标签： Oceania

In a development that keeps fragile peace hopes alive along the Israel-Lebanon border, US President Donald Trump announced Thursday that the two rival nations have agreed to extend their existing temporary ceasefire for an additional three weeks. The announcement came as the US leader laid out his vision for a landmark three-way summit at the White House to advance a potential full peace deal, even as fresh deadly exchanges of fire underscored the truce’s deep instability.

Speaking alongside Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors at the White House – the first high-level direct encounter between the two states, which have no formal diplomatic relations, since 1993 – Trump struck an optimistic tone about the prospect of ending decades of open conflict between the two nations. “I think there’s a very good chance of having peace. I think it should be an easy one,” he told reporters, adding that he expects Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun to travel to Washington for talks during the newly extended truce window.

The original ceasefire was first agreed on April 14 following initial ambassador-level talks and was set to expire Sunday. Lebanese officials had previously pushed for a one-month extension, with Aoun demanding the truce explicitly include commitments to halt destruction of civilian infrastructure, and end attacks on civilians, places of worship, medical and education facilities, and journalists. The demand gained urgent traction after a Lebanese journalist, Amal Khalil, was killed in an Israeli strike in Lebanon Wednesday, with mourners holding a funeral procession for her in the southern Lebanese town of Bissariye this week.

The current round of open conflict between Israel and Hezbollah dates back to late February, when Israel launched a major offensive in Lebanon in response to Hezbollah rocket fire. The Iran-aligned militant group had pledged retaliation after Israel killed Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the opening of the US-Israel war on Iran that began February 28. According to Lebanese authorities, the Israeli offensive has killed more than 2,450 people and displaced over one million, while Israeli forces have occupied a 10-kilometer deep “security zone” along the southern Lebanese border.

Even as the ceasefire extension was being announced at the White House, new violence erupted Thursday: Hezbollah confirmed it had launched a fresh barrage of rockets into northern Israel, saying the attack was retaliation for repeated Israeli violations of the original truce. Israeli officials reported that all incoming rockets were intercepted by their defense systems. The exchange followed a deadly day of Israeli strikes Wednesday that killed five people across Lebanon, including Khalil. On Thursday, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported an Israeli drone strike targeted a vehicle near the southern city of Nabatieh, roughly 35 kilometers north of the Israel-Lebanon border. Israel has repeatedly argued that truce terms allow it to carry out operations against what it frames as imminent or ongoing Hezbollah attacks, while Hezbollah has launched multiple small-scale attacks on Israeli troops and military assets in southern Lebanon in recent days.

Israeli ambassador to the US Yechiel Leiter struck a conciliatory tone Thursday, saying Israel seeks a formal peace agreement with the Lebanese government and claimed the campaign against Iran has significantly weakened Hezbollah’s military capacity. “We’re united with the Lebanese government in wanting to rid the country of this malign influence called Hezbollah,” he said.

The ceasefire extension comes against a backdrop of stalled US-Iran negotiations. Iran had made a full ceasefire in Lebanon a precondition for resuming talks with Washington aimed at ending the ongoing war, but refused to attend a planned second round of negotiations this week in protest of a continuing US naval blockade of Iran. Despite the breakdown, Trump announced Thursday he was extending an existing truce with Iran indefinitely. Notably, Lebanese President Aoun has already pushed back on a prior Trump claim that he would hold a direct telephone call with Netanyahu, signaling ongoing divisions remain even as diplomatic efforts move forward.

In a striking, somber display just steps from the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C., 20,000 stuffed teddy bears line a National Mall fence, each one standing in for a Ukrainian child Kyiv accuses Russia of abducting since the full-scale invasion began in 2022. On Thursday, Ukrainian activists and U.S. lawmakers gathered at the installation to draw global attention to the missing children, uniting under the urgent rallying cry: “Bring Them Home.”

For 24-year-old Ukrainian activist Mariia Hlyten, the sheer number of toys on display underscores the scale of the crisis unfolding while world powers work toward diplomatic resolution. “When you see the scale… you then start to understand how terrifying this is, and that all this time, while we are waiting for some kind of negotiations, there are children’s lives at stake,” Hlyten said, emphasizing that the abducted children must be repatriated without delay.

The event was organized by Razom for Ukraine, in partnership with the American Coalition for Ukraine. Three senior U.S. lawmakers addressed the crowd, each condemning the alleged abductions as a deliberate act of cultural erasure and a violation of international law. Senate Democrat Richard Blumenthal argued that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s campaign extends far beyond territorial conquest. “What Vladimir Putin is doing here is not trying to take territory alone. He’s not trying to defeat a nation alone,” Blumenthal said. “He’s trying to destroy the people, that is the purpose of abducting children, changing their names, re-education. Killing their identity, if not the children themselves — making sure that they never grow up speaking their own language, knowing their own religion and culture.”

House Democrat Jamie Raskin echoed Blumenthal’s criticism, calling the forced removals a blatant violation of international humanitarian standards and the laws of war. “It’s a war crime and if it’s done intentionally… it is part of the proof of genocide,” Raskin said.

Standing nearby draped in Ukraine’s blue-and-yellow national flag, 28-year-old Arkady Dolina, a Ukrainian and relative of Hlyten, described the mass abductions from Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories as “absolutely horrible.” He framed the campaign as the latest chapter in a long-running Russian policy of forced indoctrination, saying: “This is the continuation of a centuries long Russian policy to abduct, indoctrinate kids and then send them as their cannon fodder to fight their stupid, useless, brutal wars.”

