Middle East updates: New devices blast in southern Lebanon

The UN General Assembly has called for the withdrawal of Israel from the occupied Palestinian territories within a year.

The resolution was passed by a vote of 124 to 14 with 43 abstentions. The United States and Israel voted against the measure.

Germany was among the countries that abstained.

This comes after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) had ruled that the occupation is illegal and must end as soon as possible. 

Israel had ignored the ruling and is also expected to ignore the UN's nonbinding resolution. The Israeli Foreign Ministry criticized the resolution due to it not mentioning terrorist attacks such as the October 7 massacre by Hamas.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the countries that voted in favor of the draft stood by the Palestinian people's quest for justice.

The death toll has increased to 20 as a result of electronic device explosions in multiple regions of Lebanon, the country's health ministry said, while those injured now stands at 450.

This comes a day after an attack which targeted people using pagers, which resulted in 12 deaths and nearly 3,000 being injured.

Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, said that the kingdom will not formally normalize ties with Israel until a Palestinian state is established.

"We renew the kingdom's rejection and strong condemnation of the crimes of the Israeli occupation authority against the Palestinian people," bin Salman told the opening session of Saudi Arabia's advisory Shura Council.

"The kingdom will not cease its tireless efforts to establish an independent Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital, and we affirm that the kingdom will not establish diplomatic relations with Israel without one," it said.

East Jerusalem was occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War.Israel later annexed the area and declared the whole of Jerusalem as its undivided capital.

Earlier this month, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that he still had hope that Riyadh could establish diplomatic ties with Israel.

"I think if we can get a cease-fire in Gaza, there remains an opportunity through the balance of this administration to move forward on normalization," he said during a visit to Haiti.

Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates normalized relations with Israel in the US-brokered Abraham Accords in 2020, and Morocco followed suit in 2021.

Moves toward normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel were put on ice after Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel and the ensuing Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the war was entering a new stage on Wednesday.

"The center of gravity is moving northward. Resources are being allocated (to this front)," Gallant said in remarks at an air force base.

"We are opening a new phase in the war — it requires courage, determination and perseverance from us," he said.

Gallant did not explicitly mention the deadly wave of communicative device explosions that rocked Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday but praised the work of the Israeli military and security agencies, saying, "The results are very impressive."

The comments come a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that returning residents who had been evacuated from northern Israel was now a war goal.

Israel and the Hezbollah militant group have traded nearly daily fire since Hamas launched its October 7 attack on Israel.

Hezbollah officials have said that the fighting will stop if a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas is reached.

The UN Security Council is scheduled to convene on Friday over a deadly wave of communication device blasts in Lebanon.

The meeting was requested by Algeria on behalf of the Arab states, Slovenia's UN ambassador, Samuel Zbogar, said.

Slovenia presides over the 15-member council for September.

Earlier on Wednesday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that the pager blasts targeting Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group indicate "a serious risk of dramatic escalation in Lebanon, and everything must be done to avoid that escalation."

"Obviously, the logic of making all these devices explode is to do it as a preemptive strike before a major military operation," he told reporters.

He also said that it was important not to weaponize civilian objects.

Guterres also called on "all concerned actors to exercise maximum restraint to avert any further escalation," his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.

Iran condemned attacks on Tuesday and Wednesday that involved exploding communication devices.

"Iran strongly condemns yesterday's criminal explosion of communication devices and today's criminal explosion of walkie-talkies, which resulted in the death and injury of hundreds of Lebanese civilians," government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

Mohajerani's statement condemned the attack as "terrorism" and accused Israel of carrying it out. Israel has not commented on the incident.

Earlier on Wednesday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said that the explosions in Lebanon showed Western countries and the United States "fully [support]" attacks carried out by Israel "despite claiming to seek a cease-fire," according to Iranian state media.

Tehran's ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, was injured in the explosion of his pager on Tuesday. On Wednesday, he shared a message of solidarity to Lebanon on X.

Iranian Health Minister Mohammedreza Zafarqandi said a team of Iranian ophthalmologists and nurses was dispatched to Lebanon on Wednesday to assist in treating victims of the attack. He said several injured Lebanese would also be transferred to various hospitals in Tehran.

Lebanon's Health Ministry said that nine people were killed and 300 wounded in a new wave of device explosions.

The latest detonations were heard across Beirut's southern suburbs, which is a stronghold of the Hezbollah militant group.

"The new wave of walkie-talkie explosions... killed nine people and wounded more than 300," the ministry said in a statement.

It comes a day after another wave of blasts on Tuesday, which Hezbollah and the Lebanese government blamed on Israel. Israel has not commented on the incident.

The first round of explosions killed at least 12 people and wounded nearly 3,000.

Several countries, including the United States in 1997 and Germany in 2020, have designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. The European Union designated its armed wing as a terrorist group in 2013.

A company linked to pagers that exploded while being used by Hezbollah members in Lebanon has "no manufacturing" site in Hungary, a government spokesman said.

"Authorities have confirmed that the company in question is a trading intermediary, with no manufacturing or operational site in Hungary... The referenced devices have never been in Hungary," government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said on X.

He also added that Hungarian national security services are cooperating with all relevant international partner agencies and organizations and that the case "poses no national security risk" to Hungary.

Gold Apollo, a Taiwanese company initially thought to have made the devices, earlier said that the Hungary-based firm BAC, which has a license to use the Gold Apollo brand and design, had actually manufactured the pagers. 

