The death of Hezbollah’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah shocks the region in the midst of rapid escalations, In Iran, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei advocates caution, and gets taken to secure location, Lebanon faces the deadliest week since the war began, with more than a million people displaced, Hezbollah deputy leader Naim Qassem gives first speech since Nasrallah assassination, Caretaker Government calls for implementation of Resolution 1701, the diplomatic way to a ceasefire, the deployment of army in the south and the imminent election of a new President, The massacre of paramedics threatens Lebanon’s Civil Defence workers, Israel strikes apartment in a building in Cola in Beirut targeting the area for the first time, The burden of displacement for migrant domestic workers abandoned by their sponsors without documents, The international community miserably fails to reach temporary cease-fire in Lebanon after days of Israeli air offensive, 133 prisoners try to escape Jezzine prison, of whom 130 arrested, Israel plans to recruit African asylum seekers in exchange for residency, Hezbollah launched a rocket about 150 kilometres deep in Israeli settlement in east Jerusalem, Iraq’s Islamic Resistance carried out a drone attack on Eilat, Families fleeing the escalating conflict in Lebanon pouring into war-torn Syria, Israel slammed for sending 88 unidentifiable bodies of Palestinians to Gaza, Arrests on the rise in the occupied West Bank as Israel continues its war on journalists, Intense attack hits US Conoco base after US strike on eastern Syria’s Deir Ezzor kills 12 from pro-Iran factions, Iran brokering talks to send advanced Russian missiles to Yemen’s Houthis, Sudan’s army assault Khartoum in a bid to recapture the capital from the RSF
The war is total, it is here, it is in Beirut. In Dahieh, Chyieh, Bourj el-Barajneh, Cola, in Baalbeck, Sidon, in the Chouf, in Hermel – the war. The south, Tyre, Nabatieh, razed to the ground. The streets of the capital are full of displaced people, Martyrs’ Square, Manara, Corniche el-Mazraa, Tariq el-Matar, and despite this they are silent and dark. Only the flash that precedes the roar of the continuous bombing illuminates them, the flames that dye the black smoke red on the debris of the buildings levelled to the dust. More than the explosion, you can feel the silence that precedes the Israeli attacks – a few seconds of suspension – and the one that follows, the segregation inside civilians’ homes, for those who still have one, and the empty streets, which seem incredulous, suspended. The buzz of drones is omnipresent, some curse it, others have gotten used to it.
Even a densely populated neighborhood like Dahieh, an urban area of half a million people concentrated in a few square kilometers, where the Red Cross and the Civil Protection are still pulling hundreds of broken, maimed lives out of the rubble, a neighborhood bombed eight times only in the last week, remained suspended for a few fractions of a second, after the announcement – at 2.30 pm on Saturday afternoon – that indeed, the mythical, venerated, disputed leader – hated, feared, condemned by many others – was killed. Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary General of Hezbollah, liberator of the homeland, for some, and for others, instigator of massacres and targeted assassinations, is really dead, in Haret Hreik, Beirut, underground, buried by the 2000 tons of 85 bombs dropped on half a dozen buildings, six stories each. Pulled out, two days later, like any other corpse, a body wrapped in a white sheet, slipped out of the chasm that gutted the southern suburbs of the capital. Together with him, senior commander Ali Karaki; dozens and dozens of civilians; the possessions of dozens of families now displaced, without money, a mattress, or food supplies; domestic workers abandoned on the streets; the very faint hopes of a diplomatic solution; the illusion that the war could remain of low intensity, segregated to the south, in the Beqaa Valley, leaving the rest of the country physically unharmed, barely touched, perhaps only burned. Which instead is on fire, also reduced to dust.
The escalation, still ongoing, of the attacks of the last week, is unprecedented in the past year that some among the Lebanese still hesitate to define as war. With nearby Gaza destroyed by what the United Nations, no longer shyly, defines as a genocide – leaving the chamber half-empty in the presence, in the arrogance, of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu -, it seemed unthinkable that the relentless Israeli aggression could extend beyond the northern borders of the Zionist state, whose very severe censorship prevents from conveying an idea of the extent of the internal conflict, of the social fractures, of the fear of retaliation. On the other side of the border, in the occupied Upper Galilee, Israel has mobilized reservist troops: while preparing a threatened land invasion, it is recruiting more than 10,000 African asylum seekers, blackmailing them, promising in exchange a regularization of their legal status in the country.
On this side, instead – ours -, having broken the twenty-four hour suspension regarding Nasrallah’s condition – it was believed impossible that he could hide in Dahieh -, having ascertained the success of his elimination, in the minutes that followed the official announcement of his death, to the silence, to the drones, to the distant bombs, the sound of the barrage of gun shots was added to contaminate the air of the torn country. The fear of dying from the unexpected trajectory of a bullet – to that of ending up under the rubble of a bombing.
