Israel attacks Lebanon

Iran to reveal its plan for Strait of Hormuz soon as Israel attacks Lebanon and Gaza, killing and wounding dozens.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has defended Spain’s boycott of the Eurovision Song Contest over Israel’s participation, saying ‘silence is not an option’ while citing the genocide in Gaza and the ‘illegal war’ on Lebanon.

Lebanon’s Ministry of Health said Israeli attacks have killed 2,951 people since March 2 with at least 8,988 wounded.

Al Jazeera’s Manuel Rapalo reports from Washington, where the first of two days of US-mediated ambassador-level talks between Israel and Lebanon concluded on Thursday. A ceasefire between them expires on Sunday, though Israel has killed 512 Lebanese since its implementation on April 17.

A third round of direct talks between Israel and Lebanon has kicked off in Washington, DC, days before the expiration of a “ceasefire” that hardly halted Israeli attacks and Hezbollah’s response to them.

The talks, which began on Thursday, represent a step towards more serious negotiations, with higher-level envoys from Lebanon and Israel taking part after the initial preparatory sessions were headed by the ambassadors of the two countries to Washington.

Lebanese officials are hoping that the two-day negotiations will yield a new ceasefire deal and pave the way for tackling a series of thorny issues, including the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon and the disarmament of Hezbollah.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who attended the first Israel-Lebanon meetings in Washington in April, was with US President Donald Trump on a visit to China and did not attend Thursday’s session.

Lebanon’s envoy heading up Thursday’s talks, Simon Karam, is an attorney and well-connected former Lebanese ambassador to the United States who recently represented Lebanon in indirect talks with Israel over implementation of the ceasefire that preceded the latest outbreak of war between Israel and Hezbollah.

On the Israeli side, Deputy National Security Adviser Yossi Draznin was set to attend.

“We do not want to downplay the significance of these talks, but they are ambassador-level talks, excluding top leadership from Israel, Lebanon and the US,” said Al Jazeera’s Manuel Rapalo, reporting from Washington, DC, adding that there is no diplomatic relationship between Lebanon and Israel.

Trump has publicly called for a meeting between Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while Aoun has declined to meet or speak directly with Netanyahu at this stage – a move that would likely generate blowback in Lebanon.

Hezbollah, meanwhile, is not part of the talks and has been vocally opposed to Lebanon engaging in direct negotiations with Israel.

A lawmaker from the Iran-backed group, Ali Ammar, on Thursday reiterated his group’s rejection of the direct talks, saying they amounted to “free concessions” to Israel.

Still, “there is optimism”, said Al Jazeera’s Rapalo.

“The cessation of hostilities agreement is due to expire on Sunday, so there is an expectation that this will be front and centre in discussions,” he said.

“Of course, the immediate objective is to prevent the situation along the border from escalating into a broader regional conflict.”

Cautious optimism

The United Nations earlier on Thursday expressed hope for the new round of direct negotiations.

“We hope that the latest round of direct talks between Lebanon and Israel in Washington, planned for today and tomorrow, will contribute to an effective and durable ceasefire and open a path towards lasting peace,” deputy spokesman Farhan Haq told the reporters.

Haq said the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) continues to observe “significant” aerial and military activity across its area of operations, including multiple air strikes on Wednesday by Israel.

“We reiterate our call on all the parties to exercise maximum restraint, ensure the protection of civilians and humanitarian personnel and fully respect their obligations under international humanitarian law,” he added.

In Lebanon, people also hope for an end to violence as the diplomatic efforts continue.

“I think people here in southern Lebanon are cautiously optimistic about the possible results from these meetings,” said Al Jazeera’s Obaida Hitto, reporting from Tyre, Lebanon.

“Everyone understands that Lebanon is not ready for normalisation, legally speaking. There is a part of the constitution that prevents Lebanon from actually having normalisation with Israel. People realise this might be a huge obstacle to move forward and find a way to live in peace with Israel.”

Still, the Lebanese population wants the violence to stop, said Hitto.

