Hezbollah launches 'dozens' of rockets against an Israeli base after strike killed one of its members: Day 230 of the Gaza war

That's it for today's coverage of the Gaza war and its repercussions on the region, notably in southern Lebanon where cross-border fighting continues between Hezbollah and Israel, and on campuses around the world, where mass student protests in support of Palestine are causing several institutions to reconsider their ties to the country, which stands trial at one international court under the charge of genocide and whose leaders face arrest warrants in another international court.

Thanks for joining us — we'll be back tomorrow morning with more news updates and analysis. Goodnight!

Civil defense members of the Amal-affiliated al-Risala Scouts Association, working to extinguish a fire ignited by Israeli bombardment on the town of Bani Hayyan (Marjayoun district), on May 23, 2024. (Credit: Members of al-Risala Scouts Association)

Israeli war Cabinet minister and National Unity chair Benny Gantz has called for the opening of a state commission of inquiry into “the security failures” that led to Oct. 7 “as soon as possible,” stating that he will personally submit a proposal for its establishment, Times of Israel reports.

“We’ve all seen the difficult video of the kidnapping in Nahal Oz, we’ve all seen the public debate about whether or not a warning was given to the Prime Minister. There is no doubt, the period and the events leading up to Oct. 7, and the continuation of the campaign since then, are a national upheaval that we must learn from,” Gantz said in a video message.

Several hours before Gantz released the video, the Israeli army released a statement in response to a freedom of information request by an NGO called Hatzlacha, according to the Times of Israel report. The army said that over a period of several months last year, Netanyahu had received four separate communiques from Military Intelligence warning him about how the country’s enemies were viewing the social upheaval in Israel at the time.

Palestinians gather in the hope of obtaining aid delivered into Gaza through a US-built pier, as seen from central Gaza Strip, May 19, 2024. (Credit: Ramadan Abed/Reuters)

 The United Nations has resumed the delivery of humanitarian aid arriving at a US-built pier off the coast of the Gaza Strip. Deliveries were halted for two days reportedly because some truckloads of aid were being intercepted by desperately hungry people, Reuters reports.

A US official said on Thursday that so far some 800 metric tonnes of aid had been delivered off the pier to a staging area. USAID said that as of Tuesday more than 307 metric tonnes of aid had been transported from "to onward points in Gaza."

The aid offloaded at the pier comes via a maritime corridor from Cyprus, where it is first inspected by Israel. It was not immediately clear how much aid was currently positioned in Cyprus for delivery via the maritime corridor. US officials have said that once up and running the pier would initially handle 90 trucks a day, but that number could go to 150 trucks.

👉 Read the full report here.

All EU donors who suspended their funding to UNRWA following Israeli accusations of the aid agency’s links to Hamas have now resumed their support, chief diplomat for the EU, Joseph Borrell says in a post published on his X account.

“I commend the initiative in favor of UNRWA, an indispensable lifeline in Gaza and region,” he writes.

A report from the United Nations Independent Review Group, led by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, found that Israel had failed to provide any evidence to support its allegations against UNRWA, which, when made public back in January, caused a catastrophic withdrawal in funding that put much of the agency’s operations at risk.

Formal confirmation of a reinstatement of funds has yet to be made from Romania, Estonia, and the Netherlands.

A proposal to invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address US Congress is already causing controversy among American politicians. Democrats have said, both privately and publicly, that if Netanyahu were invited to speak to Congress, they would not attend, according to recent reports in American and Israeli media.

According to a report from ABC News, House Speaker Mike Johnson said he was waiting to hear from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer about whether he would sign the letter of invitation before he sends it.

Axios has published a report saying some top House Democrats think Schumer should not sign onto the invitation. Democrat representative for Connecticut and senior member of the House Committee on Intelligence, Jim Himes, said Netanyahu "should be focused on freeing hostages, not on charming legislators,” according to Axios.

