A boy rides a donkey near one of the batteries of Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system at a village not recognized by Israeli authorities in the southern Negev desert on April 14, 2024. (Credit: Ahmad Gharabli/AFP)
Want to get the Morning Brief by email? Click here to sign up.
Catch up on our LIVE coverage of Day 189, Day 190 and Day 191 of the Gaza war.
In the aftermath of an unprecedented, mostly thwarted Iranian attack on Israel Saturday Iran claimed disinterest in regional escalation, telling the US it would only act in “self-defense,” Iranian Foreign Minister Amir Abdollahian said to foreign ambassadors. The region braced for impact as Iran fired a barrage of missiles and hundreds of drones toward Israel, where the air defense system shot down the remains of the fleet already intercepted by the US, the UK and France over the hours-long trajectory. The Israeli army claimed that only 1 percent of the attack struck Israel, a 7-year-old girl was confirmed to have been injured by shrapnel and a military base suffered minor damage. Iran had vowed retaliation against Israel since accusing it of an Apr. 1 airstrike on an Iranian diplomatic mission in Damascus that killed several military chiefs. Amid threats of retaliation, a US Defense official on Friday told AFP the country deployed reinforcements to the region. The same day, Iran indirectly told the US – via Oman, following a visit by Abdollahian — its response would be “non-escalatory.” International actors repeatedly urged restraint ahead of an emergency meeting yesterday evening of the United Nations Security Council.
The caretaker cabinet scheduled an emergency meeting for today in the wake of Iran’s attack, while Israel bombarded the Bekaa yesterday after overnight strikes that killed one person and injured five people in southern Lebanon. Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati urged complete participation – after a monthslong boycott by Free Patriotic Movement-affiliated ministers protesting the presidential vacuum. Commercial flights resumed in Lebanese and neighboring airspaces yesterday after a six-hour suspension. After an overnight rush to gas stations across Lebanon, Association of Fuel Importers in Lebanon (APIC) member Jean Hatem told L’Orient Today that supplies are ample and currently unjeopardized. After Iran’s attack was confirmed, Hezbollah and Israel traded cross-border strikes, killing one person in Khiam — confirmed yesterday to have been a Hezbollah fighter, raising the number of party members killed since Oct. 8 to 275. Yesterday morning, Hezbollah said it struck Israeli military positions in the occupied Golan to retaliate for the overnight strikes. Later the same day, an Israeli airstrike demolished a building without causing casualties in Sarine Valley in Nabi Sheet (Baalbeck) which Israel claimed to have been a Hezbollah weapons production site. On Friday, Israeli gunfire hit a car carrying al-Mayadeen journalists and an Electricité du Liban maintenance workers’ vehicle.
“Nothing unites the Lebanese today more than the issue of displaced Syrians,” caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati claimed Saturday, foreseeing mass deportations when the international community deems “most regions” in Syria secure. The deportation applies to Syrians “who are in Lebanon without a job or legal pretext,” Mikati continued during his meeting with Maronite Patriarch Bechara al-Rai. Last December, amid waves of arrests on the Lebanese-Syrian borders of people attempting to cross from Syria, Mikati claimed that most entrants were coming for economic reasons. The killing and abduction to Syria of Lebanese Forces official Pascal Sleiman last week fueled retaliatory violence against Syrians in Lebanon and Lebanese officials’ anti-Syrian rhetoric – already present in waves of measures targeting the displaced population, including mass deportations, instated over the past year. While officiating Sleiman’s funeral on Friday, Rai denounced “the danger” posed by displaced Syrians’ presence in Lebanon to hundreds of mourners. Rai’s speech also accused Hezbollah of enabling and benefitting from the “anarchy in power, administration, justice, weapons and the decision of war” that set the scene for the killing. The Lebanese Forces hypothesized the possibility of a political assassination, casting doubt on the Lebanese Army’s account of the crime — that Sleiman was killed by a carjacking gang who only meant to subdue and transport him to a remote location where he couldn’t report the incident.
Lebanese officials on Saturday called for unity and took jabs in statements commemorating the 49th anniversary of the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990). Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati called for unity, urging the “generations that did not experience the war to learn from it.” Parliamentarian Jamil al-Sayyed criticized the Taif Agreement with which the war concluded, considering that it “handed the state over to the militia leaders.” MP Melhem Khalaf warned against “several incidents that innocent people paid for” resulting from April 13 being “absent from memory while there in reality.” On April 13, 1975, Kataeb gunmen killed 30 Palestinians on a bus in Ain al-Rummaneh, marking the start of a 15-year civil war.
At least 33,686 people have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, according to the latest figures from the enclave’s health ministry. The latest proposition for a cease-fire agreement between Hamas and Israel fell through, while the group held fast to its demands and its chief vowing to not waver after the killing of three of his children in an Israeli strike. Gazans told AFP Israel intensified its shelling of the enclave Friday, piling bodies across the streets of Nuseirat in Central Gaza. Hamas’s demands include a lasting cease-fire, the Israeli army’s withdrawal from Gaza and ramped-up aid deliveries to the enclave – where famine has been taking hold amid relentless shelling and the destruction of the medical system. United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator Jamie McGoldrick warned of the spread of waterborne illnesses and dehydration in Gaza Friday, Reuters reported. As French courts dismissed a case by Amnesty International to suspend Israel’s weapons supply, five Palestinians in Gaza took legal action against Germany via a European NGO over its supply of weapons to Israel.
In case you missed it, here is our must-read story from over the weekend: “In the aftermath of the Iranian attack, what are the possible Israeli responses?”
Compiled by Abbas Mahfouz