Not only because Israel is also bombing areas unrelated to the presence of Hezbollah – areas with a Maronite Christian majority such as the Metn and Keseruan, or Druze such as the Chouf; not only because the role of the ‘Party of God’ in the region, from Syria to Lebanon, is more than controversial, as the official ally of the Syrian regime – therefore the enemy of almost two million refugees in the country – and the instigator of targeted assassinations in history of this country, having murdered many figures opposed to the Syrian occupation of Lebanon; but above all because the Lebanese society is deeply divided, sectarian, geographically segregated, politically shattered, that those gunshots on Saturday afternoon made people think of the worst, evoking the ghosts of a civil war that has never been healed. With the first episodes of violence recorded in Sunni-majority areas such as Tripoli, and the growing racism towards displaced Shiites by the landlords of safe and empty apartments which could be easily made shelters for hundreds of thousands of internal refugees – those who refuse to rent them to their compatriots fallen in disgrace – Lebanon is truly, not metaphorically, on the verge of internal breakdown.
Therefore, it is not absurd to imagine that the Israeli’s are not aiming errors – but rather bombings with a completely perverse logic, terrorist both in technique and in intent: namely that of generating terror in the residents of areas that tend to be strangers when not hostile to Hezbollah, in order to create further division in Lebanon on the role and responsibility of the Shiite community, without differentiating between civilians and militants.
What is sure, in any case, is that the disappearance of the myth plunges the country and the region into the unknown. A historical page has been turned on Friday night. Taking the direction of the party thirty-two years ago, then leading the only armed force perceived as capable of containing the Israeli enemy, Nasrallah had become the face of ‘resistance’ for some. For others, supporting the regime of Bashar al-Assad in its war of extermination against the remains of the Syrian revolution, sieging the voices of opposition figures in the Lebanese political debate – that of Iran’s imperialist influence in the region. Today, his death could become the casus belli of a dreaded, unspeakable era of renewed violence.
In Lebanon
Exordium: Last Monday, September 23, Israel’s army said it had launched more than 800 attacks on some 1,600 Hezbollah targets across Lebanon in what it dubbed ‘Operation Northern Arrows.’ The attacks hit towns including Aitaroun, ad-Duwayr, Ghassanieh, Anqoun, Arab Salim, Baalbek, Babliyeh, Beit Shama, the Bekaa Valley, Bint Jbeil, Bodai, Deir Qatine, Douris, Ghaziyeh, Harbata, Haris, Hazerta, Houmin al-Faouqa, Hula, Iqlim al-Touffah, Iyat, Kawthariyeh al-Sayyad, Kfar Hatta, Libbaya, Majdal Selem, Marjayoun, Mazraat Sinai, Nabi Chit, Qlaileh, Saadnayel, Saal, Safri, Sarafand, Shmestar, Sohmor, Tarayya, Toura, Tyre, Yunin, Zefta.
Already in the morning, in the wake of quickly escalating violence, the Israeli army had promised more extensive raids against Hezbollah and issued a warning to people in Lebanon to “stay away from Hezbollah targets.” Throughout the day, members of Hezbollah were going door-to-door in the Nabatieh district of southern Lebanon as well as in Beirut southern suburbs telling residents to leave their homes and head to safer places. Shortly before 7 pm, the Israeli air force carried out what it described as a ‘targeted strike’ on the southern suburbs of Beirut, reportedly against Ali Karaki, who Israel says is in charge of Hezbollah’s operations in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah quickly declared Karaki to be alive and well. He would only have been killed four days later, on Friday, September 27.
In retaliation, the ‘party of God’ launched more than 200 rocket attacks. Some missiles were directed at Israeli air bases, including the Megiddo airfield, west of Afula, the Ramat David Airbase in Haifa, and the Amos air base and an explosives factory in Zikhon Ya’akov – saying it used Fadi 1 and Fadi 2 rockets, for the first time since the war broke out, almost one year ago.
By the end of Monday, Israeli strikes had killed 492 people and injured 1,645, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health. Thirty-five children and 58 women were among those who were killed. The Ministry has urged all hospitals in the governorates of South Lebanon, Nabatieh, and Baalbek-Hermel to suspend non-urgent surgeries to prioritize the treatment of those injured in the ongoing Israeli aggression against the country.
Crescendo: That day marked the beginning of an unprecedented escalation. The Israeli Forces have continued to launch fierce attacks on various parts of Lebanon also on Tuesday, September 24. On that day, Israel’s army announced it eliminated Ibrahim Qubaisi – senior commander of Hezbollah’s several rocket units, including a precision-guided missile unit – in a strike it defined ‘targeted’ in the densely-populated area of Ghobeiry, in the capital’s southern suburbs. The raid killed six people and injured at least 15.
According to the Lebanese Health Ministry, the two-day attacks on Monday and Tuesday have wounded 1,835 people and killed 569 others – among whom Hezbollah’s Qubaisi, as confirmed by the party itself.
