest, adding that another suspect who allegedly had helped in taking him there was also in custody.
“A Jewish extremist slit the throat of a donkey today at the Golden Gate cemetery before hanging it over the Muslim graves there,” the Waqf Islamic affairs council said in a statement. “It was a serious desecration of one of the main historic Muslim cemeteries in Jerusalem.”
Jordan’s Abdullah, Egypt’s Sissi meet in Cairo to discuss Gaza war
Jordan’s King Abdullah and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi met in Cairo on Wednesday to discuss bilateral ties as well as the war in Gaza against Hamas, their offices say.
A press statement from Sissi’s office said the two leaders reject any potential move that would create an influx of Palestinian refugees and called on the international community to push for a ceasefire, increase more aid into Gaza, and work toward “a political track for a just and comprehensive settlement leading to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state” on the 1967 borders, with east Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital.
Egypt has made clear throughout this latest war that it does not want to take in a wave of Palestinian refugees.
Sissi previously warned that a mass influx of refugees from Gaza would eliminate the Palestinian nationalist cause, risk bringing terrorists into Sinai, where they might launch attacks on Israel, and endanger the Israel-Egypt 1979 peace treaty.
Gaza population in ‘grave peril,’ says WHO
GENEVA, Switzerland — The population of Gaza is in “grave peril”, warns the head of the World Health Organization, citing acute hunger and desperation throughout the war-torn Palestinian territory.
The WHO said it delivered supplies to two hospitals on Tuesday, with only 15 out of 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip functioning with any capacity at all.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called on the international community to take “urgent steps to alleviate the grave peril facing the population of Gaza and jeopardizing the ability of humanitarian workers to help people with terrible injuries, acute hunger, and at severe risk of disease.”
In a statement, the WHO says its staff reported that “hungry people again stopped our convoys today in the hope of finding food”.
“WHO’s ability to supply medicines, medical supplies, and fuel to hospitals is being increasingly constrained by the hunger and desperation of people en route to, and within, hospitals we reach.”
The bloodiest-ever Gaza war erupted when thousands of Hamas terrorists attacked southern Israel on October 7 and killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians in their homes including entire families, and people at an outdoors music festival, amid widespread brutalities.
Terrorists also took about 240 hostages, of whom 129 remain inside Gaza, according to Israel, in the worst mass terror attack in the country’s history.
Dozens arrested in pro-Palestinian protests at two major US airports
Pro-Palestinian protesters blocked morning traffic on Wednesday around Los Angeles International Airport and New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport – two of the nation’s busiest – in coast-to-coast demonstrations that ended with dozens of arrests.
Thirty-six people were taken into custody at LAX, where demonstrators became unruly, the Los Angeles Police Department says.
“Protesters threw a police officer to the ground, used construction debris, road signs, tree branches and blocks of concrete to obstruct” a road leading into the airport “while attacking uninvolved passersby in their vehicles,” police say in a statement.