Senior Jewish US official Schumer criticizes Israel in Senate speech: Day 160 of the Gaza war

That's it for today's live coverage of the Gaza war and its repercussions in the Lebanon and region. Thank you for joining us. We'll be back tomorrow with more news updates and analysis. Take care!

Israeli newspaper Haaretz is reporting on three very different kinds of protests in Israel this evening.

One, attended by thousands of people, is being held at Habima Square in Tel Aviv, calling for ultra-Orthodox Jews to be drafted into the Israeli army.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews, specifically Haredi Jews, have been traditionally exempt from military service — which is compulsory for all other citizens of Israel — on religious grounds. Last January, the Times of Israel reported that the country’s ultra-Orthodox population had risen to 1.28 million.

A second protest has blocked a major freeway, demanding hostages be returned, and a third protest in Haifa, calling for a cease-fire and to “End the Genocide,” was met by police, who detained a protester.

👉 Read the full report here.

(Credit: Handout/Palestine Action/AFP)

A combination of image grabs taken from a video released by a protest group called Palestine Action on March 8, 2024 shows an activist spraying red paint and then slashing a painting of Lord Arthur James Balfour at Trinity College in Cambridge.

A pro-Palestinian UK protest group said one of its activists had sprayed and slashed a portrait on display of Arthur Balfour, the British politician who whose declaration led to the creation of Israel and the forced displacement of 85 percent of the indigenous Palestinian population as they fled or were forced from their homes.

Police confirmed officers had received an online report of criminal damage to a painting at the University of Cambridge's Trinity College, in eastern England. 

The situation at the Lebanese-Israeli border:

• Israeli artillery shelling was reported on the outskirts of Tayr Harfa and the town of Shamaa, both located in Sour district, by local residents.

• Hezbollah claimed an attack on the Israeli Bayyad Blida army site, located opposite the southern Lebanese border town of Marjayoun, at 8:30 p.m.

(Credit: Satellite image ©2024 Maxar Technologies/AFP)

This combination of pictures created on March 14, 2024 shows handout satellite images released by Maxar Technologies on March 14, 2024 and dated (top to bottom) March 11, 12 and 13, of a jetty under construction along the beach in the Gaza Strip. US charity World Central Kitchen said work was underway to build a makeshift jetty to receive food aid through a sea corridor between Cyprus and the Palestinian territory.

Italy has continued to export arms to Israel, the Italian defense minister says, despite assurances last year that the government was blocking such sales following Israel's invasion of the Gaza Strip, Reuters reports.

Under Italian law, arms exports are banned to countries that are waging war and those deemed to be violating international human rights.

Crosetto announced last year following the explosion of violence in Gaza that the Italian authority which oversees the sale of military goods, known as Uama, had blocked authorization of the transfer of arms to Israel.

However, picking apart data from statistics agency ISTAT, independent media outlet Altreconomia this week reported that Italy had exported 2.1 million euros ($2.30 million) in arms and munitions to Israel in the last three months of 2023.

👉 Read the full report here.

👉 Read about who is exporting weapons to Israel here.

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid says US Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s call for elections in Israel to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “proof that one by one [Netanyahu] is losing Israel’s biggest supporters in the US,” Times of Israel reports.

“What’s worse – he’s doing it on purpose,” Lapid wrote in a post on X, albeit without any proof.

“Netanyahu is causing significant damage to the national effort to win the war and maintain Israel’s security,” Lapid said.

Divisions within the Israeli government, which was already facing criticism and mass popular protests in the year before the war, are compounded by increasing tension with its key ally, the United States.

Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, described by Reuters as “the highest-ranking elected Jewish American in history” and by the Guardian as “one of the most senior figures in US politics,” has called for a temporary cease-fire in Gaza, has said that Israel has lost its way in its war on the besieged enclave, and that PM Benjamin Netanyahu should call for an election.

In a speech given to the Senate today, Schumer pushed for a two-state solution and said it was a “grave mistake” that Israel had failed to agree to it. He called Netanyahu a “major obstacle to peace” who has “all too frequently bowed to the demands of extremists.”

He admitted that the heavy civilian death toll in Gaza is pushing support for Israel “to historic lows” and warned “Israel cannot survive if it becomes a pariah.”

As tension rises and Israel’s most important ally shows signs of becoming increasingly more troubled by the war, Schumer has become the latest senior official to criticize Israel, and perhaps the first to do so this publicly and this stridently.

“Five months into this conflict, it is clear that Israelis need to take stock of the situation and ask: must we change course?”

📺 Watch his full speech here

Here’s an update on Hezbollah’s latest attacks on northern Israel:

• Hezbollah said its fighters targeted the Israeli site of Samaka in the occupied Lebanese hills of Kfar Shuba at 3:15 p.m.

