Nasrallah Warns Israel over Border Dispute with Lebanon

A picture taken on February 24, 2018 from Lebanon's southern border town of Naqoura on the border with Israel, shows the maritime boundaries between Lebanon and Israel. (AFP via Getty Images)
A picture taken on February 24, 2018 from Lebanon's southern border town of Naqoura on the border with Israel, shows the maritime boundaries between Lebanon and Israel. (AFP via Getty Images)
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Nasrallah Warns Israel over Border Dispute with Lebanon

A picture taken on February 24, 2018 from Lebanon's southern border town of Naqoura on the border with Israel, shows the maritime boundaries between Lebanon and Israel. (AFP via Getty Images)
A picture taken on February 24, 2018 from Lebanon's southern border town of Naqoura on the border with Israel, shows the maritime boundaries between Lebanon and Israel. (AFP via Getty Images)

The leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah party issued a warning Tuesday to archenemy Israel over the two countries’ maritime border dispute, saying that “any arm” that reaches to steal Lebanon’s wealth “will be cut off.”

Hassan Nasrallah's remarks came amid intensified US efforts to resolve a more than a decade-old maritime border dispute between Israel and Lebanon, which have officially been at war since Israel’s creation in 1948.

Both countries claim some 860 square kilometers (330 square miles) of the Mediterranean Sea. Lebanon also claims that the Karish gas field is in disputed territory under ongoing maritime border negotiations while Israel says it lies within its internationally recognized economic waters.

Amos Hochstein, a senior adviser for energy security at the US State Department who has been mediating in the dispute, met with top Lebanese officials last week. After the talks, he said the two countries are getting closer to reaching a deal in the dispute.

Hochstein was later reported to have visited Israel and is expected back in Beirut in the coming weeks with Israeli responses to Lebanese requests.

Israel and Hezbollah are bitter enemies that fought a monthlong war in the summer of 2006. Israel considers the Iran-backed Shiite militant group its most serious immediate threat, estimating that Hezbollah has some 150,000 rockets and missiles aimed at Israel.

In his speech during a rally south of Beirut, attended by tens of thousands to mark Ashoura, Nasrallah said Lebanon “should be ready to all possibilities.”

“We will not tolerate the idea that our wealth be stolen,” Nasrallah said.

Lebanon badly needs an agreement over the maritime border in the Mediterranean as it hopes to exploit offshore gas reserves to try and alleviate what has become the worst economic crisis in its modern history.

Last month, the Israeli military shot down three unarmed Hezbollah drones flying over the Karish field. Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati at the time criticized Hezbollah, saying the move could pose risks to the country. Hezbollah later aired drone footage showing Israeli ships in the area.

“Don’t make mistakes with Lebanon nor with the people of Lebanon,” Nasrallah said. “Any arm that tries to reach for any of this (Lebanese) wealth will be cut off.”

Nasrallah also warned Israel not to target any Palestinian officials in Lebanon amid a ceasefire that ended three days of deadly fighting between Israel and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group in the Gaza Strip. The Islamic Jihad group, along with the much larger Hamas group that runs Gaza, is a Hezbollah ally.



Israeli Fire Kills 30 in Gaza, Medics Say, as Attention Shifts to Iran 

Palestinians carry sacks and boxes of food and humanitarian aid unloaded from a World Food Program convoy that had been heading to Gaza City, in the northern Gaza Strip, Monday, June 16, 2025. (AP)
Palestinians carry sacks and boxes of food and humanitarian aid unloaded from a World Food Program convoy that had been heading to Gaza City, in the northern Gaza Strip, Monday, June 16, 2025. (AP)
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Israeli Fire Kills 30 in Gaza, Medics Say, as Attention Shifts to Iran 

Palestinians carry sacks and boxes of food and humanitarian aid unloaded from a World Food Program convoy that had been heading to Gaza City, in the northern Gaza Strip, Monday, June 16, 2025. (AP)
Palestinians carry sacks and boxes of food and humanitarian aid unloaded from a World Food Program convoy that had been heading to Gaza City, in the northern Gaza Strip, Monday, June 16, 2025. (AP)

Israeli gunfire and strikes killed at least 30 people across the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, local health authorities said, as some Palestinians there said their plight was being forgotten as attention shifted to the air war between Israel and Iran.

The deaths included the latest in near daily killings of Palestinians seeking aid in the three weeks since Israel partially lifted a total blockade on Gaza that it had imposed for almost three months.

Medics said separate airstrikes on homes in the Maghazi refugee camp and Zeitoun neighborhood in central and northern Gaza killed at least 14 people, while five others were killed in an airstrike on a tent encampment in Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

Eleven others were killed in Israeli fire at crowds of displaced Palestinians awaiting aid trucks brought in by the United Nations along the Salahuddin road in central Gaza, medics said.

The Israel army said it was looking into the reported deaths of people waiting for food. Regarding the other strikes, it said it was "operating to dismantle Hamas military capabilities" and "feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm."

On Tuesday, Gaza's health ministry said 397 Palestinians among those trying to get food aid had been killed and more than 3,000 wounded since aid deliveries restarted in late May.

Some in Gaza expressed concern that the latest escalations in the war between Israel and Hamas that began in October 2023 would be overlooked as the focus moved to Israel's five-day-old conflict with Iran.

"People are being slaughtered in Gaza, day and night, but attention has shifted to the Iran-Israel war. There is little news about Gaza these days," said Adel, a resident of Gaza City.

"Whoever doesn't die from Israeli bombs dies from hunger. People risk their lives every day to get food, and they also get killed and their blood smears the sacks of flour they thought they had won," he told Reuters via a chat app.

'FORGOTTEN'

Israel has been channeling much of the aid it is now allowing into Gaza through a new US- and Israeli-backed group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which operates a handful of distribution sites in areas guarded by Israeli forces.

It has said it will continue to allow aid into Gaza, home to more than 2 million people, while ensuring aid doesn't get into the hands of Hamas. Hamas denies seizing aid, saying Israel uses hunger as a weapon against the population in Gaza.

The Gaza war was triggered when Hamas-led fighters attacked Israel in October 2023, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli allies.

US ally Israel's subsequent military assault on Gaza has killed nearly 55,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's health ministry, displaced almost all the territory's residents, and caused a severe hunger crisis.

The assault has led to accusations of genocide and war crimes, which Israel denies.

Palestinians in Gaza have been closely following Israel's air war with Iran, long a major supporter of Hamas.

"We are maybe happy to see Israel suffer from Iranian rockets, but at the end of the day, one more day in this war costs the lives of tens of innocent people," said 47-year-old Shaban Abed, a father of five from northern Gaza.

"We just hope that a comprehensive solution could be reached to end the war in Gaza, too. We are being forgotten," he said.