Middle East latest: Israeli defense minister officially steps down

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant officially stepped down Friday in a ceremony that replaced him with Israel Katz, the former foreign minister, just three days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired Gallant, sparking protests.

Many in Israel view Gallant as the sole moderate voice in a far-right government, and see his removal as a sign that Netanyahu has lost interest in returning hostages still held in Gaza. Katz currently serves as foreign minister and is a longtime Netanyahu loyalist and veteran Cabinet minister.

Also Friday, the Israeli military body handling aid to Gaza said it was preparing to open a new aid crossing into Gaza, without specifying when.

The Israeli military says it will allow 300 truckloads of humanitarian aid supplied by the United Arab Emirates to enter the Gaza Strip in the coming days. That’s less than the 350 trucks per day that the United States said it wants to see enter the war-ravaged territory.

The Israel-Hamas war began after militants stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducting 250 others. Israel’s military response in Gaza has killed more than 43,000 people, Palestinian health officials say. They do not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but say more than half of those killed were women and children.

Hezbollah began firing into Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, in solidarity with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Since the conflict erupted, more than 3,100 people have been killed and nearly 13,900 wounded in Lebanon, the health ministry reported.

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Here’s the latest:

BEIRUT — Three people were killed and over 30 injured in several Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon's southern port city of Tyre, the health ministry said.

The ministry said that this toll is preliminary, as rescue workers are searching for people trapped under rubble.

The Israeli army did not issue an evacuation warning before the strikes. They hit several locations in Tyre and caused extensive damage, according to Lebanon’s state media.

Following the attacks, the Israeli army said it targeted Hezbollah “intelligence and command and control complexes” that operated in Tyre.

Since late October, Israeli airstrikes have repeatedly struck the city, which is known for its UNESCO World Heritage archaeological sites.

RAMALLAH, West Bank — The office of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says the leader of the Palestinian Authority spoke with United States President-elect Donald Trump for the first time since his victory in the 2024 campaign.

In a statement Friday, Abbas’ office in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah said the president congratulated Trump on his victory and wished him success in his upcoming term. The statement said that Abbas told Trump he was ready to work with him in pursuit of peace and that Trump, in turn, “emphasized his commitment to the stop the war.”

The phone call follows months of resistance by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the Biden administration’s push for a cease-fire that would see Israel end the war against Hamas in Gaza. Netanyahu was among the first foreign leaders to congratulate Trump, lavishing praise on the former president who during his first term established a record of staunch support for Israel.

Trump’s election victory — which many Israelis praised as a win for their country — has cast uncertainty on the future of diplomatic efforts to end the Israel-Hamas war. Any proposed deal would also see Hamas release the remaining Israeli hostages held in Gaza who were abducted in the group’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians.

Trump and Abbas had a particularly rocky relationship during Trump’s first term, when his administration reduced outreach to the Palestinians and reversed decades of U.S. policy in the Mideast in Israel’s favor.

UNITED NATIONS — Hunger experts say there is “a strong likelihood” that famine is imminent in parts of northern Gaza, where Israeli forces are conducting a major offensive.

An alert issued Friday by the experts calls the humanitarian situation throughout the Gaza Strip “extremely grave and rapidly deteriorating.”

The Famine Review Committee said all actors in the war in Gaza must take immediate action “within days not weeks … to avert and alleviate this catastrophic situation.”

It stressed that this includes not only combatants but those who have influence on them.

The alert follows an Oct. 17 report from the committee that said Palestinians in the entire territory face acute food insecurity. That's the emergency level, Phase 4, on the five-level classification system for hunger. Phase 5 is Catastrophe-Famine.

Friday’s alert pointed to recent significant developments, including the impact of Israel’s designation of northern Gaza as a combat zone and orders for the entire population to evacuate,;a lower level of aid shipments than at any time since October 2023; and food access reaching "critical levels and deteriorating.”

The committee is part of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, which comprises 15 U.N. and other organizations that monitor global hunger and food security.

UNITED NATIONS – The United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon says Israeli forces deliberately destroyed some of its property in violation of international law.

The force, known as UNIFIL, is in southern Lebanon to monitor the border between Israel and Lebanon.

UNIFL said in a statement Friday that the Israeli military used two excavators and a bulldozer to destroy part of a fence and a concrete structure at the peacekeeping mission’s position in Ras Naqoura on Thursday. UNIFL said that in response to its “urgent protest," the Israeli Defense Forces denied any activity was taking place inside the UNIFIL position.

UNIFIL also said the Israeli military this week destroyed and removed two blue barrels that mark the border.

The statement was accompanied by a photo of one blue barrel on its side and a short video of an excavator working in an area where a U.N. flag was flying.

Since Israel launched a ground war in Lebanon in September, UNIFIL has accused its military of shooting and wounding peacekeepers and attacking UNIFIL positions.

The Israeli military has repeatedly demanded that peacekeepers leave their positions for their safety. It did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

“Yesterday’s incident, like seven other similar incidents, is not a matter of peacekeepers getting caught in the crossfire, but of deliberate and direct actions by the IDF,” the UNIFIL statement said.

BEIRUT — Lebanon’s health ministry said Friday that 15 people were killed and 69 wounded Thursday, raising the total toll over the past year of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah to 3,117 killed and 13,888 wounded. One-quarter of them are women and children.

The health ministry said that over the past year, 2,242 men, 617 women and 192 children were killed.