• The party said it targeted Israeli soldiers inside the al-Malikiyah site, opposite the Lebanese town of Aitaroun, in Bint Jbeil district, with artillery shells at 3:35 p.m.

• It also claimed a strike against Israeli soldiers in the vicinity of the Israeli Karantina Hill, facing the Lebanese border town of Yaroun, in Bint Jbeil district, at 5:10 p.m.

Here’s an update on the security situation in southern Lebanon:

• Israeli artillery shelling targeted the outskirts of the town of Naqoura, in Sour district, residents told L’Orient Today’s correspondent in the South.

• Israeli warplanes targeted a house in the town of Yaroun, in Bint Jbeil district and ambulances were dispatched to scene. There is no information yet regarding casualties, a security source told L’Orient Today.

(Credit: Muntasser Abdallah/L'Orient Today)

Dozens of people attended the funeral of Hadi Mustafa, the member of Hamas killed Wednesday in an Israeli drone strike that targeted his car south of the Lebanese coastal city of Sour. The funeral took place today in the Rashidieh Palestinian refugee camp, where Mustafa lived and which is located next to where he was killed, L’Orient Today’s correspondent in the south reported.

Former Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal delivered a recorded message following the funeral procession in which he emphasized “the historical significance of Palestinian refugee camps as witnesses to resistance and revolution, highlighting the resilience of the Palestinian people against occupation policies.”

According to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Rashidieh is the second largest camp in Lebanon in terms of population.

👉 Read our full report here. 

In the last few months, the Israeli army’s activity in the Hermon region of northern Israel has caused "extensive and perhaps irreversible damage to the Man Valley, which is one of the most important nature sites in the Mount Hermon reserve," Haaretz reported, citing ecologist Amit Dolev, who works with the Nature Protection Authority.

Mount Hermon is a mountain range that straddles the border between Lebanon and Syria. Its southern slopes descend into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

According to Haaretz, after it became clear that the area was “not suitable to accommodate soldiers,” Israeli troops moved to different site. Dolev said that the army caused "extensive damage to the terrain" throughout its operations.

"Their activity included, among other things, a change in the natural water drainage, the construction of protective batteries, and the covering of the ground with layers of dirt, to allow the movement of vehicles," he said.

Israeli medics say that a man in his 50s was "seriously injured" in a stabbing attack in central Israel, and police said the assailant was "neutralized,” AFP reports.

The Magen David Adom emergency service said the attack occurred outside the Israeli village of Beit Kama, roughly 55 kilometers southwest of Jerusalem.

"We arrived at the scene in large numbers, we saw a great commotion, and next to one of the stores a man in his 50s was lying unconscious and suffering from stab wounds to his body," Kalman Ginzburg, a senior paramedic with MDA, said in a statement.

The attack comes one day after police said two Israeli security personnel were wounded in a stabbing carried out by a 15-year-old Palestinian boy on a bicycle.

This kind of violence has become a more regular occurrence in Israel as it continues its relentless bombardment of Palestinians in Gaza and conducts regular and often nightly raids in the illegally-occupied West Bank.

Outgoing Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati thanked Canada and Sweden for their decision to resume funding for UNRWA (UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees) in Lebanon, the Grand Serail announced in a statement.

During a meeting with the UN Resident Humanitarian Coordinator for Lebanon, Omran Reza, Mikati also spoke about encouraging more countries to join in returning to their regular funding of the organization which is the key provider of aid and support to displaced Palestinians in the region.

At the end of January, Israel presented a dossier to the US accusing 12 UNRWA employees of having been involved in the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel. This move triggered a wave of decisions to halt or suspend funding by around 18 countries including the EU, amounting to UNRWA losing more than half of its financing. Officials and media outlets who viewed the dossier have brought the quality and quantity of evidence provided into question. UNRWA employs 30,000 staff, 99 percent of which are locally recruited Palestinians.

Latest updates from the Lebanese-Israeli border:

- Israeli fighter jets carried out two airstrikes targeting a house in Naqoura (Sour) and the outskirts of the village, a security source and residents told our correspondent in the South. Residents added that ambulances headed towards one of the targeted places immediately.

- Israeli artillery shelling targeting the outskirts of Tayr Harfa and Naqoura (Sour), according to residents.

An Israeli military general publicly criticized Israeli politicians, demanding that they "be worthy" of the soldiers fighting on the front lines, AFP reports.

Brigadier General Dan Goldfus, who heads the 98th division deployed in Gaza's main southern city of Khan Younis, told an Israeli television station that the country's politicians "must be worthy of us" and that they need to "push aside the extreme, and adopt togetherness."

He has since been summoned by the military leadership for breaking the long-running taboo of Israeli soldiers making public political remarks.

Read the full story here.

In an interview with Sky News Arabia, United States Assistant Secretary of State Barbara Leaf said that "Hezbollah is leading Lebanon into a dangerous situation" and called on Iran to stop providing weapons to Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen.

