External and Internal conlficts and combat going on…
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An Israeli airstrike hit the West Bank town of Tulkarm, the Israeli military and Palestinian news media reported on Thursday. Three Palestinians were killed in the Thursday morning strike, which hit a home in Tulkarm, according to Wafa, the official news agency of the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited control in parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. A spokesman for the Israeli military, Avichay Adraee, said that an Air Force unit had targeted “armed terrorists.” Nearly 600 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank from the start of the war in Gaza in October through Aug. 12, according to the United Nations.
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Israeli warplanes attacked more than 10 Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon overnight, the Israeli military said in a statement on Thursday. Israeli forces have conducted at least two similar rounds of strikes against the powerful Iranian-backed militia this week. The two sides have traded cross-border strikesfor months….
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The furile attempts at a cease-fire …
Last-ditch efforts to salvage talks on a cease-fire in Gaza went forward on Thursday, as senior Israeli and American officials headed to negotiations in Cairo, less than a day after President Biden emphasized the “urgency” of closing the deal in a phone call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.
In the call on Wednesday, Mr. Biden and Mr. Netanyahu discussed a new round of talks in Cairo “to remove any remaining obstacles” to the proposed cease-fire and hostage release deal, the White House said, adding that Vice President Kamala Harris had joined the call. Mr. Netanyahu’s office confirmed that the call had taken place.
The Biden administration has been leading the latest push for a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas, with Egypt and Qatar acting as mediators, and has presented a “bridging proposal” meant to close, or at least narrow, the gaps between the sides….
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A Look at maybe the ‘Why’ Israel isn’t in a hurry to a cease-fire as it hunts and tried to take out people and keep hamas and Hezbollah on the defensive for as long as it can….
Israel has targeted what it says are Hezbollah weapons caches along the border and in Lebanon’s east, as deep as 50 miles inside the country. Hezbollah has responded with deeper attacks inside Israel, and on Wednesday released a wave of more than 50 rockets and drones at the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
The “center of gravity” of Israeli military operations is shifting away from Gaza and toward the border with Lebanon, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said this week. Recent strikes on alleged weapons stockpiles were “preparation for anything that might happen.”
In Lebanon, already suffering through political paralysis and a protracted economic collapse, people say they feel trapped between the warring parties — and fear there is no way out. In the impoverished south, where Hezbollah holds sway and attacks have been most intense, Syrian refugees have borne the brunt of the recent violence….
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While a new U.S.-backed push to revive Gaza cease-fire talks appears to have influenced Iran’s and Hezbollah’s calculations, they cannot indefinitely forestall escalation on the Israel-Lebanon border, according to David Hale, who served as the U.S. ambassador in Beirut from 2013 to 2015.
“There’s definitely in Israel this feeling of never again and they can’t go back to the pre-October 7 status quo where their opponents have a hand on the spigot, where the other side sets the pace,” he said. Without a clear diplomatic path to removing Hezbollah from the border, he said, Israel will probably expand its military operations….
Israeli Orthodox have moved to fighting their own country in street against serving in the military….
Hundreds of ultra-Orthodox Israeli men protested outside a conscription center in Jerusalem on Wednesday and clashed with police officers amid rising national tensions about a court decision ordering a draft for the insular community.
Israel’s military began sending conscription orders last month to ultra-Orthodox men aged 18 to 26 after the Supreme Court in June ordered an end to exemptions that had been in place for decades. Military service is mandatory for most Israelis over 18, with some exceptions, such as for most Arab citizens. Before the ruling, over 60,000 ultra-Orthodox religious students of draft age were also formally exempt from service.
At the protest on Wednesday, ultra-Orthodox demonstrators, many of whom appeared to be of draft age, scuffled with officers and also with counterprotesters who want the military to push forward with the draft to end what they see as an unequal sharing of the burden at a time of war and rising regional tensions.
The Israeli police said that they had sent reinforcements to try to maintain order, and Israeli news media reported that officers had sealed off several streets, used water cannons to disperse crowds and beaten some protesters with batons. When asked about the response, the police said in a statement that officers had been “forced to act using various means” as protests continued and demonstrators broke through a blockade, with some protesters throwing water bottles….
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