Free Republic

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s latest strikes on Lebanon and Iran have made clear that U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who started the war in lockstep, want different things.Trump had publicly warned Israel not to strike Beirut in its war with Iran-backed Hezbollah militants. When it did, on Sunday, Iran responded by firing ballistic missiles at Israel for the first time since the April ceasefire. Israel then struck Iran, with which Trump has been engaged in weeks of high-stakes negotiations.The fighting has since died down, but the differences between the two leaders are likely to persist.That’s...

CAIRO (AP) — Desperate Palestinians at a garbage dump in a Gaza neighborhood dug with their bare hands for plastic items to burn to keep warm in the cold and damp winter in the enclave, battered by two years of the Israel-Hamas war. The scene in the Muwasi area of the city of Khan Younis contrasted starkly with the vision of the territory projected by world leaders gathered in Davos, Switzerland, where they inaugurated U.S. President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace that will oversee Gaza. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Trump claimed that “record levels” of humanitarian aid...

JERUSALEM (AP) — The Israeli military campaign in Gaza, experts say, now sits among the deadliest and most destructive in history. In just over two months, the offensive has wreaked more destruction than the razing of Syria’s Aleppo between 2012 and 2016, Ukraine’s Mariupol or, proportionally, the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II. It has killed more civilians than the U.S.-led coalition did in its three-year campaign against the Islamic State group.