In the health care sector, the ministry said that 180 health workers have been killed, 306 wounded and 244 medical vehicles damaged since Oct. 8, 2023. Additionally, 87 medical and ambulatory centers have been affected, along with 65 hospitals.

GENEVA — The United Nations human rights office released a report Friday that found that 70% of verified war deaths in the Gaza Strip were women and children.

The agency examined 8,119 Palestinian deaths between Oct. 7, 2023, and Sept. 2, 2024, including 2,036 women and 3,588 children.

Most died in attacks that killed five or more people and about 80% were in residential buildings, the report said. It blamed the Israeli military’s “use of weapons with wide area effects in densely-populated areas,” though some of the deaths may also have been caused by rockets fired by Palestinian militant groups in Gaza that fell short.

The youngest death was a 1-year-old boy and the oldest a 97-year-old woman. Most of the children were 5 to 9 years old.

According to Gaza's health ministry, the overall death toll is over 43,500. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

“Our monitoring indicates that this unprecedented level of killing and injury of civilians is a direct consequence of the failure to comply with fundamental principles of international humanitarian law,” U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk said.

Israel’s diplomatic mission in Geneva said it “categorically rejects” the report and accused the U.N. human rights office of disregarding the impact of activities of the militant group Hamas on civilians in Gaza. The mission also accused the agency of relying on “unverified information.”

The report comes as two world courts examine charges of war crimes against Israel.

It also says Hamas and other militant groups “committed serious violations of international law” when they stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducting 250 others.

JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday he was appointing Yechiel Leiter as Israel’s new ambassador to the United States.

U.S.-born Leiter will replace ambassador Michael Herzog, according to a statement from Netanyahu’s office.

Leiter has been a close aide to Netanyahu and was formerly the deputy director general of Israel’s education ministry and chief of staff to the minister of finance. His son was killed while fighting in Gaza in November.

Netanyahu said Leiter was a “highly talented diplomat, an eloquent speaker,” with a “deep understanding of American culture and politics.”

Leiter has been a senior fellow at the Kohelet Policy Forum, a conservative Jerusalem think tank. He lives in the settlement of Eli in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

JERUSALEM — Israel says it is preparing to open a new aid crossing into Gaza as the deadline for a U.S. deadline to increase desperately-needed aid into the war-ravaged territory approaches.

The Israeli military body handling aid to Gaza, COGAT, said it has built inspection facilities and paved roads around the Kissufim crossing, located near the center of the Gaza. It says food, aid, and fuel will soon be able to be delivered through the crossing, but did not say when it will open nor if aid will be delivered to north of Gaza, where the United Nations and aid groups say the humanitarian situation is most dire.

Since Israeli forces unleashed a fierce offensive on north Gaza in early October, no aid has made it to the northernmost reaches of the territory, where the U.N. says roughly 70,000 Palestinians still remain.

The opening of the crossing likely reflects an Israeli desire to ramp up aid ahead of a United States-imposed deadline. In an Oct. 13 letter sent to Israeli officials, American officials said Israel had 30 days to increase the daily number of aid trucks entering the Gaza Strip to 350 or risk the U.S. reconsidering arms shipments to Israel — which have been key to Israel’s war against Hamas militants in Gaza.

Israel has so far fallen far short of this benchmark, with COGAT figures showing an average of 57 trucks a day entering Gaza. In the first seven days of November, the average has been 81.

JERUSALEM — Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant officially stepped down Friday in a ceremony that replaced him with Israel Katz, the former Foreign Minister, three days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed Gallant.

Israel has been rocked by Gallant’s firing, with the news setting off mass protests across the country. Many in Israel view Gallant as the sole moderate voice in a far-right government, and see his dismissal as a sign that the far-right government of Benjamin Netanyahu has lost interest in returning hostages still held in Gaza by Hamas militants.

Gallant thanked the military and warned that the war’s “mission is not yet complete; we must meet our moral and traditional obligation, and the war’s objective is to bring home the remaining 101 hostages who haven’t yet seen their families and homes.”

Israel Katz, his replacement, currently serves as foreign minister and is a longtime Netanyahu loyalist and veteran Cabinet minister. Katz thanked Gallant and said the war’s objectives were to “stop Iranian aggression and deny its capabilities, continue dismantling Hamas as a governing and military force, and defeat Hezbollah.” He added that returning the hostages was a top “moral priority.”

“Yoav, we were friends and will remain friends because we believe in the same things that will secure Israel’s security and future, the Jewish state,” he said. “I promise that the entire State of Israel will emerge from this war and from the pain to much higher places.”

ANKARA, Turkey — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says he hopes United States President-Elect Donald Trump will fulfil promises to end the conflict in the Middle East and tell Israel to “stop” its aggression.

Speaking to a group of journalists on a return flight from Hungary, Erdogan also said that cutting off U.S. arms support to Israel “would be a good start” toward ending the conflict in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.

“We want that promise to be fulfilled and for Israel to be told to ‘stop,’” Hurriyet newspaper and other media quoted Erdogan as saying on Friday.

Erdogan also called on Trump to abandon what he said were the Biden administration’s “erroneous policies.”

“We expect my dear friend Trump to abandon the erroneous policies of the former administration during his second term as president,” Erdogan said in a televised address. “We sincerely believed that the president will do his part to end the wars.”

Turkey has become one of Israel’s most vocal critics, accusing the country of committing genocide in Gaza and strongly criticizing Western nations for backing Israel.

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