In response, the Iran-backed group fired a barrage of missiles at Israeli air bases and attacked a naval base with drones, while world leaders gathered for the United Nations General Assembly have continued to call for de-escalation in the region.
On Wednesday, September 25, another Israeli strike targeted a warehouse in the village of Saadiyat, north of Jiyeh and about 20 kilometers south of Beirut: a large explosion was heard from the capital, and as far as Mount Lebanon shortly before 12:30 am. Saadiyat, a coastal village in the Chouf district, has the main highway going south from the capital running through it: the Wednesday strike is the first time it has been targeted in this war.
Decrescendo (apparent): Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron urged Hezbollah to cease its attacks and for Israel to “stop its escalation,” saying its operation in Lebanon cannot be “extended too long without consequences.” After Wednesday’s emergency Security Council meeting on Israel’s aggravated attacks on Lebanon, the US and France jointly called for an immediate 21-day cease-fire to allow for negotiations.
The agreement would have involved a halt to hostilities ushering in new terms for the application of Security Council Resolution 1701 – which paved the way to ending the 2006 Hezbollah-Israel war, delineating the party’s withdrawal from the border region and expanding UN peacekeepers’ deployment strength and prerogatives. Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri told Asharq al-Awsat he was undertaking “serious efforts” with international actors to end Israel’s aggression, emphasizing that the next “24 hours” would have been decisive. Indeed, the diplomatic effort of the international community proved to be a miserable failure.
While, in fact, Israel was claiming its attacks to continue amid new threats of escalation – Netanyahu reiterating threats of further attacks against Lebanon while officials from Israel’s northern troops evoked preparations for a ground incursion – the United States were supplying 8.7 billion dollars worth of weapons to the Zionist state.
Second crescendo: Thursday, September 26, saw 51 more dead and 220 injured, according to data provided by Firas Abiad, caretaker Minister of Health, after three days of uninterrupted bombing by the Israeli army. Bombs fell on Maaysra, in the district of Keseruan, and on Joun, in the Chouf region. In Maaysra the target would have been the Shiite sheikh Mohammad Amro, originally from the village and responsible for Hezbollah in Mount Lebanon, as well as in the north. The toll registered was of 4 dead and 18 injured in Maaysra, and 4 dead and 7 injured in Joun. In Bourj el-Chemali, Tyre, a missile hit an ambulance causing 7 injuries, including the rescuers themselves.
On the same day, the head of Hezbollah’s drone unit, Mohammad Srour, was killed in another airstrike on the southern suburbs of Beirut, the party confirmed in a statement.
As happened in the previous days, Thursday saw areas hit that were not hitherto affected by the conflict. The reason, on the one hand, could be the strictly military reason of the Israeli army – while, on the other, the desire to make it clear that no place where Hezbollah is present is safe. The remote cyber-attacks of September 17 and 18 should also be read from this perspective, when first pagers and then walkie-talkies supplied to members and affiliates of Hezbollah, not necessarily from the military wing, were detonated in broad daylight, causing a hundred dead and over 3000 injured.
Hezbollah, on its side, having announced the death of Qubaisi during the Tuesday strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, prepared its response by hitting the headquarters of the Israeli Northern Command, in the Dado base, Safad. For the first time, then, the group’s armed wing launched missiles in the direction of Tel Aviv, more precisely on the headquarters of the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency. The missiles were intercepted by the Iron Dome’s defense system.
Caesura: Meanwhile, caretaker Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Miqati was in New York to seek a diplomatic solution to the feared all-out war. With him was Foreign Minister Bou Habib, who met with French President Macron, Palestinian President Abbas, Iraqi Prime Minister Al-Sudani, US Secretary of State Blinken. and US envoy Hochstein.
People in Lebanon started to fear that the airport would be closed shortly, figuring Lebanon to become a trap in the event of the main way-out of the country being bombed. Many companies have been cancelling incoming and outgoing flights.
At the same time, Lebanese schools remained closed for the whole week and lessons have been prepared to start remotely. Many complexes have become shelters for the hundreds of thousands displaced people who have been moving in a hurry since Monday and Tuesday, after several hours on the crowded streets.
Various UN agencies, including OCHA; the Lebanese Red Cross; the municipalities, civil protection, local and international NGOs, have been all in a collective effort to deal with this new, umpteenth emergency.
Climax: On Friday, September 27, all Beirut trembled in a blast that rattled windows and shook houses some 30 kilometers north of the capital. Israel has carried out a devastating wave of air raids in the city’s southern suburbs that it said targeted the headquarters of the Iran-backed armed group, with several buildings reduced to rubble. A series of massive explosions sent huge clouds of smoke soaring above the densely populated Haret Hreik neighborhood in Dahieh, southern Beirut, after sunset – with waves of attacks continuing early on Saturday, pushing thousands of residents to flee the area. At least 41 people were killed and 110 others were wounded in the attacks, according to Lebanese health authorities, with the toll expected to rise much higher.