Top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on the Middle East, Dean Phillips, told Axios that he thinks it a “strange time” to invite Netanyahu. “It’s a really divisive kind of move.” Phillips says Netanyahu is "dividing this country ... in a similar way he's divided Israel, and I think that's awfully dangerous. I can only imagine the personal and political conflict facing Leader Schumer."

👉 Read the full report here.

Updates from the Lebanese-Israeli border over the last 30 minutes:

• Israeli warplanes raided the village of Odaisseh, in Marjayoun district, two times and Aita al-Shaab, in Bint Jbeil, once, a security source and residents told our correspondent in the South.

• Five Israeli artillery shells fell on neighborhoods in the village of Yaroun, in Bint Jbeil, a security source told L'Orient Today.

• Continuous "hostile aircraft sirens" have been sounding in multiple villages throughout Israel's north, according to Haaretz.

Latest updates from Southern Lebanon and Northern Israel:

• Israeli warplanes raided the village of Aita al-Shaab (Bint Jbeil district), a security source told our correspondent in the South.

• Israeli warplanes raided the village of Kfar Kila and an area between the villages of Odaisseh and Markaba (Marjayoun), according to residents.

• An Israeli drone raided an open area in the outskirts of Yater (Bint Jbeil), residents told L'Orient Today.

• According to residents' testimonies relayed by our correspondent, two Israeli artillery shells fell on Wadi al-Dalafa on the outskirts of Houla (Marjayoun).

• Hezbollah said that it fired artillery shells at 4:55 p.m. on the Israeli site of "Marj", opposite the Lebanese village of Markaba.

Hezbollah announced that it ambushed and targeted a Merkava Israeli tank in the Shtula woods, facing the Lebanese village of Aita al-Shaab, with a guided missile at 4:55 p.m., claiming that the tank's crew was "killed and wounded."

"After monitoring and following [Israeli] forces in the Shtula woods and spotting a Merkava tank attacking our people and villages, [we] ambushed it and ... destroyed it [while it was moving]," the party's statement reads.

Latest updates from Southern Lebanon and Northern Israel:

• An Israeli drone fired a missile at the junction at the entrance to the village of Mansouri, in Sour district, residents told our correspondent in the South. Eyewitnesses told L'Orient Today that the drone fired the missile towards a motorcycle but failed to hit it, instead hitting an archway. However, according to the Islamic Health Association Organization and the Risala Scout Association, two people were injured from shrapnel scattering. The same sources added that their conditions are stable.

• "Hostile aircraft alerts" and rocket sirens sounded in northern Israel, according to Haaretz.

The heads of three universities and an academic honor society are testifying today to the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce about universities' handling of pro-Palestinian protests, Reuters reports.

The hearing is the sixth event the committee and its subcommittees have held on schools' responses to tensions that have flared since the war began. On dozens of campuses throughout the country, students set up tents and held rallies to call for an end to Israel's onslaught on Gaza and to demand that their universities divest from companies that back the government of Israel.

The student movement, compared by commentators to that of the Vietnam War-era student protests, has reached campuses across the globe. Similar pro-Palestine encampments have been established in Canada, the UK, Europe and Australia and have resulted in several institutions reconsidering their ties with Israel.

House lawmakers will now hear from the heads of Northwestern University, Rutgers University and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). The head of the Phi Beta Kappa Society will testify in his personal capacity, a spokesperson for the organization said.

"Each of you refused to enforce your own rules, preserve campus safety and protect Jewish students," House Education Committee Chair Virginia Foxx said in her opening remarks.

👉 Read more here.

Following a patrol-boat tour along the coast of the besieged Gaza Strip, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the Israeli army is deploying additional forces to Rafah while working to “create the conditions for the return of the hostages,” the Times of Israel reports.

The army initiated its invasion of Rafah over two weeks ago when it seized the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing and shut it down. Israel’s operation in Rafah is widely unpopular both internationally — its key ally the US has long opposed it — and domestically, where more than half of the population prefers a cease-fire agreement with Hamas, according to a poll released just days before the army invaded.

