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Catch up on yesterday’s LIVE coverage of Day 222 of the Gaza war here.

A Hamas rocket misfire from southern Lebanon killed one person and injured four others south of Sour, a security source told L’Orient Today’s correspondent. Another Israeli drone strike assassination targeting Hezbollah members killed a party fighter driving south of Sour and injured two other people. Israel’s attacks continued throughout the day with further shelling, drone strikes and bombardment striking villages in the border region. Israeli media reported 60 rockets fired from Lebanon to northern Israel as Hezbollah announced retaliatory strikes. Party leader Hassan Nasrallah met with Hamas officials in Beirut while its parliamentary bloc chief, Mohammad Raad, repeated Hezbollah’s stance to keep fighting until the end of Israel’s assault on Gaza. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, meanwhile, told a press conference that either military or diplomatic action would “soon” be needed to return displaced residents to northern Israel – who Nasrallah urged, during his speech the day before, to call on their government to end the war in Gaza if they wish to return.

Legislators resolved to begin the legal process to deport Syrian inmates in Lebanon and formed a committee to plan Syrian repatriation during yesterday’s Parliament session. During the session, caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati recapped government procedures targeting Syrians such as tightening municipal policing, censusing and labor restrictions. Mikati also called for stricter punishment of human traffickers transporting informal migrants across the border with Syria – which, the premier lamented, would require a fivefold increase in Lebanese Army deployment to fully secure. Part of Parliament’s provisions called for international aid to Lebanese security services bolstering its ability to prevent informal migration to and from its territory – while also urging international actors to reconfigure their aid to Syrians to facilitate repatriation. The session followed a $1 billion pledge from the European Union, announced during a visit from the presidents of the European Commission and Cyprus last week, which several politicians denounced as bribes. Mikati reiterated during the session that the aid was unconditional, adding that it was a continuation of repeated European donations to the country.

Ministry of Youth and Sports employees evacuated after concerns over the building’s safety. The Ministry will remain cordoned until the siphoning of water that seeped underground, which is currently in quantities below the threshold for Civil Defense intervention, agency chief Raymond Khattar told L’Orient Today. Water damage to building foundations has been linked to several, deadly structural failures across Lebanon, with more than 16,200 buildings at risk of collapse by the Property Owners Association’s estimate. Over the past year, several people have been killed and others narrowly escaped death from toppled buildings.

The Lebanese Army recovered a drowned teenager, missing since Sunday off the coast of Jbeil. The remains of three other people lost at sea the same day have been recovered between then and yesterday. Five other swimmers, part of the same group, were brought safely to shore on Sunday. Several drownings have been reported across the Lebanese coast over the past weeks while Civil Defense and local officials urge precautions preventing access to the sea during rough tides and for lifeguard appointments to public beaches.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s (EBRD) regional report projected 0.2 percent to Lebanese GDP in 2024, noting stabilized inflation, an uptick in Central Bank foreign reserves and converging official and parallel currency valuations. The report said growth could reach three percent next year with eased regional tensions and the implementation of a host of reforms conditional to unlocking billions of International Monetary Fund (IMF) aid. The Gaza war’s outbreak threw off previous projections that Lebanon’s economy would grow for the first time since 2018 by 1.7 percent this year, with some tempering the figure and others forecasting contraction. Under new, transitional, management beginning last June, Central Bank (BDL) saw its foreign currency reserves grow, despite an overall $1 billion in 2023, EBRD reported, citing tourist spending and hiked remittances. 

At least 35,233 people have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, according to the latest figures from the enclave’s Health Ministry. Nearly half a million people have been displaced again over the past week by intensified Israeli attacks on Rafah and northern Gaza – the former a last refuge for more than a million people moved south by Israel’s onslaught and the latter being attacked again after Israel claiming that it had been cleared of Hamas. Yesterday marked 76 years since the Nakba, the forced displacement of nearly 760,000 Palestinians by Zionist militias massacring and pillaging in a war culminating decades of clashes over territory allotments in British mandatory Palestine after which Israel declared independence. 

In case you missed it, here is our must-read story from yesterday: “Lebanon’s arms market is booming”

Compiled by Abbas Mahfouz