On Saturday, Israel claimed that Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an air strike on Dahieh, but Hezbollah did not immediately issue a statement on his fate. Only in the early afternoon, at 2.30 pm, the announcement of the Sayyed’s death was made public, amidst the bewilderment of the Lebanese. The body of the Hezbollah leader has been recovered from the site intact, a medical source and a security source told Reuters on Sunday. While Hezbollah’s statement on Saturday confirming Nasrallah’s death did not say how exactly he was killed nor when his funeral would be, the two sources said his body had no direct wounds and that it appeared the cause of death was blunt trauma from the force of the blast. The strike – carried out with eight aircraft turned out to be carrying at least 15 2,000-pound (roughly a ton) anti-fortune shells – also killed senior commander Ali Karaki, whom Israel attempted to assassinate several times.
Israel had previously attacked targets in Dahieh several times over the last week, killing at least three senior Hezbollah military commanders. But the latest assault was far more powerful, with multiple blasts shaking windows across the city, recalling Israeli air raids during the war it fought with Hezbollah in 2006.
The bombing started moments after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu concluded his address to UN General Assembly delegates in New York on Friday, in which he pledged to keep up attacks against Hezbollah and fight until “total victory” in Gaza. The Israeli leader cut short his New York trip to return to Israel amid the onslaught.
The initial attack was followed by an unprecedented five hours of continuous attacks early on Saturday. Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health said hospitals in the area would be evacuated and called on unaffected hospitals to stop receiving non-urgent cases temporarily. Meanwhile, Israel’s military mobilized three reserve battalions to bolster its Central Command defense amid escalating conflict in Lebanon. A missile from Lebanon was fired at central Israel and fell in an open area as the first part of retaliation, the Israeli army said on Saturday.
Also on Friday, in a new massacre against civilians, 8 people were killed and at least 5 others were wounded, including a one-year-old child, in the raid carried out by the Israeli army on a house in the town of Baazran, Chouf. The raid resulted in the complete destruction of the targeted house and damaged a number of neighboring houses.
Sunday bloody Sunday: The massacres of Sunday, September 29, involved all Lebanon. From the northern Beqaa Valley, in Zebud, where a residential building was hit, killing 17 people from the same family, with survivors trapped under the rubble – to the south, Nabatieh district, in Houmine El Faouqa, where three paramedics who were directly targeted were killed. On the same day, four other paramedics were killed in a raid near the Islamic Message Scout Center in Tayr Debba, Tyre district. Five other paramedics from the Islamic Health Authority were also injured in a targeted strike while they were working in the town of Khiyam, recovering the victims of a previous raid, on Saturday evening.
In the early hours of Monday, five Civil Defense members of the Islamic Health Commission were killed in the center in Sohmor, west Beqaa, while fulfilling their duty: in the attack, six other people were also killed, and several dozens injured.
At the same time, 11 people from a Syrian family were killed in a single raid on the town of Al-Ain in Baalbek, and six of the bodies have been recovered until Sunday morning, as rescue operations continue to lift others. The Israeli Air Force launched a series of strikes, exceeding 15, on the Beqaa Valley, especially on the surroundings of Al-Asira neighborhood, in the city of Baalbek, in northern Valley – as well as the area of Hermel, where several people were killed. The Ministry of Health reported that 21 people were killed today due to the raids on Hermel, with 47 others injured.
Also on Sunday, at least 50 people were killed and several others were wounded as a result of another Israeli raid on a building in Ain El-Delb, Sidon. One survivor sent a message from under the rubble, calling for help, after the building collapsed on him. This is the first time this area has been targeted.
And it was the first time that Cola, another densely populated area in west Beirut, was targeted, in an assassination strike that killed four people, of whom three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and wounded at least 16. The strike hit the upper floor of an apartment building in the popular district of Lebanon’s capital, with videos showing ambulances and a crowd gathered near the building in a mainly Sunni district with a busy thoroughfare lined with shops.
The first speech: On Monday, September 30, at noon, Hezbollah’s deputy Secretary General, Naim Qassem, delivered the party’s first live speech after the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, to whose remembrance he dedicated, as expected, the opening of the speech. “We lost a brother, a father and a leader, Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, this great person who remained in the arena till his martyrdom,” Qassem started.
“Despite the loss of commanders and the attacks on civilians in all of Lebanon and the big sacrifices,” he claimed “we will not change our positions. We will continue supporting Gaza and defending Lebanon.” Just as Nasrallah, in his latest speech, acknowledged the hit suffered by the party with the pagers and walkie-talkie cyberattacks on September 17 and 18, yet did not step back from the group’s military objectives, Qassem claimed that after the clear security failure of recent attacks, the party’s operations continued in the same way and even more than before. “Israel said yesterday that a million people went into shelters due to one missile,” he commented, adding that “Israel will not be able to touch our military capabilities. Hopefully we will win the same way we won in 2006.” And he recommended the Lebanese people to be “relaxed.”
