Tensions in the Middle East: still outrageously high!

• Lebanese militant group Hezbollah claimed responsibility for a drone and missile attack in northern Israel on Wednesday. The Israeli military said the attack injured 14 soldiers, six of them severely, and was one of the most damaging acts committed by Hezbollah in recent months. Hezbollah said the attack was in response to Israeli airstrikes on Tuesday, which the Israel Defense Forces said killed two Hezbollah commanders. Beginning on October 7, the cross-border conflict between Hezbollah and Israel has been escalating, and the fighting has displaced tens of thousands of people in both Israel and Lebanon. 

• Israel’s Western allies continue to call for the country to exercise restraint as it weighs how to respond to Iran’s Saturday counterattack, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that Israel will make its own decisions. The United States, European Union and the Group of 7 nations all announced plans to consider expanding sanctions on Iran in an attempt to cool tempers among Israel’s war cabinet. 

• The United Nations agency that aids Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, released a report on Tuesday describing severe physical abuse experienced by Palestinians while in Israeli detention. Detainees detailed being forced to sit on their knees for hours while blindfolded and with their hands bound. Some were deprived of food and water and recounted being urinated on, among other humiliations. Others described being beaten with metal bars or the butt end of guns and boots, or forced into cages and attacked by dogs. The New York Times could not independently verify each account, but some of the testimonies in the report matched reports provided to the Times by freed detainees and their relatives in January. The Israeli military and PM’s office didn’t respond to questions from the Times about the report. In the past, the country has maintained that detainees are held in accordance with the law.

• Several current and former State Department officials told ProPublica that a special department panel made up of Middle East and human rights experts recommended to Secretary of State Antony Blinken months ago that he should disqualify multiple Israeli military and police units from receiving American aid after reviewing allegations that they committed serious human rights abuses. But according to those officials—who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to disclose internal deliberations—Blinken has failed to act on the proposal due to growing international criticism of IDF conduct in Gaza. 

• The incidents in question mostly took place in the West Bank before the October 7 Hamas attack, and include reports of extrajudicial killings, an incident in which an elderly Palestinian American man was gagged, handcuffed, and left for dead, as well as alleged torture and rape of a teenager who had been accused of throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails. The panel’s recommendations were reportedly sent to Blinken in December. The Israeli government did not respond to a request for comment.