“We are strengthening our effort against Rafah,” Gallant said, cited by the Israeli news outlet. “This operation will go on and increase, more forces on the ground, more forces from the air, and we will reach our goals — to deal a very hard blow to Hamas, to deprive it of its military capabilities, [and] to create the conditions to return the hostages to their homes,” he said aboard the boat.

Updates from southern Lebanon:

• Israeli artillery shelling targeted firefighting units from the Civil Defense as they were working to extinguish a fire in the village of Bani Haiyyan, in Marjayoun district, around 3:52 p.m., residents told our correspondent Mountasser Abdallah. The fire was ignited by thermal balloons dropped by Israeli warplanes as they flew at a low altitude over the area.

• At around 4:10 p.m., the village of Aita al-Shaab, in Bint Jbeil district, was also targeted by Israeli artillery shelling.

In a message on his X account, MP Samy Gemayel, leader of the opposition Kataeb Party, said that “children who go to school in the morning and civilians should not have to pay the price of the criminal Israeli attacks that Hezbollah attracts to the country, just to score points on the regional negotiating tables.”

Reacting to the injuries inflicted on Thursday morning on pupils in a bus that passed near the car of a Hezbollah executive targeted by an Israeli drone, in the Nabatieh region, the MP for Metn expressed his solidarity with the pupils, their parents and all civilians “who are harmed by this criminal war adventure.”

شو ذنب أولاد رايحين الصبح عالمدرسة ومدنيين يدفعوا ثمن إجرام إسرائيلي يلي عم يستدرجو #حزب_الله تيمرّك نقاط بالمنطقة ليصرفها عطاولات التسويات والمحاصصة الإقليمية.
تفكيرنا مع الطلاب وأهلن وكل المدنيين يلي عم يتأذوا من ورا مغامرة الحرب المجرمة.#النبطية

— Samy Gemayel (@samygemayel) May 23, 2024

In response to the Israeli airstrike that killed a Hezbollah member and wounded students in the southern Lebanese village of Kfar Dajjal this morning, Hezbollah announced that it fired dozens of Katyusha and Falaq rockets at the headquarters of the Israeli "Sahel Battalion of the 769th Brigade" at the Beit Hillel base, adjacent to the Lebanese village of Houla.

This is the second attack carried out by Hezbollah in response to the Israeli attack on Kfar Dajjal (Nabatieh).

Hezbollah claimed responsibility for two new strikes: At 12:30 p.m., against “spy equipment” in Metulla, opposite the Lebanese village of Khiam (Marjayoun), and at 2:30 p.m., against the “Raheb” site, opposite Aita al-Shaab (Bint Jbeil). According to Haaretz, warning sirens sounded in northern Israel. 

Rocket sirens sounded in Northern Israel, according to Haaretz.

⁠Israeli warplanes broke the sound barrier twice over Sour, residents told L'Orient Today's correspondent in the South.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said she feared “a humanitarian crisis” if Israel carried out its threat to deny Palestinian banks access to its own banking system, blocking vital transactions in the occupied West Bank.

“I believe that cutting off Palestinian banks from their Israeli counterparts would create a humanitarian crisis,” Yellen told a press conference at the opening of the G7 finance ministers' meeting in Stresa, Italy.

Further updates on Hezbollah's attack on the village of Ayelet in northern Israel:

Several fires broke out in the "Houla Valley," Haaretz reported citing Israel's fire and rescue service.

According to the announcement, "six fire crews have been working from several fire stations in the area."

Leaders of the “Axis of Resistance” groups discussed the war in Gaza between Israel and Palestinian Hamas at a meeting yesterday in Teheran, on the sidelines of the funeral of Iranian President Ebrahim Raissi, official media reported. Representing Hezbollah was the party's deputy secretary general, Naim Qassem. 