"We look forward to the Lebanese state monopolizing arms and Hezbollah becoming a political party," she added.

Regarding Gaza, she said that there is a new "truce proposal on the table" awaiting a response from Hamas.

Leaf added that "it is unacceptable to conduct a military operation in Rafah before moving civilians to safe locations."

Latest updates from the Lebanese-Israeli border:

- A missile, launched by an Israeli jet, fell on Mais al-Jabal (Marjayoun) last night at midnight and did not explode, residents of the village told our correspondent in the South. The missile landed in the vicinity of the Imam al-Rida religious complex. The Scouts al-Rissala (affiliated with the Amal movement) have set a security perimeter around the explosive and are coordinating with the Lebanese army to deploy on the site and detonate it.

- During the last 30 minutes, Israeli jets carried out two strikes at the Kunin woods, located between the villages of Kunin and Baraasheet (Bint Jbeil), according to a security source relayed by our correspondent in the South.

In a televised interview with Télé-Liban, the official TV channel, caretaker Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said "Israel will not launch a ground offensive against Lebanon because it knows that such a conflict would not be a cakewalk." On the other hand, he expects "the war of attrition Israel is waging with its drones to continue."

Bou Habib reiterated his rejection of "half-hearted solutions [to the ongoing conflict in South Lebanon], which exclude the question of Israeli withdrawal from [the Lebanese territories of] the Shebaa Farms and the Kfar Shouba Hills". He expressed his support for "increasing the strength of the Lebanese army so that it can deploy effectively in the South."

Gaza's health ministry announced that 31,341 people have been killed in the enclave since the start of the war.

It added that 73,134 have been wounded since Oct. 7.

The Biden administration is expected to impose new sanctions as early as Thursday against two illegal outposts in the occupied West Bank that have been used as bases for attacks on Palestinian civilians by extremist Israeli settlers, three US officials told the Axios website.

"This would be the first time US sanctions have been imposed against entire outposts and not just individuals," the site said. The decision comes as the Biden administration increases pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government over a range of issues, including settler violence against Palestinians and the war in Gaza.

Nearly 500 attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians took place between Oct. 7 and Jan. 31 this year, according to the United Nations humanitarian office (OCHA).

Here is what happened on the Lebanese-Israeli border last night:

- Between 9 and 10 p.m.: Israeli artillery shelling targeted the outskirts of Houla (Marjayoun) and Wadi Slouqi.

- Israeli fighter jets fired two missiles on the village of Aita al-Shaab (Bint Jbeil).

- Between 10 p.m. and 12 a.m.: Israeli jets fired two missiles on the area of Labbouneh (Sour).

- Israel fired on the eastern neighborhoods of Houla with machine guns.

- Israel fired flares over the village of Mais al-Jabal (Marjayoun).

- Hezbollah said that it targeted a group of Israeli soldiers east of the al-Abbad Israeli site at 11 p.m.

Israeli airstrikes on the village of Mais al-Jabal (Marjeyoun), reported yesterday evening, destroyed seven houses and severely damaged ten other houses and some shops, residents told our correspondent in the South. Security sources told L'Orient Today that the attacks did not cause casualties.

Yesterday evening, Israel carried out three airstrikes on the village.

The Israeli army announced that it had "eliminated" a Hamas member in a targeted strike in Rafah. The man, Mohammad Abou Hasna, was one of four killed by the Palestinian movement, which described him as a security official at the targeted UNRWA warehouse.

Late on Wednesday, the Gazan Ministry of Health also reported seven dead and numerous wounded in Israeli fire on a gathering at the "Kuwait" traffic circle, a crossroads south of Gaza City where food aid distributions are taking place.

On Wednesday, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) announced that one of its warehouses in Rafah was hit by a strike that killed at least one of its employees and wounded several others, with the Gazan Ministry of Health citing four deaths.

"Today's attack on one of UNRWA's few remaining distribution centers in the Gaza Strip comes at a time when malnutrition, and even famine in some areas, is spreading," stressed the agency's head, Philippe Lazzarini.

A first boat loaded with 200 tons of food supplies left Cyprus for Gaza on Tuesday. This boat, belonging to the Spanish NGO Open Arms and towing a barge, was making slow headway this morning off the coast of Israel, according to the specialist website Marine Traffic, quoted by AFP.

Cyprus, some 370 kilometers from the Palestinian territory, announced that a second boat was ready to leave with a larger cargo.

Four US army ships also left the United States on Tuesday with around 100 soldiers and the equipment needed to build a jetty and quay in Gaza to unload humanitarian aid "within 60 days," according to the US authorities.

Make sure to read the Morning Brief so that you are caught up with what has been happening.

Morning Brief

Two killed in Sour, new restrictions for Syrians, UNIFIL report on journalist’s killing: Everything you need to know to start your Thursday

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