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Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday that Israel would continue fighting Hizbollah until the Israeli citizens displaced by its conflict with the Lebanese militant group were able to return to their homes.
“We won’t rest until our citizens can return safely to their homes. We will not accept a terror army perched on our northern border able to commit another October 7 massacre,” the Israeli prime minister said in a defiant address to the UN General Assembly, without addressing a US-French proposal for a ceasefire.
“We’ll continue degrading Hizbollah until all our objectives are met.”
The speech came after US President Joe Biden and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron earlier this week put forward a proposal for a 21-day truce in a last-ditch bid to prevent the hostilities between Israel and Hizbollah from spiralling into all-out war.
The two sides have been exchanging fire since Hizbollah began launching rockets at Israel on October 8 in support of Hamas’s attack on the country the day before.
But over the past two weeks, Israel has sharply escalated the fighting — killing a string of senior Hizbollah officials and launching intense air strikes on the south and east of Lebanon that have so far killed more than 600 people and displaced more than 90,000.
This is a developing story
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