Communications equipment used by Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah group exploded late Wednesday afternoon in the south of the country and in the southern suburbs of the capital, Beirut, the AFP and Reuters news agencies said, citing their sources and a witness.

According to the sources, the devices were not pagers but walkie-talkies, the hand-held radios.

At least one of the blasts occurred during a funeral organized by Hezbollah for those killed a day earlier when thousands of pagers used by the group exploded across the country.

Lebanon's Health Ministry said one person has been killed and more than 100 injured by exploding electronic devices in several regions of the country.

Meanwhile, the state-run Lebanese News Agency (NNA) said at least three people were killed in the blasts in the western Bekaa Valley.

Several countries, including the United States in 1997 and Germany in 2020, have designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. The European Union designated its armed wing as a terrorist group in 2013.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during his visit to Cairo that the US had no prior knowledge about the pager explosions in Lebanon. 

"With regard to Lebanon, the United States did not know about, nor was it involved in these incidents, and we're still gathering information and gathering the facts," he said in Cairo. 

"Broadly speaking, we've been very clear, and we remain very clear, about the importance of all parties avoiding any steps that could further escalate the conflict," Blinken said. 

Meanwhile, he said the best way to contain regional violence in the Middle East more generally would be to reach a cease-fire deal for Gaza. 

"We all know that a ceasefire is the best chance to tackle the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, to address risks to regional stability," he told journalists at a press conference with his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry.

He said negotiators had made progress towards this in the last month and a half. He said that of a draft text with 18 paragraphs, 15 had been agreed, but that remaining issues still needed to be resolved. 

Blinken's counterpart Shoukry, meanwhile, said that Egypt would not accept any changes to the rules for security on its border with Gaza and the operation of the Rafah crossing from the Palestinian side that were in place prior to Hamas' October 7 attacks.

This is thought to be one of the sticking points in the talks, with Israel wanting to maintain its presence in the Philadelphi Corridor, Israel's name for the narrow strip of land along Gaza's border to Egypt.

Matthew Levitt, an expert on counterterrorism and intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told DW that Tuesday's attack on pagers used by Hezbollah was a huge intelligence penetration of the militant group, and "it is highly likely that Israel is behind this incident."

"It seems quite clear that small amounts of explosives were inserted into these pagers during the procurement of them while they were in the supply chain. This was not some type of cyber issue," Levitt said.

He added that this attack was likely a signal from the Israelis to Hezbollah that they're "very, very serious" and that they need to end the 11 months of Hezbollah firing rockets into northern Israel.

Watch the entire interview with Levitt here:

Egyptian Preisdent Abdel Fattah el-Sissi told visiting US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Cairo rejects any attempt at an escalation in conflict in Gaza and supports Lebanon in the aftermath of the pager explosions. 

"The president affirmed Egypt's rejection of attempts to escalate the conflict and expand its scope regionally, pointing out the need for all parties to act responsibly, and reaffirming Egypt's support for Lebanon," the Egyptian presidency said in a statement. 

Blinken has traveled to Egypt, a fellow country trying to mediate a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, with a view to advancing that long-stalled process. 

El-Sissi's office said that during a 90-minute meeting Wednesday, the pair discussed "ways to intensify joint efforts between Egypt, the US and Qatar to make progress on cease-fire negotiations and the exchange of hostages and detainees." 

The president also called for "decisive intervention to remove obstacles to the entry of huge amounts of aid" to Gaza, and "ending Israeli violations in the West Bank," his office said.

A US State Department spokesperson had said prior to the talks not to expect major developments on Wednesday in Cairo. The spokesperson said Blinken was focused on trying to hammer out a proposal that the mediators believed both Israel and Hamas would agree to.

Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad said Wednesday that 12 people had died following the explosions of hundreds of paging devices used by Hezbollah members. 

Abiad told a news conference that "after checking with all the hospitals," the toll was revised to "12 dead, including two children." 

He put the number of wounded at between 2,750 and 2,800. 

He said some patients, for instance in Lebanon's eastern Bekaa Valley, "were transferred to Syria" for treatment and that other people would also be evacuated to Iran.

Lebanon's government and Hezbollah have accused Israel of being behind the explosions.

Israel has not commented on the pager explosions. 

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas embarks on a two-day trip to Spain on Wednesday that will include talks with Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and King Felipe VI. 

The visit follows Spain's formal recognition of a Palestinian statecomprising the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The first Palestinian ambassador to Spain presented his credentials to King Felipe in Madrid on Monday. 

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said Madrid's decision in May to recognize a Palestinian state was "not against anyone, least of all Israel," but it nevertheless drew a critical response from Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the time called the move "a reward for terrorism."

 Spain has been more critical than most European governments of Israel's military action in Gaza in recent months.

 Abbas leads Fatah and the Palestinian Authority, which currently governs the occupied West Bank but not the Gaza Strip, which is controlled by the Hamas militant group. Abbas' talks with Sanchez were scheduled for Thursday.

In late May, Spain and Ireland became the first EU members to recognize a Palestinian state. Slovenia became the third in June. Norway, which is not a member of the EU, also recognized an independent Palestinian state.

Gold Apollo, a Taiwanese company initially thought to have made the devices, said the Hungary-based firm BAC, which has a license to use the Gold Apollo brand and design, had actually manufactured the pagers. 

"According to the cooperation agreement, we authorize BAC to use our brand trademark for product sales in designated regions, but the design and manufacturing of the products are solely the responsibility of BAC," the statement read.

Experts have said that the explosive material was likely put into the pagers prior to delivery in what would have been a highly sophisticated supply chain infiltration operation.