Spotlight
-
Lebanon Netanyahu says Israel and Lebanon to form working groups to resolve border disputes Israel said on Tuesday that it had agreed to release five captive Lebanese citizens as a goodwill gesture to Lebanon’s “new president” Joseph Aou...
-
Lebanon Israel to free Lebanese captives after Aoun pressure, US efforts President Joseph Aoun held a meeting Tuesday in Baabda with the head of the ceasefire monitoring committee, U.S. General Jasper Jeffers, in the pre...
Israeli artillery shelled Wednesday Kfarshouba and Wadi Hamoul in south Lebanon, while warplanes raided Aita al-Shaab, al-Khiam and al-Dhayra and a drone struck a power line in al-Taybeh.
Later on Wednesday, Hezbollah said it targeted buildings used by Israeli troops in the Metula settlement near the border in response to Israeli strikes on a number of buildings in the southern towns of Khiam and Kfarshouba.

Canada has urged its citizens in Lebanon to leave "while they can," warning of the risk of escalating violence between Israel and Hezbollah in the region.
Foreign Minister Melanie Joly in a statement Tuesday called for Canadians to depart while commercial flights remain in operation.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has cautioned that "miscalculation" could trigger all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, urging the need for "extreme restraint" as tensions soar.
Israel and Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, have traded near-daily cross-border fire since the Palestinian militant group's October 7 attack on Israel sparked war in the Gaza Strip.

The United States is pressing Israel to avoid a major war against Lebanon's Hezbollah, with top American officials urging a diplomatic solution in order to prevent another Middle East crisis.
Israeli forces and Iran-backed Hezbollah are exchanging fire on a near-daily basis, and the Israeli army said last week that plans for an offensive in Lebanon were "approved and validated."

Hezbollah launched Tuesday an array of suicide drones at an Israeli military base in Nahal Gershom in response to Monday’s strikes in the Bekaa.
The group later targeted the Berkat Risha and the Bayyad Blida posts in northern Israel.

A senior Israeli official on Tuesday said Israel and the United States will devote an unspecified number of weeks to trying to reach a new arrangement with Hezbollah before resorting to other means to bring calm to the Israel-Lebanon border.
Israel's low-level conflict with the Lebanese group has escalated in recent weeks, raising fears of an all-out war.

U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein is supposed to return to Beiut and Tel Aviv to prepare for arrangements aimed at restoring calm on the Lebanese-Israeli border, ahead of an expected Israeli declaration of the end of military operations in Gaza, a media report said.
“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will declare victory over the Hamas Movement, and the Americans want this step to be the beginning of a long-term truce in Gaza that would include an exchange of prisoners and a sustainable ceasefire,” ad-Diyar newspaper quoted sources as saying.

Parliament Speaker and head of Hezbollah-allied Amal movement Nabih Berri is worried about a war conflagration, he told Russian state-controlled international news television RT.
"This month is crucial, we are in a sensitive and delicate stage," Berri told RT in an interview Monday, adding that the situation is "unsettling."

A “spiritual-national summit” was held Tuesday in Bkerki in the presence of the Vatican’s Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, amid an apparent Shiite boycott over recent remarks by Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi.
The summit was attended by al-Rahi, Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Latif Daryan, Druze spiritual leader Sheikh Sami Abi al-Mona, Orthodox Armenian Catholicos Aram I, Catholic Armenian Patriarch Raphaël Bedros XXI, Islamic Alawite Council chief Sheikh Ali Qaddour, MP Pierre Bou Assi representing Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea, Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil, Marada Movement leader Suleiman Franjieh, and MP Nadim Gemayel representing Kataeb Party chief Sami Gemayel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's top advisers minister Ron Dermer and national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi came to Washington on June 20 for meetings at the White House and told U.S. President Joe Biden's top aides that the Israeli PM is “not interested in a war with Hezbollah and prefers a diplomatic solution,” two U.S. officials told U.S. news portal Axios.
A U.S. official said Biden's advisers told Dermer and Hanegbi that the U.S. is working on a diplomatic solution, but if there's a war in Lebanon because “Hezbollah decides to attach itself to Hamas' leader Yahya Sinwar's interests,” the U.S. will “fully support Israel.”
