Middle East latest: Israel insists on right to act against Hezbollah in any deal to end fighting

Israel’s defense minister says his country insists on the right to act militarily against Hezbollah in any agreement to end the fighting in Lebanon.

Lebanon’s government is likely to view any such demand as an infringement on its sovereignty, complicating efforts to end more than a year of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah that erupted into all-out war in September.

Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement Wednesday that “the condition for any political settlement in Lebanon is the preservation of the intelligence capability and the preservation of the (Israeli military’s) right to act and protect the citizens of Israel from Hezbollah.”

Lebanese officials mediating between Israel and Hezbollah have called for a return to United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war between the sides.

It calls for Hezbollah militants and Israeli forces to withdraw from a buffer zone in southern Lebanon patrolled by U.N. peacekeepers and Lebanese troops.

U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein, who has spent months trying to broker a cease-fire, held a second round of talks on Wednesday with Lebanon’s parliament speaker, Nabih Berri, an ally of Hezbollah who has been mediating on their behalf.

Hochstein told reporters the talks had made “additional progress,” and that he would be heading to Israel “to try to bring this to a close, if we can.” He declined to say what the sticking points are.

Israeli strikes and combat in Lebanon have killed more than 3,500 people and wounded 15,000, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. The war has displaced nearly 1.2 million people, or a quarter of Lebanon’s population.

On the Israeli side, 87 soldiers and 50 civilians, including some foreign farmworkers, have been killed by attacks involving rockets, drones and missiles. Hezbollah began firing on Israel the day after Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023 attack triggered the war in Gaza.

That attack killed some 1,200 people in Israel, mostly civilians, and another 250 were abducted. Around 100 hostages remain inside Gaza, at least a third of whom are believed to be dead. Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed nearly 44,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities.

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Lebanese army says one of its soldiers was killed by an Israeli airstrike

BEIRUT — A Lebanese army soldier was killed Wednesday by an Israeli airstrike that hit his vehicle on the road linking Burj al-Muluk and Qalaa in southern Lebanon, the army said in a statement. The Israeli military said it was looking into reports.

A day earlier, three soldiers were killed by an airstrike that targeted an army post in the town of Sarafand, near the coastal city of Saida.

Wissam Khalifa, a resident of Sarafand who lives next to the army post and was injured in the strike, said he was shocked that it was targeted.

“It’s a safe residential neighborhood. There is nothing here at all” that would present a target, he said. “Regarding the martyred soldiers, I don’t even know if there was a gun in the center. Why did this strike happen? We have no idea.”

The Lebanese army has not been an active participant in the fighting between Israeli forces and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah over the past 13 months, but more than 40 soldiers have been killed in the conflict.

Altogether, more than 3,500 people have been killed in Lebanon since Oct. 8, 2023, the vast majority of them in the past two months.

Wounded Al Jazeera reporter to be evacuated to Jordan for treatment

AMMAN, Jordan: Israel has allowed an Al Jazeera journalist wounded in an airstrike in Gaza last month to be evacuated to Jordan for medical treatment.

Jordan’s Foreign Ministry said Wednesday that Ali al-Attar had been transferred to the kingdom with his sister in coordination with the World Health Organization. There was no immediate comment from Israel.

Al-Attar was wounded by shrapnel when Israeli forces struck makeshift points used by Hamas-run police outside a hospital in central Gaza early on Oct. 7. There were no police present at the time.

Israel banned Al-Jazeera earlier this year, accusing it of serving as a mouthpiece of Hamas. It has also accused six Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza of being current or former fighters for Hamas and another armed group.

Al Jazeera has denied the allegations and accused Israel of trying to silence critical coverage. The Qatar-based network has reported round-the-clock from Gaza since the start of the war, with its field correspondents focusing on the killing of civilians in Israeli strikes. Several Al Jazeera reporters have themselves been killed or wounded.

Al Jazeera has also regularly broadcast videos released by militant groups in their entirety, including some that show Israeli hostages speaking under duress.