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Israel’s military on Wednesday launched a new operation against Palestinian armed groups in the occupied West Bank, where a local governor told AFP that Israeli forces had raided several towns.The Israeli military, police and internal security service said in a joint statement that they had begun “a broad counter-terrorism operation” in the north of the Palestinian territory after they received intelligence about “attempts to establish terrorist strongholds”.The military said the operation began with air strikes to isolate the area, which were followed by “searches” on the ground, during which suspects were questioned and funds were confiscated.It also said it shot and killed a “terrorist (who) hurled an explosive toward (Israeli) troops operating in the Qabatiya area”, in the Jenin governorate, adjacent to Tubas.The Israeli army confirmed to AFP that it was a new operation, and not part of the one launched in January 2025, which primarily targeted Palestinian refugee camps in the northern West Bank.Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967.The operation, which began overnight, was taking place in predominantly agricultural Tubas, the northeasternmost of the 11 governorates in the West Bank.Ahmed al-Asaad, governor of the Tubas region, told AFP: “This is the first time that the entire governorate is included — the whole governorate is now under Israeli army operations.”Asaad said Israeli forces raided the towns of Tammun and Tayasir and the Al-Faraa Palestinian refugee camp.”The army has closed the city entrances with earth mounds, so there is no movement at all,” he added.He told AFP that “an Apache helicopter” was involved in the operation, and said it had fired in the direction of residential areas.”This is a political operation, not a security one,” he said.- Injuries reported -An AFP photographer saw some soldiers walking around inside Tubas city, with a few armoured cars driving through and a surveillance aerial vehicle buzzing overhead. Most shops were closed.The road entrance to nearby Tammun had been closed off by a military vehicle. An ambulance was allowed to go through but citizens were not. Armoured cars were driving around at the scene.The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said its teams in the governorate had treated 10 injured people, four of whom had to be transferred to hospital.It added that some of its teams were “facing obstruction in transporting patients in the city of Tubas and the town of Tammun since dawn” and were still responding to calls for help following the raids.The UN’s humanitarian agency OCHA said on Wednesday evening that a curfew had been imposed in the area, and that at least two dozen families were forced to evacuate as Israeli troops took over their homes.Militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad condemned the Israeli operation.Hamas said in a statement that it was part of a policy “aimed at crushing any Palestinian presence in order to achieve complete control over the West Bank”.Violence in the West Bank has soared since Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel triggered the Gaza war, and has not ceased despite the fragile truce between Israel and Hamas coming into effect last month.Israeli troops or settlers have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians, many of them militants, but also scores of civilians, in the West Bank since the start of the Gaza war, according to an AFP tally based on Palestinian health ministry figures.At least 44 Israelis, including both soldiers and civilians, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or Israeli military operations, according to official Israeli figures.

Tension is escalating between Israel’s political and military top brass over accountability for the failures behind the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused of sidestepping blame.Weekly protests against Netanyahu’s leadership of the subsequent two-year war in Gaza and demanding the return of hostages became emblematic of the anger boiling within parts of Israeli society over how the attack and its fallout have been handled.Much of the Israeli public has been calling — in vain — for an independent inquiry into the events leading up to the 2023 Hamas attack, which resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people.Polls show more than 70 percent of Israelis want a state commission of inquiry, which have been set up in the past to investigate major state-level failings.The one established after the October 1973 Arab-Israeli war led to the resignation of prime minister Golda Meir in June 1974.The decision to create a commission rests with the government, but its members must be appointed by the president of the supreme court.Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition government has accused the court of political bias.More than two years on from the Hamas attack, no such inquiry has been established, and Netanyahu once again rejected the idea in parliament on November 10 — accusing the opposition of seeking to turn it into a “political tool”.Netanyahu is no stranger to the art of political survival. The 76-year-old is Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, having spent more than 18 years in the post across three spells since 1996.”Netanyahu doesn’t take responsibility for anything: it’s always someone’s fault,” said Yossi Mekelberg, a Middle East expert at the London-based think-tank Chatham House.”The idea that after these two years, there’s no inquest, and he tried to escape it — most Israelis won’t accept it,” he told AFP.- ‘Puzzling’ -Israel’s military announced on Sunday the dismissal of three generals and disciplinary action against several other senior officers over their failure to prevent the October 2023 attack.The move came two weeks after the publication of a report raking over the military’s internal investigations into the October 7 attacks.Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, Israel’s top military chief, appointed an independent committee of experts to undertake the review.In presenting their findings on November 10, Zamir called for a wider “systemic investigation”, to learn lessons from the October 7 onslaught.According to Israeli media, the remarks were seen as a betrayal by Netanyahu, for whom Zamir had served as a military adviser.On Monday, Defence Minister Israel Katz announced that he had commissioned a review of the committee’s work.The decision was swiftly labelled “puzzling” by Zamir.The military “is the only body in the country that has thoroughly investigated its own failures and taken responsibility for them,” said a military statement on Zamir’s behalf.”If any further examination is required to complete the picture, it must take the form of an external, objective and independent commission,” it added.- ‘Yes man’ -According to independent analyst Michael Horowitz, Katz is seen by the Israeli public as a “political loyalist, a ‘yes man’ who rarely diverges from Netanyahu”.Friction between the political and military elite is not a new phenomenon under Netanyahu, he told AFP, but the recent spat is unusually public.”The main reason is that this isn’t about personality so much as a divide as to who is to blame for October 7, and how this question should be settled,” he said.Netanyahu has said there will be no state commission of inquiry before the end of the war in Gaza.Instead, in mid-November, the government announced it was setting up an “independent” probe into the October 7 failures — but one whose composition would be chosen by a panel of cabinet ministers.The move sparked anger in Israel, with thousands of protesters rallying in Tel Aviv on Saturday to demand a full state commission of inquiry.”It should be an objective committee,” Eliad Shraga, the chairman of the NGO Movement for Quality Government, told AFP at the protest.”A committee who will really find out how come that we had such a failure, such a crisis.”Netanyahu has so far never acknowledged responsibility for the failures that led to October 7.”He has one strong and straightforward incentive not to take responsibility,” Horowitz told AFP.”Accepting the blame means leaving office. After all, almost all of those who accepted part of the blame have left.”Netanyahu has said he will stand in the next elections, to be held before the end of 2026.