“It’s been more than two months of ongoing Israeli strikes, artillery strikes, air strikes, drone strikes, coordinated, systematic demolitions of entire towns and villages,” he said.

The Israeli army continues daily strikes in Lebanon despite a ceasefire that was announced on April 17 and later extended until May 17.

Three people were killed in Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon on Thursday, Lebanese media reported.

Since March 2, Israeli attacks in Lebanon have killed at least 2,896 people, injured over 8,824, and displaced more than 1.6 million, about one-fifth of the country’s population, according to Lebanese officials. In that time, at least 200 children in Lebanon have been killed in Israeli attacks, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Thursday.

Istanbul, Turkiye – When investigations by Al Jazeera and other media outlets in 2024 revealed that Israeli-linked artificial intelligence (AI) systems such as Lavender and Gospel had helped generate thousands of military targets in Gaza, critics warned that warfare was entering a new era – one driven not only by soldiers and bombs, but by algorithms, data, and surveillance technology.

Then, in September 2024, thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by members of Hezbollah exploded in coordinated attacks in Lebanon, widely attributed to Israeli intelligence operations that had turned ordinary communication devices into weapons.

And, last year, reporting by Al Jazeera also raised concerns about the use of cloud and data infrastructure linked to major US technology companies in Israeli surveillance operations involving Palestinians.

For a growing number of scholars, economists and political thinkers, such developments reflect more than just the changing nature of conflict. They show how power in the modern world is increasingly exercised not just through military force, but through technology, finance and control over information.

That argument has revived broader debates around decolonisation – a term historically associated with the dismantling of European empires after World War II, when countries across Asia, Africa and the Middle East gained formal independence.

But many proponents of what is termed “decolonial theory” – a school of thought arguing that colonial-era systems of power and hierarchy still shape modern politics, economics and knowledge – argue that colonial power structures never fully disappeared. Instead, they evolved, embedding themselves in global financial systems, technology platforms, media networks and even the production of knowledge itself.

Dependence of Global South countries on Western technology, digital infrastructure and global markets can create new forms of political and economic vulnerability, particularly across the Global South.

“A generation may have grown up believing they had never experienced colonialism or exploitation,” Esra Albayrak, board chair of the NUN Foundation for Education and Culture and daughter of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, told Al Jazeera during the World Decolonization Forum in Istanbul on May 11-12.

“Yet, mentally, they may still be living under colonial influence.”

The war in Gaza marked a turning point, Albayrak says, shining a spotlight on how international principles are not applied equally. Global institutions have so far failed to stop what many countries and rights groups have described as genocide against Palestinians.

“The world is sounding an alarm, and we can no longer afford to remain indifferent to it,” she said.

A techno-feudal era

Albayrak argues that a handful of technology companies are emerging as new, invisible centres of power, shaping how information is produced, circulated and consumed in the digital age.

She describes the digital sphere as the realm of what she calls “future colonialism”, warning that AI systems trained largely on Western-centric data risk reinforcing existing global inequalities.

“When AI systems are run by those tech companies and trained on Western sources, they risk carrying the hierarchies of the past into tomorrow’s digital world, as they now have personalised data, suppressing identity,” Albayrak said.

By this, she means that most major AI models are still trained largely on English-language and Western-produced data – a pattern critics say risks sidelining non-Western languages, cultures and perspectives.

On social media platforms, algorithms tend to amplify some conflicts while rendering others nearly invisible, effectively shaping what billions of users see, discuss and remember online.

Walter D Mignolo, professor at Duke University, argues that while what we historically see as “formal colonialism” may have largely ended, systems of Western dominance continue through economics, culture, technology and knowledge production.

“Coloniality is not over. It is all over the world,” Mignolo said, arguing that modern ideas of development and progress often have the effect of pressuring societies to conform to Western norms.

Rather than simply resisting those systems, he said, societies must find a way to “re-exist” by rebuilding intellectual and cultural autonomy outside dominant global frameworks.

Colonisers in the financial age

The March 2026 Global Debt Report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reveals that 44 countries face severe debt burdens, often aggravated by global conflicts, forcing some governments to spend more on interest payments than on health or education.