The successor will be chosen as soon as possible as per the mechanisms in place, he ensured, stating that for each commander and responsible, there are deputies and alternatives. Qassem has then concluded his speech without providing any indication regarding the potential date for Hassan Nasrallah’s funeral.
Announcing, between the lines, that the military group will continue its cross border fighting with the same intensity of before the assassination, and calling it “the bare minimum of our capabilities,” Hezbollah is taking time to organise a bigger military response – which would likely take place after the election of a new chairman, and the funeral of the ex-leader.
During Naim Qassem’s speech, Hezbollah claimed in two separate statements that it had bombed the Israeli base at Naoura, east of Haifa, about 50 kilometers from the border, with Fadi 2 missiles, as well as the city of Safad.
The government’s paralysis: Meanwhile, the caretaker government’s response seems to echo a pattern that does not take into consideration the recent developments, as Najib Miqati argued that “we, as a government, affirm our pledge to implement all the points mentioned in the French-American statement and our position on implementing the international community’s call for a ceasefire to begin fully implementing Resolution 1701.”
Speaking at an emergency cabinet meeting that he convened upon returning from the United Nations General Assembly in New York, the caretaker Prime Minister affirmed that Lebanon is ready to send the Lebanese army to the border and deploy its members in the south immediately after the ceasefire, that he still expects to be reachable through diplomatic effort. Even though the reality on the ground is proving the opposite.
Mikati did not mention Nasrallah in his address, but his office later published a decision to hold three days of national mourning for Nasrallah.
In all cases, just as Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri stated on Saturday in a speech mourning late Hezbollah’s Secretary General, Miqati reaffirmed his call on the House of Representatives to elect a President of the Republic soon.
Nowhere else to go: Amidst growing political tensions, the humanitarian situation in the country is catastrophic. Families fleeing the escalating conflict in Lebanon have been pouring into Syria in growing numbers, waiting for hours in heavy traffic to reach the relative safety of another war-torn country, the Associated Press reported. UN officials have estimated that thousands of Lebanese and Syrian families had already made the journey, with numbers expected to grow.
From Monday, lines of buses and cars extended for several kilometers from the Syrian border and some families were seen making the journey on foot. Once in Syria, people waited hours more to be processed by overwhelmed border officials, AP reported. “Many will have to spend the night outdoors waiting for their turn,” Rula Amin, a spokesperson for UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency, said in a statement. Amin added that some of the people arriving from Lebanon had visible injuries suffered from recent attacks.
Yet, in a moment of rapid escalation and spreading panic among internal refugees, neither the roads letting people out of the country are safe, as ongoing strikes are gutting the country’s arterial roads. On Friday, an Israeli drone targeted a vehicle in Zahle, in the eastern Beqaa, transporting displaced people, killing two, and injuring several others – after the road connecting the southern city of Tyre to Sidon was severely struck in an air attack between Monday and Tuesday, at the peak of the first massive wave of displacement from the south.
And with growing panic and fear of ongoing indiscriminate attacks in several areas of the country, community leaders are asking all citizens and residents to evacuate buildings near the likely-targeted municipality. On Monday, an evacuation warning was raised by the mayor of Saadnayel, a Sunni-majority town in the district of Zahle, Beqaa, to all the municipality’s neighbors, “immediately” and “without taking anything” with themselves.
Escape attempt: The state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported that on Sunday, September 29, 133 prisoners escaped from Jezzine prison. The Lebanese security forces, in cooperation with the people of Jezzine, succeeded in arresting 130 out of 133 fugitives. Two prisoners were injured in the operation and the three escapees are currently being pursued.
Only one day earlier, on Saturday, September 28, MTV reported that the Lebanese army was able to thwart an escape attempt by prisoners from Baalbek prison – as well as an uprising that was breaking out in Roumieh.
Amid an economic crisis that has aggravated the already poor conditions inside the country’s prisons, where overcrowding and lack of medical care regularly cause protests and riots by inmates, the harsh reality faced by prisoners has become particularly acute in recent years. According to a report published by Amnesty International in 2023, Lebanese prisons are 323% over capacity, and around 80% of detainees are held pre-trial: numbers confirmed by Human Rights Watch, according to whose data – provided by the country’s Internal Security Forces – detention centers across Lebanon have a total capacity of 4,760, but hold about 8,502 people, only 1,094 of whom, as of August 2023, had been sentenced.
The attack on the country’s security and on its inhabitants’ safety carried out by the continuous Israeli strikes over the last week, as expected, can only worsen an already serious situation of insecurity, exclusion and chaos.
Voices of the unseen: Among the mass exodus of people trying to flee deadly Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon are migrant domestic workers, some of whom unable to get to safety. Trapped by the kafala system, they often live with their employers and are forced to surrender their identity documents.