Iran will allow two French citizens held by the Islamic republic for over three years to return home in “exchange” for France freeing an Iranian citizen “in the next two months”, Tehran’s foreign minister said on Wednesday.In an interview with TV channel France 24 after talks in Paris with his French counterpart Jean-Noel Barrot, Abbas Araghchi said “an exchange was negotiated between us and France”.French citizens Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris, who were arrested in May 2022, were freed from prison earlier this month but are still at Paris’s embassy in Tehran waiting for permission to leave Iran.Iranian Mahdieh Esfandiari was meanwhile arrested in France in February on charges of promoting “terrorism” on social media, according to French authorities. She is to go on trial in Paris from January 13 but was last month released on bail by the French judicial authorities and is now at the Iranian embassy in Paris.”There has been an agreement and indeed, we are waiting for the entire legal and judicial process to take place in both countries,” Araghchi said.”I hope, I think, that in the next two months… it will be completed and the exchange will take place,” the Iranian minister said.France has neither confirmed nor denied the existence of such an exchange deal.France has described Kohler and Paris as “state hostages” taken by Tehran in a bid to extract concessions. They were convicted on espionage charges their families have always condemned as fabricated.Dozens of Europeans, north Americans and other Western citizens have been arrested in the last few years in similar circumstances.Iran has previously carried out exchanges of Westerners for Iranians held by the West but insists foreigners are convicted fully in line with the law.”The verdict has been issued (against Kohler and Paris), but based on Iranian law, prisoners can be exchanged in the interest of national security, and the exchange process is decided within the framework of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council,” said Araghchi. 

Rachelle Mazraani is travelling from Sydney to Beirut for Pope Leo XIV’s visit this week, one of many Lebanese at home and abroad who hope the trip will revive their struggling country.After visiting Turkey, Leo is to arrive in Lebanon on Sunday for a three-day trip that includes an open-air mass at Beirut’s waterfront that organisers expect to draw 120,000 people.He will also hold a special meeting with those aged 16 to 35 in Bkerke, north of Beirut, where the patriarchate of Lebanon’s Maronite Church is located.”As a young Lebanese woman living abroad, this visit represents a deep reassurance that Lebanon is not forgotten,” the Australian-born Mazraani, 23, who works in sales and marketing, told AFP by telephone.She is among some 500 young people from church delegations from several countries who will attend the pope’s youth meeting on Monday.Leo’s visit “reminds us that Lebanon still has a mission in this region, a spiritual identity that cannot be erased by crisis or conflict”, she said, adding that it urges “us not to lose faith in who we are or in what Lebanon can still become”.The small Mediterranean country has faced waves of crisis and conflict that have driven people to emigrate, with millions of Lebanese or their descendants now living abroad.The number of Christians has plummeted, though no official figures are available as authorities have not held a recent census.The community plays an important political role in multi-confessional Lebanon, the only Arab country with a Christian head of state. Under the country’s power-sharing system, the post of president is reserved for a Maronite Christian.- ‘Suffering deeply’ -Billboards showing Leo with the slogan “Blessed are the peacemakers” have sprouted across the country.It is a welcome message for a country still the target of regular Israeli strikes despite a November 2024 ceasefire that sought to end more than a year of hostilities between Israel and militant group Hezbollah.But many fear a return to broader conflict.”Lebanon has been suffering deeply, from ongoing crises to the most recent Israeli strikes, and our hearts are tired,” Mazraani said.”While no single visit can solve everything overnight, I pray it inspires all of us… to come together to rebuild and to work for the Lebanon that we all dream of,” she said.The pope is expected to emphasise interfaith dialogue and to call for peace during his visit to the Middle East, whose overall Christian community is diminishing.The Lebanon visit “carries enormous significance”, said university student Gilbert Bakhos, 19, adding that it brings “unity and peace”.He said he had travelled from Nigeria to be part of the youth meeting, which he called a “historic moment”.”I hope to hear a message that motivates our country” to improve things “so my parents and family and our people can return”, he said, adding: “Nobody likes to live far from their country.”Lebanon has declared a two-day official holiday to allow people to participate in Leo’s public events.Some hotels are offering special deals, including discounts on bookings and transport to the mass.- ‘Struggling’ -Leo is visiting “at a time when even the Lebanese are afraid to come”, said Anthony Khadige, 33, a communications manager who was set to travel from Dubai.”We live in a world in which we have lost hope… All we see is killing and bombing and blood,” he said, expressing optimism that the visit would “restore hope to people’s hearts”.The largest foreign delegation attending the youth meeting is from neighbouring Syria, which has emerged from a nearly 14-year civil war after the December ouster of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad.Syria’s Christian community has shrunk from around one million people before the war to fewer than 300,000 due to waves of displacement and emigration, experts say.In Damascus, Father Makarios Qalouma from a Greek Catholic parish said he was keen for the visit to bring “hope and peace” to Lebanon and Syria.Syrian Christians’ participation is an important message that “despite all the crises and difficulties that Syrian society has been through, and particularly the Christians… we are still here”.A deadly suicide attack on a church in Damascus in June has further stoked fears among the country’s minority community.Qalouma, who is heading a 300-strong delegation including some 190 young people, said Syrian Christians were “struggling and fighting through all these crises to stay in our country”.Malik Jabra, head of a Catholic group, said the delegation sought support for a people “who have suffered greatly — particularly Christians who are thinking of emigrating”.

