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As of December 12, Israel continues to launch strikes in both the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, jeopardizing efforts to end the war.
In Gaza, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said that it had carried out strikes on two groups of fighters operating on a route used to transport humanitarian aid in the Strip.
“All of the terrorists who were eliminated were Hamas terrorists who planned to violently take control of humanitarian aid trucks and transfer them to the Hamas terrorist organization,” the IDF said in a statement. “The strike was intended to allow humanitarian aid to reach the residents of the Gaza Strip safely.”
“We emphasize that the IDF did not attack humanitarian aid trucks and that the aid truck transit route remained open and active,” it added.
Authorities in Gaza, which are led by the Hamas Movement, claimed that the strikes hit guards who were securing the trucks.
Seven guards were killed in a strike in Rafah, while another strike left five guards dead in Khan Younis, spokesman Mahmud Basal of the Hamas-run Gaza civil defense agency told AFP.
Separately, at least 36 Palestinians were killed, several of whom are children, in an Israeli airstrike on houses in the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza.
The deadly strikes came following a report by the Wall Street Journal which said that Hamas has yielded a key demand for a potential hostage-ceasefire deal and will allow Israeli troops to remain in Gaza during the truce on what the outlet said would be a temporary basis.
United States President-elect Donald Trump also said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knows that he wants the war in Gaza to end.
“He knows I want it to end,” Trump told the Time magazine.
Trump informed Netanyahu of his stance during phone calls the two held throughout the presidential election campaign, according to the Time.
Meanwhile in Lebanon, the ceasefire brokered by the U.S. last month is still holding up despite repeated violations by the IDF.
The IDF announced that it had carried out a drone strike against a group of Hezbollah fighters who were spotted in southern Lebanon in violation of the ceasefire agreement. According to the military, the fighters posed a threat to Israeli civilians.
“The IDF continues to be committed to the understandings regarding the ceasefire in Lebanon,” the IDF said , adding that it continues to be deployed to southern Lebanon and is operating to “remove any threat to the State of Israel and its citizens.”
Lebanon said that an Israeli strike on the border town of Khiam killed one person, just a few hours after Washington announced Israel had withdrawn from the area as Lebanon’s army deployed under a ceasefire deal with Hezbollah.
“The Israeli enemy strike on the town of Khiam killed one person and injured another,” the Lebanese health ministry said in a statement.
Meanwhile, a top U.S. military officer visited Beirut on December 11 to monitor the withdrawal of the first Israeli troops from Lebanon under a ceasefire agreement reached last month, according to the Central Command (CENTCOM).
Army General Michael Kurilla, CENTCOM’s commander, visited the monitoring headquarters in Beirut for the ceasefire and met with the commander of Lebanon’s armed forces, General Joseph Aoun, the command said in a post on X.
Kurilla was there to monitor “the ongoing first Israeli Defense Forces withdrawal and Lebanese Armed Forces replacement in Al Khiam, Lebanon, as part of the agreement,” CENTCOM said.
All in all, the war in both Gaza and Lebanon appears to be nearing its end. However, Israel is clearly trying to improve its conditions at the last minute, taking advantage of several recent developments, like the results of the recent U.S. elections and the fall of the Assad regime in Syria.
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