BEIRUT: Senior officials of Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad have held talks with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah about achieving “real victory” in their war with Israel, the Lebanese group said Wednesday.
The Hezbollah statement did not specify when or where Nasrallah met with Hamas number two Saleh al-Aruri and Islamic Jihad leader Ziad Nakhaleh beyong saying that it was at a undisclosed location in Lebanon.
News of the meeting comes as Hezbollah and allied Palestinian factions exchange daily fire with the Israeli army across the Lebanon-Israel border, raising fears of a new front in Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza.
The three groups are part of the “axis of resistance”—Palestinian, Lebanese, Syrian and other Iran-backed armed groups opposed to Israel.
They discussed what “the axis of resistance must do at this critical stage to achieve real victory... in Gaza and Palestine and stop” Israel’s “brutal aggression”, the statement said.
They also discussed “recent events in the Gaza Strip since the start of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood”—the unprecedented October 7 Hamas attack.
Nasrallah and the Palestinian militant leaders “agreed to keep coordinating and daily following up on developments,” the statement added.
Hezbollah and Hamas have long been part of a “joint operations room” with the Quds Force—the foreign operations arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards—a source close to Hezbollah previously told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The meeting also touched upon the cross-border fire on the Lebanon-Israel border, the statement said.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that he was cancelling plans to visit Israel because of its “inhumane” war against Hamas militants in Gaza.
“We had a project to go to Israel, but it was cancelled, we will not go,” Erdogan told ruling party lawmakers in parliament, adding that he viewed Hamas as “liberators” fighting for their own land.
Ankara’s relations with Israel froze over an Israeli raid on a Turkish ship carrying aid into Gaza, which killed 10 civilians in 2010.
Erdogan met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a United Nations summit in New York last month, marking an improvement in relations that began with a decision last year to reappoint ambassadors.
The Turkish leader did not say when he had intended to visit Israel, where Ankara had been eyeing joining a natural gas pipeline project promoted by the United States.
“Of course, we had good intentions, but (Netanyahu) abused them,” Erdogan said.
“If he had continued with good intentions, our relations might have been different, but now, unfortunately, this will not happen either.”
Erdogan had taken a more measured tone in the first day of war, condemning all attacks against civilians and urging Israel to be measured in its response.
But he became much more vocal after the deadly strike on Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza last week, leading to large and angry protests across the Muslim world.
The health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip said Wednesday that 6,546 people have been killed in the territory since the outbreak of war with Israel.
The death toll includes 2,704 children. A total of 17,439 people have also been wounded since the conflict erupted on October 7.
More than 100 Palestinians have been killed across the occupied West Bank since war erupted.
Violence had already spiralled in the West Bank before the Gaza war, with the highest death toll in the Palestinian territory since at least 2005.
Many of the Palestinian deaths came in raids by Israeli troops but there has also been a rise in clashes between Palestinians and Israeli settlers, with civilians and fighters killed on both sides.
On Tuesday, Erdogan accused the United Nations Security Council—where the United States, Britain and France have permanent seats—of bowing to the “Israeli regime”.
On Wednesday, he added: “Those outside the region should stop pouring fuel into the fire.
“All parties should take their hands off the trigger and a cease-fire should be declared immediately... Direct or indirect negotiations should be initiated to release the hostages.”
Erdogan is expected to appear at a massive rally in Istanbul on Saturday defending Palestinian right.
The Gaza Strip has lived through 16 years of de-development, the United Nations said Wednesday, adding that the economic consequences of the Israel-Hamas war were “impossible to determine”.
“Gaza has experienced 16 years of de-development and suppressed human potential and the right to development,” the UN’s UNCTAD trade and development agency said in an annual report on the Palestinian economy.
Israeli strikes hit Syria’s Aleppo airport , a war monitor said, in what was the fourth such incident in two weeks as regional tensions simmer over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
