The Israeli military is proposing a plan to “evacuate” civilians.

Powerful Hezbollah said on Monday it shot down a large Israeli drone using a surface-to-air missile over southern Lebanon, the scene of daily violence between the Israeli army and pro-Iranian militias. Hezbollah's “anti-aircraft defense unit” in Lebanon said in a press release that it shot down a large Israeli drone using a Hermes 450 missile.

He noted that the incident took place in Hizbullah's stronghold of Iqlim al-Tawfa, twenty kilometers from the Israeli border. Hezbollah vowed to “continue to confront enemy aircraft and prevent them from achieving their objectives.”

Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayeh said on Monday that Palestinians need “new political actions” and unified leadership because of the “new reality” imposed by the war in the Gaza Strip, whose government has postponed its decision.

“The next phase requires new governmental and political measures to take into account the new reality in the Gaza Strip (…) and the urgent need for a consensus agreement between the Palestinians,” he declared in Ramallah.

A general Israeli offensive in Rafah would “sound the death knell” for humanitarian aid programs in Gaza, where aid to people in dire need is “grossly inadequate,” the UN chief warned on Monday.

The large-scale assault announced by Israeli officials on the city “will not only shelter more than a million Palestinian civilians; This will spell the death knell for our aid programmes,” Antonio Guterres warned at the opening of the 55th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva.

The Palestinian Authority government, which sits in the occupied West Bank, submitted its resignation to President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday, Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayeh said.

“I submitted the government's resignation to Mr. President on February 20, and today I submitted it in writing,” announced Mohammad Shtayeh in Ramallah, noting that “this decision was made specifically in light of the developments related to the aggression against Gaza.”

The UN is involved in the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza. The UN secretary-general warned on Monday that the Security Council's inaction could deal a “catastrophic” blow to its authority.

“The Council's disunity in dealing with Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Israeli military operations in Gaza following the brutal Hamas terrorist attacks on October 7 undermines its authority,” he said. Geneva called for “radical reform” of the institution.

A U.S. soldier was seriously injured Sunday after trying to set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington, officials said, as local media reported he was protesting the war in Gaza. Emergency services rushed to the scene shortly before 1pm (7pm French time) “on a call about a person on fire in front of the Israeli embassy,” the Israeli fire department in the capital X.

When they arrived, they found that the Secret Service, the security service for high-ranking US government officials, had already extinguished the fire. The man was taken to the hospital with “serious, life-threatening injuries,” we learned from the same source.

The Israeli army presented a plan to “evacuate” civilians from “war zones” in the Gaza Strip, Benjamin Netanyahu's services announced on Monday, and is still determined to launch a military offensive against the populous city of Rafah. The army “presented to the War Cabinet a plan for the evacuation of people from the war zones in the Gaza Strip and a plan for future operations,” the Prime Minister's Office said in a brief statement, without giving details.

The announcement comes ahead of an expected Israeli offensive on Rafah, a city in the south of the Palestinian territory where, according to the UN, nearly 1.5 million Palestinians, most of them displaced, live in the most precarious situation. Despite several international warnings, Benjamin Netanyahu wants to launch a ground operation against the city, backed by Egypt's closed border and what he posits as the “last bastion” of the Islamist movement Hamas.

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