Middle East crisis live: Israel strikes Beirut after evacuation call

A Beirut property developer is one among many wealthy Lebanese people denied access to their fortunes by banks after a financial crisis and now left reeling from effects of Israel’s airstrikes, Ruth Michaelson reports for the Observer:

Ibrahim Abdallah and his family are still members of the nearby country club, but earlier this year he sold his 10-metre-long boat with a plush cream leather interior. Last year, he sold a flat located among embassy buildings in the pricier neighbourhood farther uphill that was intended for his young son.

He has $2m in the bank and the receipts to prove it, but weathering Lebanon’s multiple financial and political crises has left Abdallah selling the trappings of his former life to sustain himself and his family …

“Here’s how it feels: you made your dreams come true, but were forced to give it up. You achieved your aims, then someone takes it away from you,” he said.

Lebanon state media reports a strike on Tyre in the south of the country.

Earlier today two separate airstrikes hit Beirut’s southern suburbs.

Another airstrike hit the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut around midday local time, according to AFP, after the area was hit earlier this morning.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported a raid by “enemy aircraft” in the neighbourhood of Chiyah.

Before the strikes, Israeli army spokesman Avichay Adraee had urged residents of three neighbourhoods to leave the area.

Iran has “categorically” denied that its UN envoy met with Elon Musk in New York, the country’s IRNA news agency reported.

In an interview, foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said while “categorically denying such a meeting” he expressed “surprise at the coverage of the American media in this regard”.

Iranian newspapers, particularly those aligned with the reformist party that supports president Masoud Pezeshkian, largely described the meeting in positive terms before Baghaei’s statement.

Gaza death toll: 43,799 Palestinians killed since October last year

An artillery shell hit the west sector headquarters of UN forces in Lebanon yesterday afternoon, the agency said.

“This afternoon, a 155mm live artillery shell hit UNP 2-3, Unifil West Sector headquarters in Shama,” a Unifil statement said. “The shell did not detonate and Italian bomb disposal experts swiftly secured the area, removed the ordnance, and conducted a controlled detonation. There was no injury among peacekeepers, but only minor damages to the gym.”

The statement did not say whether the shell had come from Israeli or Hezbollah forces.

“We strongly remind all actors of their obligations to ensure the safety and security of UN personnel and properties. Deliberate attacks on peacekeepers are a grave violation of international humanitarian laws and of the UN Security Council Resolution 1701.”

Israel has been accused of targeting Unifil, the UN-mandated force deployed along the border between Israel and Lebanon since it launched its ground invasion of Lebanon early last month. Israel has said its raids are only targeted at Hezbollah.

In the crowded Qalandia refugee camp, UNRWA’s training centre is an island of calm where young people from the occupied West Bank learn trades, but a recent Israeli ban on all cooperation with the UN agency has left the centre in limbo, AFP reports.

UNRWA’s ban in Israel and occupied east Jerusalem has raised fears that its West Bank employees could face problems not only accessing those areas, but also moving around more generally because they would lose the ability to coordinate with the Israeli authorities manning checkpoints.

The same fears apply to visas and permits delivered by Israeli authorities.

Eighteen-year-old Ahmed Naseef, a refugee from the Jalazone camp north of nearby Ramallah, said he didn’t know what he and his classmates would do should the Qalandia training centre close as a result of the law.

“It would disrupt my fellow students. Many don’t have the financial means to go to another institute for study. Here, it’s almost free,” he told AFP during a class in which he was learning how to install lights in a room.

Jonathan Fowler, UNRWA spokesman in Jerusalem, warned that if some of the services were unable to continue, the socioeconomic consequences could be “potentially disastrous”.

“If these services are not able to operate… who is going to provide education for the children and the adolescents in this camp?”

Baha Awaad, the school’s principal, said it trains 350 students but cannot provide for more due to the lack of permission to expand buildings. Asked whether the students would be able to finish their school year, Awaad admitted: “Frankly, we don’t know.”

Tensions between UNRWA and Israel began after Israel accused about a dozen of the agency’s staff of taking part in Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on 7 October last year.

A series of probes found some “neutrality related issues” at UNRWA, and determined that nine employees “may have been involved” in the attack, but found no evidence for Israel’s central allegations.

Outoging US president Joe Biden now has his best opening to end Israel’s war on Gaza but he won’t use it, Mohamad Bazzi writes …

[Biden’s] lack of action this week is especially egregious because he is politically unrestrained: the presidential election is over, and Donald Trump won. Biden can do whatever he wants without incurring a political cost. He doesn’t even have to worry about a transition to his fellow Democrat and vice-president, Kamala Harris. If there was ever a time for Biden to use his considerable power to save Palestinians, this was it. Yet he squandered this final opportunity to make the right and moral choice – and help end the Gaza war before leaving office.

Biden’s decision to keep supplying weapons to Israel reinforces his legacy as the primary enabler of the slaughter in Gaza, and Netanyahu’s campaign to expand the war into Lebanon. While Biden and his allies have done a lot of hand-wringing about Trump’s disregard for the rule of law, the Biden administration failed to uphold US law and its own policies – and it has undermined US credibility around the world even before Trump takes office once again.

You can read the full piece at the link below.

Images are coming through of Israel’s strike on Beirut this morning, showing a large plume of smoke rising above the city.

An Iranian official met with Elon Musk, according to a US official, AP reports.

Iran’s UN Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani met with Musk — a key Trump ally and the world’s richest man — on Monday in New York.

The US official said he had been informed that the discussion covered a variety of topics, most notably Iran’s nuclear program, its support for anti-Israel groups throughout the Middle East and prospects for improved relations with the United States.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said no immediate decisions were taken by either side. The official said the Iranians sought the meeting with Musk and that it did not take place at the Iranian mission to the UN.

The Trump transition team would not confirm or deny the meeting.

“The American people re-elected President Trump because they trust him to lead our country and restore peace through strength around the world. When he returns to the White House, he will take the necessary action to do just that,” Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the Trump transition, said in a statement.

Iran’s UN mission declined to comment.

Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed US officials, that Iran told the Biden administration in a written message delivered on 14 October that it would not try to kill Trump. It was a response to an earlier warning from the US that an attempt on Trump’s life would be considered an act of war, the Journal reported.

Here is the tweet from the IDF’s Arabic spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, calling for the evacuation of southern Beirut’s Haret Hreik neighbourhood a couple of hours ago.

“To all residents in the southern suburb area, specifically in the buildings specified in the attached maps and the buildings adjacent to them in Haret Hreik … You are located near Hezbollah facilities and interests, against which the IDF will act forcefully in the near future,” a translation of the post reads.

“For your safety and the safety of your family members, you must evacuate these buildings and those adjacent to them immediately and stay away from them for a distance of no less than 500 meters.”

AFP reported an Israeli strike hit the south of the city this morning.

Strike hits south Beirut after Israeli evacuation call