Students raising Lebanese flags and banners in Saida in support with students who were wounded in an Israeli airstrike earlier today. (Credit: Muntasser Abdallah)

Students of the Omani Model Public School in Saida stood in solidarity with the students of the Lycée Public de Choukine after an Israeli airstrike wounded three students of the latter school, according to L'Orient Today's correspondent, who was present at the sit-in.

An Israeli airstrike killed a Hezbollah member and wounded students in the southern Lebanese village of Kfar Dajjal this morning.

Israeli army's Arabic-language spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, commented on his X account on this morning's assassination of Mohammad Ali Farran in southern Lebanon, claiming that he is “responsible for the infrastructure for the production of combat weapons” within Hezbollah. Farran was also a physics teacher at a school in Nabatieh. He was targeted by an Israeli drone in the same area, and the attack damaged a school bus passing nearby.

According to Adraee, Farran had helped “produce strategic and unique weapons for Hezbollah,” adding that “some of the infrastructures for which he was responsible have been attacked in recent months in southern Lebanon.”

Latest updates from the Lebanese-Israeli border:

-⁠ ⁠A security source told L'Orient Today's correspondent in the South that an Israeli drone strike followed by an airstrike carried out by an Israeli warplane targeted the outskirts of At Tiri (Bint Jbeil).

-⁠ ⁠An Israeli drone fired a missile on an agricultural orchard in the area of Hamoul on the outskirts of Naqoura (Sour).

-⁠ ⁠Meanwhile, the Israeli army said that its air force attacked the source of the launches to the Upper Galilee.

In response to the drone strike this morning that killed a Hezbollah member near Kfar Dejjal, in the southern Lebanese district of Nabatieh, Hezbollah announced that it had fired “dozens of Katyusha rockets” at the “new headquarters of the 91st division of the Israeli army, in the Ayelet base.” The map published by Hezbollah with this statement indicates that the strike was carried out at the Israeli village of Ayelet Hashachar, in northern Israel, opposite the Lebanese town of Aitaroun (Bint Jbeil).

The Israeli army, quoted by Haaretz, reported that 30 rockets had been fired towards Ayelet Hashachar, some of which were intercepted. 

Hezbollah MP Hassan Ezzeddine felt that “the [Israeli] enemy's insistence on continuing the war is not in its interest, and will lead to further wear and tear” in the ranks of its troops, who will end up “lacking courage in confrontation on the ground and deserting.” Speaking at a ceremony in honor of one of the Hezbollah members killed, Hassan Nehmeh, in the southern Lebanese village of Mahrouneh, the politician asserted that Israel “no longer has any choice but tactical defeat or strategic defeat.”

Gaza's civil defense reported that two pre-dawn Israeli air strikes had killed 26 people in Gaza City.

Sixteen people were killed by a strike that hit their homes, and ten others perished in the second strike that hit a mosque and a school, said civil defense spokesman Mahmoud Bassal.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the UN's highest court, announced that it will rule tomorrow on a request from South Africa to order Israel to cease-fire in Gaza.

Pretoria wants the court to order Israel to cease “immediately” all military operations in Gaza, including in Rafah, where Israel launched ground operations on May 7 despite opposition from the international community.

“A public session will take place at 3:00 p.m. (1:00 p.m. GMT) at the Peace Palace in The Hague,” where the court is based, the ICJ announced in a statement quoted by AFP. 

Israel's war cabinet has given the green light for the resumption of negotiations for the release of hostages held in the Gaza Strip, reports AFP.

The decision to continue these talks comes after the release of a video showing the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers by fighters from the Islamist Hamas movement on Oct. 7. The families of five soldiers held hostage in Gaza yesterday authorized the broadcasting of these images.

What happened last night in southern Lebanon, before the targeted strike that killed a Hezbollah member in the morning:

- Israeli airstrikes targeted Odaisseh (Marjayoun), after 9pm.

