MAARAB, Lebanon (AP) — The leader of a main Christian political party in Lebanon blasted the Shiite militant group Hezbollah for opening a front with Israel to back up its ally Hamas, saying it has harmed Lebanon without making a dent in Israel’s crushing offensive in the Gaza Strip.

In an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday night, Samir Geagea of the Lebanese Forces Party said Hezbollah should withdraw from areas along the border with Israel and the Lebanese army should deploy in all points where militants of the Iran-backed group have taken positions.

His comments came as Western diplomats try to broker a de-escalation in the border conflict amid fears of a wider war.

Hezbollah began launching rockets toward Israeli military posts on Oct. 8, the day after Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel in a surprise attack that sparked the crushing war in Gaza.

Maryam Alwan figured the worst was over after New York City police in riot gear arrested her and other protesters on the Columbia University campus, loaded them onto buses and held them in custody for hours.

But the next evening, the college junior received an email from the university. Alwan and other students were being suspended after their arrests at the “ Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” a tactic colleges across the country have deployed to calm growing campus protests against the Israel-Hamas war.

The students' plight has become a central part of protests, with students and a growing number of faculty demanding their amnesty. At issue is whether universities and law enforcement will clear the charges and withhold other consequences, or whether the suspensions and legal records will follow students into their adult lives.

Terms of the suspensions vary from campus to campus. At Columbia and its affiliated Barnard College for women, Alwan and dozens more were arrested April 18 and promptly barred from campus and classes, unable to attend in-person or virtually, and banned from dining halls.

The Israel Defense Forces on Tuesday rejected Hamas’s allegation as “baseless.” It said forces searching for Israeli hostages had examined bodies previously buried by Palestinians near Nasser Hospital and had returned the bodies to where they were buried after they were examined.

It has been documented that Palestinians buried their dead at the hospital grounds both before and while Israeli troops operated in the area. Hamas officials in Gaza claimed on Saturday to discover a mass grave with more than 200 bodies at a hospital in Khan Younis that was recently the target of a military raid.

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It has been documented that Palestinians buried their dead at the hospital grounds both before and while Israeli troops operated in the area. The location of that burial site was geo-located by experts to the same location where Hamas officials claimed to have discovered the new mass grave.

Columbia University has banned one of the students leading the university’s pro-Palestinian protests, a university spokesperson told CNN on Friday.

Khymani James, a student spokesperson for Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) coalition, acknowledged in a post on X that he said, “Zionists don’t deserve to live,” saying it was from an Instagram Live video taken in January.

“I misspoke in the heat of the moment, for which I apologize," James wrote.

“I want to make clear that calls of violence and statements targeted at individuals based on their religious, ethnic or national identity are unacceptable and violate university policy,” the university spokesperson said.

Former International Court of Justice President Joan Donoghue told BBC's HARDtalk on Thursday that there had been a general misunderstanding of the meaning of the ICJ's ruling on the case.

Donoghue served as the ICJ's president from 2021 until 2024 and served on the court from 2010. She presided over South Africa's case against Israel, representing the court.

When she was asked about the court's ruling on the case, she clarified a general misunderstanding of its meaning.

The court decided that "the Palestinians had a plausible right to be protected from genocide" and that "South Africa had a right to present that in the court."

"It did not decide, and this is something where I'm correcting something that's often said in the media. It did not decide that the claim of genocide was plausible." Clarifying further, she said that the order emphasized there was a risk to the Palestinian right to be protected from genocide. "The shorthand that often appears, which is that there's a plausible case of genocide, isn't what the court decided."

IDF says terrorists fired mortar shells at under-construction US-led Gaza aid pier as UN officials toured site

Members of a terror group in the Gaza Strip launched mortars at an under-construction pier for a US-led project to bring aid into the Palestinian enclave yesterday, the military says.

The mortar attack occurred as United Nations officials were touring the site with Israeli troops on the coast of central Gaza, the IDF says in response to a query on the incident.

The IDF says the UN officials were rushed to a shelter by troops amid the attack. UN officials also confirmed the mortar attack to the Associated Press, saying there were no injuries.

