Israel’s Netanyahu says will take over Gaza, starvation deaths rise

PM Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel will “take control of all of Gaza” in an interview, claims authority to be handed over to a third party upon military victory.
Gaza’s hospitals have recorded four new deaths “due to famine and malnutrition over the past 24 hours”, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry, raising the total number of hunger-related deaths to 197, including 96 children.
Lebanese government plan compounds the rapid decline of Hezbollah
In the years after the 2006 war, when Hezbollah valiantly fought Israel to a stalemate and declared victory, the Lebanese group appeared invincible.

Its domestic influence in Lebanon grew as it amassed a massive rocket arsenal. Meanwhile, the group had established deterrence on the Lebanon-Israeli border, stopping the near-daily Israeli violations of the past decades.

Then, the war on Gaza and the regional violence that followed it changed everything. When Israel increased its attacks on the group, following months of low-level exchanges of fire, Hezbollah’s resourcefulness and the experience of its battle-hardened fighters were no match for Israel’s firepower and intelligence capabilities.

A quick succession of heavy punches left the group in tatters: the unprecedented pager attack in September of last year; enormous waves of air strikes that depleted Hezbollah’s arsenal and killed hundreds of civilians; the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah and other political and military leaders.

Hezbollah was forced to a de facto unilateral ceasefire that allowed Israel to destroy most of Lebanon’s border villages, leading to what amounts to ethnic cleansing of the area.

Then, the regime of Bashar al-Assad, a strong ally of Hezbollah, fell in Syria, and he was replaced by former rebels hostile to the Lebanese group.

Now in Lebanon itself, Hezbollah is seeing the government it once dominated turn against it and push to disarm it under US pressure.
UNICEF warns of ‘staggering’ increase in child acute malnutrition
The UN’s child relief agency (UNICEF) says the number of Palestinian children suffering from acute malnutrition in Gaza has surged from about 2,000 in February to nearly 12,000 now.

“It is clear evidence that malnutrition is accelerating rapidly, putting young lives at grave risk,” the agency wrote on X.

“We know how to prevent and treat malnutrition. The tools exist. The expertise exists. But without safe, sustained access, they mean nothing. Children in Gaza need urgent access to aid at scale and a ceasefire. NOW.”