Many of Lebanon’s 176,000 migrant domestic workers are women working in exploitative conditions for extremely low wages that make the cost of a ticket out of the country prohibitive. The majority come from Ethiopia, while others are from Bangladesh, the Philippines, Kenya and elsewhere. At least one domestic worker, a young woman from Gambia named Anna, was reportedly killed in an airstrike this week on her employer’s home in Hanouiyeh, south Lebanon.
According to a fundraising appeal published by a group of Lebanese grassroots organizations, “migrant workers trapped under the kafala system have been abandoned by their employers or even forced to stay behind in south Lebanon, unable to leave and take shelter, while the constant shelling threatens their lives.”
After the displacement, many migrant domestic workers gathered in the streets of Beirut, from the Corniche to Martyrs’ Square, with some of their belongings packed in nylon bags, after their sponsors evacuated from the Israeli aggression on the south and the Beqaa, leaving them behind.
In The Region
Advocating caution: Following the strike on Beirut southern suburbs that last Friday killed Hassan Nasrallah, in the Islamic Republic of Iran, while conservatives advocate for a strong response, moderates led by the new Iranian president, Massoud Pezeshkian, are calling for restraint.
These divisions became evident during an emergency meeting of the Supreme National Security Council convened by Ayatollah Khamenei when it became clear that Hassan Nasrallah was likely dead. Conservatives, including Saeed Jalili, an influential former presidential candidate, argued that Iran should quickly restore deterrence through a strike against Israel before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu brings war to Tehran, according to officials familiar with the discussions during the meeting, the New York Times reported.
Moderate voices, including that of President Pezeshkian, instead, emphasized that since Netanyahu has crossed all red lines, if Iran were to launch attacks against Israel, it could face severe retaliation against its own critical infrastructure, a prospect the country cannot afford, the American newspaper’s analysis continued.
With the ongoing situation, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is in a “vulnerable position,” according to the NYT. Four Iranian officials, including two members of the Revolutionary Guards familiar with developments in Iran, stated that despite the Ayatollah being deeply shaken by the death of his friend, he has still opted for a “calm and pragmatic posture.” Khamenei has been taken to a secure location inside Iran amid heightened security, sources told Reuters, a day after Israel killed the head of Lebanese group Hezbollah in a strike on Beirut.
Following the announcement of Hezbollah Secretary General’s death, the Iranian Supreme Leader called on Muslims to “support the Lebanese people and the proud Hezbollah with all the means at their disposal and to help them face the malevolent regime of Israel.” He further declared, “The fate of this region will be determined by the forces of resistance, with Hezbollah at the forefront,” according to state media.
Thus, it is Hezbollah, rather than Iran, that will lead the response to this assassination – to which Iran would likely play a supportive role. General Hossein Salami, the commander-in-chief of the Revolutionary Guards, also stated that “Hezbollah, Hamas, and other Palestinian militants” would be the ones to strike at Israel.
Deep inside Israel: After the official confirmation of the death of Hezbollah’s Secretary General, the ‘Axis of Resistance’ has increased the depth of attacks inside Israeli-occupied territories. The Iraqi Kataib Hezbollah carried out a drone attack against the southern city of Eilat, on the Red Sea’s borders between Egypt’s Sinai, the south of Israel, and Jordan – followed by sirens in the area in the early hours of Sunday. Later on the same day, the IDF said a Navy Sa’ar 4.5-class missile boat had intercepted a drone outside of Israeli airspace in the area of the Red Sea.
On Saturday night, moreover, fires broke out and electricity went out in a number of settlements in eastern Jerusalem, after Hezbollah launched a rocket about 150 kilometers deep. Sirens have been activated, as the occupation army announced a rocket fall from Lebanon in the settlement of Ma‘ale Adumim.
In Syria: Field sources in eastern Syria reported to Al-Mayadeen that an intense bombing of the American base in the Conoco gas field base was carried out using missiles and drones, targeting the armored division and achieving direct hits. The attack came after American warplanes carried out three airstrikes in the vicinity of Deir Ezzor, killing 12 members of pro-Iran factions.
In the early hours of Sunday, Deir Ezzor witnessed extensive military mobilization by Iran-backed militias in preparation to launch attacks on areas of Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on the eastern bank of Euphrates River, where the US bases of Al-Omar and Conoco are located.
It is worth noting that US and coalition forces in Iraq and Syria have been targeted with dozens of attacks since October 2023, following the start of the war on Gaza. The ‘Islamic Resistance’ in Iraq claimed responsibility for the majority of the operations, citing the US involvement in the Israeli genocide in Gaza, conditioning that they would stop when the war on the Strip ended. The US military has some 2,500 troops deployed in Iraq and 900 in Syria.