- At 10:30 p.m., Hezbollah issued a statement announcing that it had carried out a “suicide drone” attack on a “position of the Israeli army's 403 brigade south of Beit Hillel” (opposite the Lebanese village of Houlain the Marjayoun district), in areas where Israeli soldiers and officers gather, and had “hit it accurately.”

- At 11 p.m., rescue workers from al-Rissala Scouts (affiliated to the Amal movement) announced that they had extinguished a fire resulting from an Israeli attack on the village of Maroun al-Ras (Bint Jbeil). Israeli reconnaissance aircraft were flying overhead.

- At midnight, the Israeli air force carried out new strikes on Odaisseh, and flares were launched over Shebaa.

The "martyr" poster for Mohammad Ali Farran who was killed this morning near Nabatieh. (Credit: Hezbollah Media Office)

In a statement, Hezbollah confirmed that the man killed in the Israeli strike near Nabatieh, Mohammad Ali Farran, was a member of the party. Farran was born in 1989 in Nabatieh.

According to a Hezbollah source, Farran was a member of Hezbollah's tabbiya forces which, while civilians with other jobs in normal times, act as a defensive force for their villages during wartime. Farran also worked as a physics teacher at the Hassan Kamel al-Sabbah secondary school in his hometown. 313 Hezbollah members have been killed in Lebanon and Syria since fighting began on Oct. 8. 

For more on how Hezbollah claims its member's killed, read L'Orient Today journalist Ghadir Hamadi's story on the confusion over who has been claimed by the party.

The man killed in the Nabatieh strike was Mohammad Ali Farran, a contract physics teacher at the Hassan Kamal al-Sabbah public high school in Nabatieh, the school confirmed. A “polite, no-fuss teacher," school principal Abbas Choufani described him to L'Orient Today.

The injured students were on a bus from another school, the Lycée Public de Choukine. There were two students with minor injuries caused by shards of glass. They will soon be discharged from hospital, according to a school official.

And on the ground, Gaza continues to be bombarded relentlessly.

Early this morning, an AFP team reported strikes in the Rafah area, while witnesses reported intense shelling in Gaza City, in the north of the territory. 

Israel's main supporter, US President Joe Biden, reiterated that “a Palestinian state [must] come about through direct negotiations between the parties, not through unilateral recognition.”

Following the announcements made by Oslo, Madrid and Dublin, Colombia confirmed its plans to open an embassy in Ramallah, the city in the occupied West Bank where Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority is based.

In early May, the Colombian president, whose country had been a key ally of Israel in Latin America, announced the severing of diplomatic ties between the two countries, describing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government as “genocidal” in its conduct of the war in Gaza.

Israel is incensed by the decision of three European countries to recognize the State of Palestine, in the midst of war.

“Israel will not remain silent on this question” of recognition, thundered Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz, announcing the summoning of the ambassadors of Spain, Ireland and Norway, and the recall for consultations of the Israeli ambassadors in these three countries.

According to a security source, the victim in the targeted car was a physics teacher from the Hassan Kamel al-Sabbah public secondary school in Nabatieh.

The civil defense of the Islamic Mission Scouts Association (affiliated with the Amal movement) said in a statement that it had mobilized a team on site in Kfar Dajjal to extinguish the fire that had broken out in the bombed car and transport injured people to nearby hospitals.

In southern Lebanon, the day began with a targeted drone strike on a car on the Kfar Dajjal road, in the Nabatieh district, some ten kilometers from the border.

According to local residents and a security source, the strike killed the car's passenger. It also wounded some students who were in a school minibus near the targeted vehicle. Three of them were slightly wounded by shards of glass from the bus and were taken to a local hospital.

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

Morning Brief

Two killed in southern Lebanon strikes, EDL under Israeli fire, recognition of Palestinian statehood: Everything you need to know to start your Thursday

Good morning!

Thank you for joining us for our live coverage of the ongoing war in Gaza and its regional and global impacts.