Key events
Thousands of Palestinians returned to their homes in Khan Younis on Tuesday after Israeli forces end week-long incursion.
Reuters are reporting thousands of Palestinians returned to their homes in the ruins of Gaza’s main southern city Khan Younis on Tuesday, after Israeli forces ended a week-long incursion there which they claim aimed to prevent Hamas from regrouping.
Palestinian health officials said rescue workers had so far recovered 42 bodies of Palestinians killed in the Israeli incursion into eastern Khan Younis. Gaza’s Civil Emergency Service said more searches were under way with 200 people still reported missing.
The Israeli military said its forces killed more than 150 Palestinian gunmen during the week-long raid, destroyed militant tunnels and seized weapons.
After the Israeli forces left, people streamed back to their homes on foot and with donkey carts carrying their belongings. Many found their houses damaged or destroyed.
Witnesses said army forces had bulldozed the main cemetery in Bani Suhaila, the town on the eastern outskirts of Khan Younis that was the main focus of the raid, as well as houses and roads nearby.
“I am coming back and I have faith in God. I don’t know whether we will live or die, but it is all for the sake of the homeland,” said Etimad Al-Masri, who had walked for at least five kilometers back to her home.
“Despite the suffering, we are patient and God’s willing we will have victory.”
Many residents said they had been displaced from their homes several times.
“We hope there will be a ceasefire and calm. We hope that they act on a ceasefire so that we can live in security and safety,” said Walid Abu Nsaira, holding some of his belongings on his shoulder as he walked back home.
Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik spoke to Dr Mohammed Abu Mughaisib, the deputy medical coordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Palestine, as part of the Gaza voices series.
He is working on the ground in Gaza. Here is an extract from the piece:
We managed to evacuate a patient from Gaza City, a woman in her mid-20s. She was pregnant. She had an explosive injury from an airstrike on her home. She lost her husband, her kids, her leg was amputated, and she lost her baby as well. It was really very difficult for everyone, for the medical staff, to see this case.
Greece’s Aegean Airlines said on Tuesday that it cancelled flights to Beirut until 1 August, due to the current situation, Reuters reports.
“We are constantly evaluating the developments following the instructions of the competent authorities,” the airlines said.
US defence secretary says Hezbollah-Israel conflict not inevitable
US defence secretary Lloyd Austin does not believe that a fight between Israel and Hezbollah is inevitable, and said Washington would like to see things resolved in a diplomatic fashion, Reuters reports.
“While we’ve seen a lot of activity on Israel’s northern border, we remain concerned about the potential of this escalating into a full-blown fight. And I don’t believe that a fight is inevitable,” Austin said. “We’d like to see things resolved in a diplomatic fashion.”
Austin made the comments on Tuesday at a joint press conference in Manila, after security talks between himself, US secretary of state Antony Blinken and their Philippine counterparts, Gilberto Teodoro and Enrique Manalo.
Druze leaders in the annexed Golan Heights have distanced themselves from Israeli threats to retaliate against Lebanon’s Hezbollah group, who Israel blamed for a deadly rocket strike on a Druze Arab town in the territory, the AFP reports.
Most of Majdal Shams’s around 11,000 mainly Druze residents still identify as Syrian more than half a century after Israel seized the Golan Heights from Syria and later annexed it in a move not recognised by the international community.
On a visit to the town on Monday, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Israel would deliver a “severe response” to the strike, which killed 12 children aged between 10 and 16 as they played football in the town on Saturday.
In a statement issued after his visit, Druze lay and religious leaders said the community rejects the “attempt to exploit the name of Majdal Shams as a political platform at the expense of the blood of our children”.
Noting that the Druze faith “forbids killing and revenge in any form”, the community leaders said “we reject the shedding of even a single drop of blood under the pretext of avenging our children”.
Skin diseases are running rampant in Gaza, health officials have told the Associated Press, due to appalling conditions in overcrowded tent camps housing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians driven from their homes.
Palestinians say they have no soap to wash themselves, their children or their clothes during the summer heat. The sanitation system has collapsed amid Israel’s bombardment and offensives, the UN says.
The World Health Organization has reported more than 160,00 cases of lice, scabies and skin rashes. At one hospital, doctors report hundreds of skin disease cases a day, including a steady stream of children, covered in spots, scabs, rashes and lesions that turn into worse infections.
Israeli strikes hit Syrian air defence bases
Two air defence bases in southern Syria have been struck by Israeli missiles overnight, a war monitor has said.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported no casualties in the overnight strikes in Daraa province, which abuts the armistice line separating Syrian and Israeli forces on the Golan.