Blackmailing asylum seekers: The Israeli government has launched a recruitment drive offering African asylum seekers permanent residency in exchange for military service in its war on Gaza, Haaretz reported. The scheme, which aims to fill a shortage of about 10,000 soldiers, will be coordinated by local authorities responsible for identifying recruits, with the Israeli army and Ministry of Interior overseeing their training.
A previous Haaretz report revealed that none of the asylum seekers who fought in Gaza have been granted permanent status and defense sources acknowledged that the ethical concerns surrounding their recruitment remain unaddressed. The outlet reported that asylum seekers had been used in various operations, citing military sources. Haaretz also noted that “the manner in which the Israeli army deploys the asylum seekers is barred from publication” due to restrictions imposed by the Israeli military censor.
There are approximately 30,000 African asylum seekers in Israel, with an estimated 5,000 born in the country. Most of them lack permanent status. Despite being a signatory to the United Nations Refugee Convention, Israel has granted refugee status to very few asylum seekers.
According to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), Israel did not begin processing asylum claims from Sudanese and Eritrean refugees until 2012, and less than 0.5 percent of the claims reviewed have been deemed legitimate. In lieu of asylum, the government offers a “conditional release permit,” which protects refugees from deportation but denies them access to medical or welfare services. The Ministry of Interior has also made the renewal process increasingly difficult, requiring more frequent renewals and restricting the locations and office hours for processing the permits. This has led to dozens of arrests for expired permits, according to the HIAS.
Eyes (still) on Gaza: While the southern suburbs of Beirut, the Beqaa Valley and south Lebanon were razed to the ground, the Israeli occupation forces committed, on Friday alone, four massacres against families in the besieged Strip, resulting in at least 52 dead and almost 90 injured.
On Saturday morning, new airstrikes targeted Hamad city, northwest of Khan Younis, while several fires erupted in citizens’ homes due to continuous aggressions west of Rafah. The northern and central Strip were not spared, with ongoing attacks in Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, southeast of Gaza City, and severe bombs above Jabalia – as well as strikes on the new camp area of Nuseirat, resulting in at least two dead and several wounded, the destruction of the Great Mosque, and one more victim between the camps of Maghazi and Bureij.
Unidentifiable: On Wednesday, September 25, Israeli forces sent a truck to the Red Cross filled with 88 dead bodies of Palestinians they had slaughtered. The Palestinian Health Ministry has stated that they have no information on where the bodies came from, with no identification and no names provided – journalist Hossam Shabat, from the north of the Gaza Strip, reported on X.
“The bodies have been transported in a dump truck; they are decomposed and unidentifiable. Israeli occupation forces killed them in cold blood and treated their bodies like garbage. The bodies will be buried in mass unmarked graves,” Shabat posted.
According to Al Jazeera, the Ministry of Health in Gaza refused to receive the bodies – their organs were stolen and their bodies dissected and empty. The procedures for receiving the container were in fact suspended until Israel provides full data with the victims’ names, time of death and the location they were taken from, the Ministry said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app on Wednesday.
The Palestinian Civil Defense said that on the same day at least 53 more Palestinians have been killed across the Gaza Strip in Israeli attacks on their homes and shelters, raising the number of the victims – without counting the missing under the Strip’s rubble – to at least 42,000 people, with nearly 100,000 wounded.
Raids in the West Bank: Meanwhile, in the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces have raided Hebron, and arrested seven residents, security sources told the Palestinian news agency Wafa. Six more Palestinians were arrested in the towns of Kafel Haris, Iskaka and Burqin in the Salfit governorate, Wafa reported.
Earlier, Israeli forces stormed the villages of Beit Furik and Salem to the east of the city of Nablus, as well as Asira ash-Shamaliya to the north of Nablus, and arrested five Palestinian men, the agency added. Nine Palestinians from the Dheisheh refugee camp, south of Bethlehem, were also arrested, according to Wafa.
War on journalists: The United Nations Security Council has put under the spotlight Israel’s attacks on press freedom, including the targeting of journalists and closure of Al Jazeera’s bureaus, during its war on Gaza. On Sunday, September 22, Israeli soldiers raided the Qatar-based network’s bureau in Ramallah and ordered its closure for 45 days. The order came from the Israeli military authority despite the bureau being in Area A, an area delineated as being under Palestinian control in the Oslo Accords. The Israeli army accused Al Jazeera of incitement and supporting “terrorism” and claimed “the channel’s broadcasts endanger the security and public order in both the area and the State of Israel as a whole.”
Al Jazeera rejected the “unfounded” accusations as a “dangerous and ridiculous lie” that puts its journalists at risk. “The raid on the office and seizure of our equipment is not only an attack on Al Jazeera, but an affront to press freedom and the very principles of journalism,” it said.
On Wednesday, at the UN Security Council, Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu told the 15-member body that “there are journalists from Palestine and Lebanon who Israel has killed or closed their offices while they risk everything to ensure we don’t all return to a world where children and babies die in silence, perish in darkness.”
