Middle East latest: Striking Iran's nuclear facilities 'on the table', says ex-Mossad intelligence chief (2024)

The cabinet has approved a five-year plan that would see $5bn spent on rebuilding and strengthening communities near Israel's border with Gaza.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would invest the funds in housing, infrastructure, education, employment, health and other areas.

The funding came after the Hamas attacks on 7 October targeted communities near the border.

"Hamas terrorists wanted to uproot us - but we will uproot them and deepen our roots," Mr Netanyahu said in a statement.

"We will build the land of Israel and protect our country."

The prime minister's office said local communities would work with government ministries, and along with the business sector and philanthropy, to bring the region to be a "vital, flourishing and attractive area".

A massive US aid bill for countries including Israel and Ukraine held up for months will be filed in the House of Representatives today, the House speaker's has said.

Mike Johnson said the text of four bills providing assistance to Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific would be filed "soon today", with a fourth including "other measures to confront Russia, China and Iran" posted later.

The bill, worth some $95bn (£76bn), was approved by the Democrat-led Senate on 13 February, but is likely to face stiff opposition in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives when it eventually makes the floor.

Both houses of Congress must approve the bill before President Joe Biden can sign it into law.

However, former president Donald Trump and his Republican allies in Congress want funding directed toward domestic issues such as border control, rather than on foreign wars.

Critics of Mr Trump have suggested he is deliberately blocking legislation that would ensure funding for both Ukraine and border control because he intends to focus his election campaign on immigration and it is therefore not in his interests to improve the perceived problems.

The United Nations' Security Council will vote on Friday on whether to allow Palestine to fully join the organisation, anonymous sources have told the Reuters news agency.

Israel's ally the US is expected to block the move, as itwould effectively recognise a Palestinian state.

The 15-member council is due to vote at 3pm local time 8pm UK time on Friday on a draft resolution that recommends to the 193-memberUN General Assembly that "the state of Palestine be admittedto membership of the United Nations," said diplomats.

The council needs nine votes to pass it - and crucially no vetoes from any of the permanent members (US, UK, France, Russia or China).

Foreign ministers from the Group of Seven (G7) major democracies are gathering on the Italian island of Capri for three days of talks.

The meeting is being overshadowed by expectations of an Israeli retaliation against Iran for its missile and drone attacks over the weekend.

Italy, which holds the G7's rotating presidency, has been pushing for a ceasefire in Gaza and a de-escalation in the wider Middle East.

"Against a background of strong international tensions, the Italian-led G7 is tasked with working for peace," foreign minister Antonio Tajani said in a statement.

The G7 pledged support for Israel following the attack.

A single Israeli shell destroyed more than 4,000 embryos when it struck Gaza's largest fertility clinic in December, it has emerged,

The explosion blasted the lids off five liquid nitrogen tanks at Gaza City's Al Basma IVF centre, causing to evaporate the -180C liquid holding the embryos and 1,000 more specimens of sperm and unfertilized eggs.

"We know deeply what these 5,000 lives, or potential lives, meant for the parents, either for the future or for the past," said Bahaeldeen Ghalayini, 73, the Cambridge-trained obstetrician and gynaecologist who established the clinic in 1997.

At least half of the couples can no longer produce sperm or eggs to make viable embryos, he said.

"My heart is divided into a million pieces."

In April, the embryology lab was still strewn with broken masonry, blown-up lab supplies and, amid the rubble, the liquid nitrogen tanks, according to a Reuters-commissioned journalist who visited the site.

The former director of intelligence at the Israeli spy agency, Mossad, says targeting nuclear facilities in Iran is among the options on the table as Israel decides how to respond to Saturday's attack.

Zohar Palti spoke toThe World with Yalda Hakimin Jerusalem about possible responses after Iran launched more than 300 missiles and drones at Israel.

Asked if everything was on the table, including targeting nuclear facilities, Mr Palti said: "No doubt. Everything is on the table right now."

Pressed on whether this included nuclear facilities, he said: "Including everything."

Iran temporarily closed its nuclear facilities on Sunday over "security considerations" and the International Atomic Energy Agency kept its inspectors away for two days.

The attack on Israel came after a deadly suspected Israeli strike on the Iranian consulate in Syria. The IDF said 99% of the weapons fired at Israel failed to break through its air defences.

Watch the rest of his interview from 9pm in The World With Yalda Hakim live from Jerusalem.

By Alistair Bunkall,Middle East correspondent

There is little doubt in diplomatic and political circles here that Israel will carry out a reprisal attack on Iran.

David Cameron, on a short visit to Jerusalem, said as much in TV interviews.

The questions remain when and where. Israeli leaders are keeping that very close, not even telling visiting foreign ministers from allied countries, but it might be that no final decision has been made.

Cameron is canny enough to know that if he came here pushing a message of "don't do it" then he might be shown up as ineffective in the coming days.

And so the language has changed to "okay, if you have to do it, then make sure it's reasonable and doesn't escalate matters further".

With the US and European capitals saying the same (the German foreign minister was here today too), it might have some sway.

Israel says it needs to send Iran a clear message but doesn't want an escalation - that's all very well but Iran might not see it like that.

Assuming the do-nothing, "take-the-win" option is off the table, the next best outcome is for a series of increasingly smaller events that ultimately see this crisis fizzle out.

I've also picked up frustration among diplomats over political attempts back in the UK to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terror organisation.

It would have no impact on the current crisis and could put the future of the British Embassy in doubt.

That would then remove a vital back-channel of communication, not just for the UK, but for allies like the US and Israel to lean on London for that.

It's moments like these when those channels come into their own and the Foreign Office can be influential.

Ultimately though, Israel's main message to Iran won't be via diplomatic back-channels but a military strike which, in their words, will be "in a manner and time of their choosing".

The Lebanese foreign minister is speaking with special correspondent Alex Crawford following exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and Israel across the Israeli border.

Asked about Israel's determination to retaliate against Iran, Abdallah Bou Habib says Lebanon is worried.

"Any kind of revenge is going to end up with a bigger war, probably," he says.

"And therefore Lebanon, Syria and Jordan may be in trouble."

Mr Habib hopes for a ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel, he says.

If the UN were to move in that direction, the Lebanese government would "most probably" support it.

"We are left not able to do anything of the sort. It is not a matter of the Hezbollah stronger than the Lebanese army, because they not going to collide or fight each other."

Up until 7 October, there was "nothing on the border", he says, saying he hoped to return to a stable border.

More than 5,000 houses have been destroyed in Lebanon by Israeli attacks, says Mr Habib.

Asked about Hezbollah's backing of the Iranian attack, Mr Habib says: "We do not welcome it and we don't denounce the attack, because Israel started it."

"We do not have influence over Hezbollah as long as there is fighting between them and Israelis, and if we have a choice then we support Hezbollah."

A two-state solution is "the solution for most of the problems in the Middle East", he says.

Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron has said he repeated his view that any response to Iran should be designed to limit and de-escalate the conflict when visiting Israel today.

"Nobody wants to see this conflict grow and spread," said Lord Cameron.

He turned to Hamas, which he blamed for holding up a truce deal in Gaza.

"Everyone should recognise that it is Hamas that is causing this conflict to continue."

Benjamin Netanyahu has thanked the British and German foreign ministers for their input, but said Israel would make its own decisions on security.

"Our allies have all kinds of suggestions and advice, I appreciate it, but I want to make it clear - we will make our own decisions, and the State of Israel will do everything necessary to defend itself," he said.

Lord Cameron has been in Israel today, alongside his German counterpart Annalena Baerbock, urging restraint in response to Iran's drone and missile attack.