“The terrorist organizations continue to systematically harm humanitarian efforts while risking the lives of UN workers, while Israel allows the supply of aid to the residents of the Gaza Strip,” the IDF adds.

President Biden and 17 other world leaders issued a statement Thursday calling on Hamas to release the remaining hostages taken during the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel, arguing that doing so would bring about a prolonged cease-fire in the ongoing conflict in Gaza.

“We call for the immediate release of all hostages held by Hamas in Gaza now for over 200 days. They include our own citizens,” the leaders wrote. “The fate of the hostages and the civilian population in Gaza, who are protected under international law, is of international concern.”

“We emphasize that the deal on the table to release the hostages would bring an immediate and prolonged ceasefire in Gaza, that would facilitate a surge of additional necessary humanitarian assistance to be delivered throughout Gaza, and lead to the credible end of hostilities,” they continued. “Gazans would be able to return to their homes and their lands with preparations beforehand to ensure shelter and humanitarian provisions.”

The statement was signed by Biden, as well as the leaders of Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Columbia, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Spain, Thailand and the United Kingdom. The countries all have citizens who are being held or are missing in Gaza following Hamas’ terrorist attacks in Israel last October, a senior administration official said.

Hamas is fundamentally responsible for the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza, US Special Envoy David Satterfield told reporters on Tuesday, as he dismissed a question about Hamas's humanitarian policy compared to that of Israel.

"Hamas's humanitarian policy is the opposite of humanitarian. It is to use innocent civilians as shields, as presumed protection for their own facilities, for their own terrorist military forces," he said, as he appeared startled by the comparison.

“The fundamental actor responsible for the suffering here is a terrorist group — Hamas,” explained Satterfield, who is specifically tasked with humanitarian issues relating to Gaza.

“The fighting in Gaza, the suffering of the Palestinian people could end tonight, if Hamas chose to accept the deal for the release of hostages in the establishment of a cease-fire. And that ceasefire could with further releases be sustained.

Foreign Minister Israel Katz accused United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres of standing “shoulder to shoulder with the rapists and murderers of Hamas” for declining to include the terror group in a report published Tuesday on organizations suspected by the UN of committing acts of sexual violence during conflict.

The document, titled “Conflict-related sexual violence,” and published as a “Report of the Secretary-General,” noted there is evidence that sex crimes were committed during the Palestinian terror group Hamas’s devastating October 7 attack on Israel, but did not specifically attribute responsibility to Hamas.

The ministry elaborated in the statement that Guterres ignored “the plethora of testimony and evidence that was collected and then included in the report of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict Pramila Patten.” Patten’s report after her visit to Israel found that rape likely occurred during the Hamas attacks, and said there was convincing evidence hostages were facing sexual abuse in Gaza. In his report, Guterres referenced Patten’s assessment, but noted that it, “not being investigative in nature and given its limited duration, did not draw conclusions on attribution to specific armed groups or determine prevalence of incidents of conflict-related sexual violence during and after the attacks of 7 October. Such a determination would require a fully-fledged investigation.”

Guterres, fumed Katz, refused to acknowledge Hamas’s responsibility for the grave sexual crimes that appear in the Patten report and to declare it a terrorist organization.

Hamas officials in Gaza claimed on Saturday to discover a mass grave with more than 200 bodies at a hospital in Khan Younis that was recently the target of a military raid. The officials claimed the dead were buried in a mass grave by Israeli forces, but evidence suggested this claim was false, with the bodies having previously been buried at that same location by Palestinians amid the fighting between Israeli forces and terror operatives in the area.

The Israel Defense Forces on Tuesday rejected Hamas’s allegation as “baseless.” It said forces searching for Israeli hostages had examined bodies previously buried by Palestinians near Nasser Hospital and had returned the bodies to where they were buried after they were examined.

It has been documented that Palestinians buried their dead at the hospital grounds both before and while Israeli troops operated in the area. Hamas officials in Gaza claimed on Saturday to discover a mass grave with more than 200 bodies at a hospital in Khan Younis that was recently the target of a military raid.

--snip-

It has been documented that Palestinians buried their dead at the hospital grounds both before and while Israeli troops operated in the area. The location of that burial site was geo-located by experts to the same location where Hamas officials claimed to have discovered the new mass grave.