Moscow has repeatedly denied all accusations of forcibly abducting Ukrainian children. Still, claims from Kyiv have gained traction from international bodies and world governments. In February, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that roughly 2,000 children had been successfully returned to Ukraine from Russia and Russian-held territories, but thousands more remain held captive. In March, the U.S. government launched a $25 million fund to support efforts to reunite displaced Ukrainian children with their families, a cause that former U.S. First Lady Melania Trump has also publicly backed. In 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Putin and his children’s rights commissioner, charging the pair with the war crime of unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children.

Kyiv alleges that Russia has systematically worked to erase the Ukrainian identity of abducted children, forcing them to undergo pro-Russian indoctrination, compelling many to take Russian citizenship. These claims have been corroborated by firsthand testimony from Ukrainians who have escaped Russian occupation.

A fragile 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon has been thrown into new controversy after an Israeli airstrike killed a seasoned Lebanese journalist and left another injured, triggering sharp accusations of deliberate war crimes from Beirut and condemnation from global human rights and United Nations officials.

On Wednesday, civil defense forces and Amal Khalil’s employer, Lebanese daily newspaper Al-Akhbar, confirmed the 42-year-old correspondent’s death. According to Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA), Khalil and fellow journalist Zeinab Faraj had fled to a residential home in the border village of Al-Tiri after Israeli forces targeted a car traveling immediately ahead of them. That initial strike killed two people inside the vehicle: the mayor of Bint Jbeil, a nearby town under Israeli occupation, and his companion.

Moments after the pair took shelter, a second Israeli airstrike hit the house they were hiding in. Faraj was evacuated to a local hospital with non-life-threatening wounds, but Khalil was left trapped under rubble. The Lebanese Red Cross confirmed its teams were able to extract Faraj, but were forced to retreat from the area after receiving an imminent strike warning, leaving them unable to reach Khalil. Rescue operations could only resume several hours later after Lebanese authorities coordinated with UN peacekeepers deployed to the southern border region to regain access, with Khalil’s body eventually recovered from the rubble.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun issued a formal statement Thursday accusing Israel of deliberately targeting journalists to cover up its military actions against Lebanese civilians, calling the killing an unambiguous war crime. Prime Minister Nawaf Salam echoed the condemnation in a post on X, noting that both targeting journalists and blocking access for emergency rescue teams violate international war norms, and confirmed his administration would formally bring the case to international judicial and human rights bodies. Lebanon’s health ministry additionally accused Israeli forces of targeting an ambulance clearly marked with the Red Cross emblem during the incident, a charge the Israeli military has denied.

The Israeli military offered a different account of the incident in its own statements, saying it had targeted two vehicles that departed from a Hezbollah military facility in southern Lebanon. It claimed the vehicles carried individuals classified as terrorists who had crossed the so-called “forward defense line” that Israeli forces established in southern Lebanon and were moving toward Israeli troop positions. An Israeli military spokesperson told Agence France-Presse Thursday that the incident remains under internal review, and denied that Israeli forces had blocked rescue teams from accessing the strike site.

Since the resumption of hostilities between Israel and the Iran-aligned militant group Hezbollah in October 2023, more than 2,400 people have been killed in Lebanon, a majority of them civilians. The 10-day ceasefire that went into effect last Friday was intended to open space for diplomatic negotiations to de-escalate the year-long cross-border conflict, which has displaced hundreds of thousands of Lebanese residents from the southern border region. Israel has maintained a forward presence in southern Lebanon and enforced a “yellow line” that bars displaced residents from returning to their homes in the area.

On Thursday, dozens of colleagues, family members, and supporters gathered in Khalil’s southern hometown of Baysariyeh for her funeral. Her coffin was draped in the Lebanese flag, decorated with flowers, and topped with her press helmet and vest, symbols of her work reporting from the front lines of the conflict. Hundreds more joined a protest in the capital Beirut to demand accountability for her death.

Global and regional rights groups have joined Lebanon’s leadership in condemning the killing, noting that Khalil is at least the fourth Lebanese journalist killed by Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon since the start of the current conflict. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) Middle East head Jonathan Dagher said the sequence of strikes that killed Khalil – the initial attack on the car, followed by the strike on the house where journalists had taken shelter, followed by the delay in rescue access – strongly indicates deliberate targeting of press workers and obstruction of emergency aid, both defined as war crimes under international law. Ramzi Kaiss, Lebanon researcher for Human Rights Watch, called for an independent, credible investigation into the killing, emphasizing that intentional strikes against civilians, including journalists, meet the legal definition of a war crime.

United Nations officials also weighed in on the incident. Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for UN Secretary-General António Guterres, reaffirmed that targeting civilians and blocking humanitarian and emergency access are clear violations of international humanitarian law. Dujarric added that Guterres has repeatedly stressed that journalists must be allowed to carry out their critical work of documenting conflict without fear of harassment, attack, or death. Back in March, an earlier Israeli airstrike killed three other journalists in southern Lebanon, prompting UN human rights experts to call for a full international investigation into that incident.

Speaking from the Beirut protest honoring Khalil, local journalist Inas Sherri told AFP that international accountability is the only way to end the pattern of press killings. “If we were holding people accountable, Israel would not have continued killing journalists one after another,” Sherri said.