This is not a new phenomenon, as developing countries have been labouring under the weight of foreign debt for decades.

But British political economist and author Ann Pettifor told Al Jazeera that modern forms of domination are now increasingly embedded not in empires or nation-states, but in financial systems operating beyond democratic oversight.

Pettifor points to the growing influence of “shadow” banking networks – financial institutions operating largely outside traditional banking regulations – and giant asset managers such as BlackRock, which manages $13 trillion in assets.

Much of the global financial architecture now functions largely outside the regulatory control of governments, she says, including that of Western states themselves.

“This is not a state colonising other states,” Pettifor said. “This is the financial system colonising the whole world, including my country and the US.”

She argues that elected governments increasingly struggle to control key economic realities – from energy prices to commodity markets – because those systems are dictated by global financial actors operating far beyond public accountability.

In Nigeria, for example, Pettifor says, efforts to expand domestic refining capacity continue to face pressure from international financial institutions and global energy markets to keep fuel prices tied to global markets and maintain reliance on imported refined oil products, despite its vast oil reserves.

Coordinated cooperation between developing nations may be necessary to challenge the dominance of Western-centred financial systems, Pettifor says, pointing to growing efforts across parts of West Africa to expand regional refining capacity and reduce dependence on imported fuel. Yet such ambitions can also leave critical sectors dependent on the decisions and influence of a small number of powerful private actors.

Global financial markets, algorithm-driven platforms, and foreign-controlled digital infrastructure increasingly define everyday life – from fuel and food prices to the information people consume online and the technologies governments and societies depend on, observers say.

A ‘mastery complex’

As wars become increasingly influenced by AI, digital infrastructure and financial dependency, debates around colonisation are focusing less on territorial control and more on who influences energy prices, lending systems, access to technology and the flow of information across borders, observers say.

Albayrak draws a parallel between today’s debates around technology and global power and Rudyard Kipling’s 1899 poem “The White Man’s Burden”, published as the US took control of the Philippines following the Spanish-American War. The poem framed colonial expansion as a moral obligation to “civilise” other societies rather than an exercise of domination.

Albayrak said such traces of “mastery complex” still survive today, though in different forms – not necessarily through military occupation, but through technological, financial and informational influence.

But what the world really needs, she argues, is a global order built not on hierarchy, but on shared responsibility.

“The burden should belong to humanity collectively.”

Lebanon’s National News Agency reported that Israeli warplanes targeted the Ezzedine residential project in Srifa on Thursday morning.

Israel has ramped up its attacks on southern Lebanon, killing two people and issuing several forced displacement orders as the two sides prepare for United States-brokered talks on extending a ceasefire.

Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) reported on Thursday morning that Israeli warplanes targeted the Ezzedine residential project in the town of Srifa, killing two people.

The Israeli army announced in a post on Telegram that it had begun targeting alleged Hezbollah infrastructure sites in several areas in southern Lebanon.

Earlier, the Israeli army’s Arabic language spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, announced on X the forced evacuation orders for the towns and villages of Libbaya, Sahmar, Taffahata, Kafr Malek, Yohmor (Bekaa), Ain Tineh, Houmin al-Fawqa and Mazraat Sina.

NNA reported that one person was injured following a raid by an Israeli drone near the vocational school between the towns of Breqa and Zrarieh.

An air strike was also reported on the town of Ain al-Tineh in the Western Bekaa.

Reporting from Beirut, Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands said in the past few days Israel has launched one of its “most intense periods of aerial bombardment in weeks”.

“There have been many individual strikes – usually by drones – on cars and motorbikes. Several of these have happened on the main coastal highway that leads south from Beirut,” he said.

According to Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health on Wednesday, at least 2,896 people have been killed in Israeli attacks since the conflict resumed in early March.

At the same time, the Israeli army announced on Telegram that a drone launched by Hezbollah had fallen in Israeli territory near the shared border, injuring several people who were evacuated to hospital for treatment.

Israel-Lebanon talks

Representatives from both sides are expected to meet in Washington, DC, on Thursday for a new round of talks aimed at extending the ceasefire, which is scheduled to expire on Sunday.