More than 110 journalists and media workers have been killed in Israeli attacks since the war began in October last year, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), while authorities in Gaza have put the figure at 173. Israel denies targeting journalists.
In his speech, Muizzu decried the attacks against journalists as he reminded members that it was this body that had established the architecture of a “world order based on justice,” and called for the abolition of veto powers of the council’s five permanent members: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.
Iran, Russia and the Houthis: According to Reuters’ exclusive, published on September 24, Iran has brokered ongoing secret talks between Russia and Yemen’s Houthis to transfer anti-ship missiles to the militant group, three Western and regional sources said, a development that highlights Tehran’s deepening ties to Moscow. Seven sources said that Russia has yet to decide to transfer the Yakhont missiles – also known as P-800 Oniks – which experts said would allow the militant group to more accurately strike commercial vessels in the Red Sea and increase the threat to the US and European warships defending them. Russia has previously supplied the Yakhont missile to Iran-backed Hezbollah.
Two regional officials aware of the talks said that the Houthis and Russians met in Tehran at least twice this year and that the talks to provide dozens of the missiles, which have a range of about 300 km, were ongoing with further Tehran meetings expected in coming weeks. The Wall Street Journal reported in July that Russia was considering sending the missiles, but Iran’s role as an intermediary has not been previously reported.
The Houthis have launched repeated drone and missile strikes on ships in the crucial Red Sea shipping channels since November to show support for Palestinians in the Gaza war with Israel. They have sunk at least two vessels and seized another, disrupting global maritime trade by forcing shipping firms to divert cargo and, according to industry sources, driven up insurance costs for ships plying the Red Sea. In response, the United States and Britain have struck Houthi positions but have failed to stop the group’s attacks.
In Sudan: As the war in Sudan approaches its eighteenth month, in the early morning of September 26, Sudan’s Armed Forces (SAF) launched a major offensive to capture the capital Khartoum from the rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) – marking one of the army’s most significant operations since the Sudan war erupted in April 2023.
Since then, the RSF has been in firm control of most of the city and has been accused of committing abuses against the civilian population, such as looting markets and hospitals, uprooting residents and confiscating their homes and subjecting women and girls to extreme forms of sexual violence.
Prior to the army’s recent advance in the capital, there were growing concerns among its supporters that it may not be equipped or able to defeat the RSF, compelling thousands of Sudanese men to pick up weapons to protect their villages and communities.
Sudan’s Army chief, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, recently spoke at the UN General Assembly in New York as the de facto authority in the country, where he said that a number of countries are sending weapons and supplies to the RSF. He added that the army is open to “peace” after the RSF ends its occupation. Regaining Khartoum could be a major step towards that goal, as well as signaling to the global community that the army is gradually regaining control over Sudan.
What We’re Reading
Innocent, detained: Valeria Rando reported for NOW about the spiral of injustices suffered by Yacoub, a Syrian teenager in Lebanon, in prison for months for crimes he did not commit. On the eve of the hearing which could be definitive for his release, the family told his story, for the first time, to the press.
The digital footprint of mass killings: On Tuesday, September 17, pagers used by Hezbollah members – including fighters and medics – detonated simultaneously across Lebanon, killing at least nine people and wounding nearly 4,000. One day after the same event occurs, this time talkies walkies explode, wounding more than 100 other people. NOW’s Maan Barazy tackled the issues of Lebanon sovereignty, security, and targeted assassination, as the pattern of Israeli killings in the country is a testament to the evolving nature of modern warfare, where cyber tools, data leaks, and intelligence-gathering overlap to produce deadly outcomes.
At the expense of civilians: In the wake of recent Israeli airstrikes targeting civilian buildings in Beirut’s southern suburbs, some Lebanese have voiced criticism against Hezbollah for using these areas for their meetings and military operations, Rodayna Raydan wrote for NOW.
Escalation, accountability, and the cost of war: NOW’s Ramzi Abou Ismail analyzed how, as thousands of families flee their homes, the weight of the humanitarian crisis in Lebanon has become impossible to ignore: the displaced are caught in the crossfire of a conflict they had no part in starting. At this moment, it’s essential to hold the parties accountable for the suffering of the Lebanese people.
Public enemy number one: Edward Tashjian wrote an opinion piece for NOW, pointing the finger at Hezbollah and Iran – other than Israel – for being responsible for the suffering of Lebanese civilians.
Illusion and contradictions: While France and the US seek to implement a 21-day temporary ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, the belligerents exclude the option. And Lebanon is on the brink of hell, Valeria Rando reported for NOW.
Lebanon +
Al Jazeera correspondents Zeina Khodr, Imran Khan, and Ali Hashem, hosted the latest episode of The Take podcast, tackling the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon, amidst the continuation of the brutal Israeli onslaught on Gaza, where more than 43,000 Palestinians have been killed.