Syria’s state-run media did not report any strikes.
The move marks a further rise in tensions on Israel’s northern border after a deadly rocket strike on the annexed Golan Heights killed 12 over the weekend.
Italian PM tells Israel not to fall into ‘trap’ of retaliation
Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni on Tuesday called on Israel not to fall into the “trap” of retaliation, saying she was “very, very worried” by the situation in Lebanon and by the risk of a regional escalation, Reuters reports.
Speaking during an official visit to China, Meloni said the international community should continue sending messages of moderation, and that China could help in these efforts, having “solid ties” with Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the Middle East.
Lebanon is on high alert after Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised a “harsh” response to a deadly rocket strike on the occupied Golan Heights, saying, “the state of Israel will not and cannot let this pass”.
Diplomatic efforts to avert an escalation in the exchanges of fire between the militant group Hezbollah and Israel – which have taken place almost daily since the outbreak of the Israel-Gaza war – were in high gear, with the US leading the drive.
US secretary of state Antony Blinken spoke with Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Monday, emphasising the “importance of preventing escalation” and discussing efforts to reach a diplomatic solution to months of conflict.
White House spokesperson John Kirby told reporters that Israel had every right to respond to the Golan strike, but that nobody wanted a broader war.
“As for conversations over the weekend, you bet we’ve had them and we had them at multiple levels,” he added. “But I’m not going to detail the guts of those conversations.”
Lebanon’s deputy parliament speaker Elias Bou Saab, who said he had been in contact with US mediator Amos Hochstein since Saturday’s Golan attack, told Reuters Israel could avert the threat of major escalation by sparing the capital, Beirut, and its environs.
“If they avoid civilians and they avoid Beirut and its suburbs, then their attack could be well calculated,” he said.
Israeli officials have said that their country wants to hurt Hezbollah but not drag the region into all-out war.
More on that soonest. In other key developments:
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Two senior Israeli defence officials have told Reuters that Israel wants to hurt Hezbollah but does not want to drag the region into an all out war, while two other officials said the country was preparing for the possibility of a few days of fighting. “The estimation is that the response will not lead to an all-out war,” said the diplomatic source. “That would not be in our interest at this point.”
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The US is leading a diplomatic dash to deter Israel from striking Lebanon’s capital Beirut or major civil infrastructure in response to a deadly rocket attack on the Golan Heights, five people with knowledge of the drive said according to Reuters. The focus of the high-speed diplomacy has been to constrain Israel’s response by urging it against targeting densely populated Beirut, the southern suburbs of the city that form Hezbollah’s heartland, or key infrastructure like airports and bridges, said the sources who requested anonymity to discuss confidential details that haven’t been previously reported.
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An Israeli drone strike outside the southern Lebanese town of Shaqra on Monday killed two people and wounded three, including a child, according to the Lebanese civil defense. The rescue service did not say whether those killed were fighters or civilians.
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About 300 friends, supporters and relatives of the slain children protested against a visit by Netanyahu on Monday to the soccer field in Majdal Shams in the Golan Hieghts where Saturday’s strike took place. They shouted that he was exploiting the bloodshed for political gain and called for an end to the violence. Some held up pictures of the children, saying they wanted no more deaths.
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Western governments have called for calm and some have advised their citizens to leave Lebanon. The foreign ministry in Berlin called on the about 1,300 German nationals who were believed to be in the country to get out “as long as there is still time”. Italian foreign minister Antonio Tajani discussed preventing a new war in the Middle East with his Israeli and Lebanese counterparts, Israel Katz and Bou Habib on Monday.
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The Cypriot foreign minister said the country is on standby to assist in the evacuation of civilians from the Middle East if a standoff between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon escalates. “We are all hoping it won’t be necessary, but should that not happen, Cyprus will continue to operate as a safety bridge in facilitating the departure of civilians from any embattled zone in our area,” said Constantinos Kombos.
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An investigation by the Israeli military into the alleged abuse of a Palestinian detainee at a notorious military detention camp for prisoners captured in Gaza has sparked protests from members of Israel’s far right. The Israeli military said on Monday the office of its advocate general ordered an inquiry “following suspected substantial abuse of a detainee” at the Sde Teiman facility, which holds Palestinian detainees, including alleged members of Hamas’s elite Nukhba forces involved in the 7 October attack. The detentions prompted outcry from a coalition of extreme-right members of parliament and their supporters who attempted to storm the military base in protest.