In one afternoon, Amani Bazzi went from being a doting mother-of-four to a widow grieving three young children.An Israeli strike in south Lebanon killed them as the family was returning home after having lunch with her parents.”Our whole life was our kids. We did everything together,” said Bazzi from the Beirut hospital where her eldest daughter Aseel, 13, is being treated for devastating head-to-toe wounds.”Why should they have been part of this horrific scene?” asked 33-year-old Bazzi. “Why did this happen to us?”Despite the enormous challenges they face to rebuild their shattered lives, both she and Aseel said they were determined to fight for accountability.”We will carry on until the end… to reach the international community” and global courts “to get justice for Chadi, Hadi, Cylan and Celine”, Bazzi said.Aseel, her voice soft but her gaze firm despite her injuries, said: “When I get out (of hospital) and stand on my feet, the first thing I want to do is get justice for them.”They were wronged, they were innocent. This shouldn’t have happened to them.”A ceasefire that came into effect on November 27, 2024 was supposed to end more than a year of hostilities including two months of all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah. The violence erupted when the militant group launched cross-border fire at Israel over the Gaza war.However, despite the truce, Israel has kept up near daily strikes on Lebanon, usually saying it is targeting Hezbollah sites and operatives.- Stroller, tiny shoes -On September 21, Bazzi and her husband Chadi Charara, 46, who sold cars, were driving from her parents’ house in Bint Jbeil, near the border with Israel.With them were Aseel, their daughter Celine, 10, and twin toddlers Hadi and Cylan — a boy and a girl.They planned to visit her grandfather on their way home to the coastal city of Tyre, she said.”We weren’t afraid because we aren’t part of a political party,” Bazzi said. Besides, they had become used to the sound of Israeli aircraft overhead.When the strike hit, they had stopped in the car to greet a passerby on a motorbike, a relative of her husband who was also killed.Some 340 people have been killed and almost 1,000 wounded in Lebanon since the ceasefire, according to health ministry figures.UN rights office spokesman Thameen Al-Kheetan said on Tuesday that the office had verified at least 127 of the dead were civilians.An AFP photographer saw the wreckage of the family vehicle, which Bazzi said contained items like the twins’ stroller, tiny shoes they had just bought for Hadi, and food from her mother.The Israeli military said in a statement that the raid killed a Hezbollah operative, without naming him. It acknowledged that “as a result of the strike, several uninvolved civilians were killed”, adding that it “regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals”. It said the incident was under review.- ‘Mother in heaven’ -At the funeral, crowds of mourners gathered around Bazzi and her family’s coffins, two of them tiny. They were all draped in the colours of the Lebanese flag with its cedar tree — unlike at funerals for Hezbollah members where coffins usually bear the group’s yellow standard.Bazzi was herself badly wounded in the strike, and attended the funeral on a stretcher, her hospital armband visible on her wrist.Home videos show the bright-eyed twins, aged one year and seven months, laughing and playing together, or her daughter Celine singing.Celine was like a second mother to the twins, Bazzi said. “Now for sure she’s their mother in heaven.”UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Morris Tidball-Binz, told AFP the attack that killed Bazzi’s family “was a targeted killing of unarmed civilians”.He said it violated the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and international humanitarian law.Tidball-Binz is an independent expert mandated by the UN Human Rights Council, but who does not speak on behalf of the United Nations.He said in a statement that Israel was bound to international human rights law and international humanitarian law obligations, “the violation of which amounts in this case to arbitrary killings… and a war crime”.Bazzi said her family home in Tyre was destroyed last year when an Israeli raid on a nearby building sparked a blaze.”First we lost our home… then we lost our whole family,” she said, wearing a jumper reading “Wish you were here” and a badge showing her husband and slain children.