“The discussions are controversial here in Lebanon. One of the reasons is that Hezbollah is not at the table. Hezbollah doesn’t want these talks to go ahead at all,” Challands explained.

“It says any direct discussions between Lebanon and Israel are basically capitulation. It wants first a full-on ceasefire, for Israel to have withdrawn from the country, for hundreds of thousands of displaced people to return to their homes, and for reconstruction to have started,” he said, adding that the Lebanese government, however, believes these points can be discussed during the talks with Israel.

Iran’s First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref said Tehran’s ‘right’ to the Strait of Hormuz is ‘established and the matter is closed’, state media reports.

Al Jazeera’s Obaida Hitto reports from southern Lebanon, where displaced residents say they will not leave again despite a sharp rise in deaths and intensifying Israeli strikes.

Strikes come after forced displacement warnings by Israel for nine towns in southern and eastern Lebanon.

Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon have killed at least four people and wounded eight others, according to Lebanese media.

The state National News Agency (NNA) reported injuries to two medics as they rushed to offer aid to victims of the latest attacks by the Israeli military in violation of the official ceasefire.

The medics were wounded when an air strike hit a civil defence team affiliated with the Islamic Health Society in Toul in Nabatieh, as they responded to an earlier attack, NNA said.

Two men were killed and five others injured in an air raid on the town of Ebba in Nabatieh.

NNA added that a drone strike on a car in the town of Haris in Bint Jbeil district killed one man and injured his brother.

Israeli warplanes targeted the home of a former municipal chief in Sajd, while other strikes were reported in Kfar Rumman and Safad al-Battikh. No casualty information was immediately available.

Forced displacement threat

Ahead of the attacks, the Israeli army issued a forced displacement threat for nine towns in southern and eastern Lebanon.

They are: Rihan, Jarjou, Kfar Rumman, Nmairiyeh, Arabsalim and Harouf in Nabatieh, and Jmayjmeh, Mashghara and Qlayaa in eastern Lebanon.

Posting on X, army spokesman Avichay Adraee urged residents there to evacuate due to what he called Hezbollah infrastructure in the towns.

The Israeli military said a soldier was killed by a drone launched by Hezbollah near the border. Also in southern Lebanon, three Israeli soldiers were injured by a booby-trap drone explosion.

Israeli forces continue to exchange fire with Hezbollah and carry out attacks, despite the ceasefire which began on April 17 and later extended to mid-May.

Since March 2, Israeli attacks have killed at least 2,840 people in Lebanon, injured almost 8,700 and displaced more than a million, according to Lebanese figures.

The United States is preparing to host more peace talks between Israel and Lebanon in Washington on Thursday and Friday. Hezbollah has criticised the Lebanese government for taking part.

US president says Tehran’s response to US peace proposal ‘unacceptable’, as the Iranian military warns it is ready if war resumes.

The same tiny tungsten cubes that spray out of Israeli bombs, causing devastating internal injuries to people in Gaza are being found in wounded civilians in Lebanon, war surgeon Dr Tahir Mohammed says. He draws parallels between what Israel is doing in both places and describes the weapons as “indiscriminate”.

US-Iran ceasefire holds as Tehran warns Washington against attacks on tankers and Israel kills 24 people in Lebanon.

Israel has increased its attacks across southern Lebanon. Al Jazeera’s Obaida Hitto reports from Tyre as Israel strikes surrounding towns.

Israeli attacks killed at least 31 people in southern Lebanon on Friday, including a rescue worker, Lebanon’s official National News Agency said.

Talks between Lebanese and Israeli delegations to be held in Washington, DC, next week, the official tells Al Jazeera.

The United States is trying to de-escalate Israel’s actions in Lebanon as it pushes for solidifying an ongoing ceasefire and moving to the next phase of negotiations between the two sides, according to a Lebanese official.

The official, who spoke to Al Jazeera Arabic on condition of anonymity, revealed on Thursday the details of the planned second stage of negotiations between Israel and Lebanon after an initial round in Washington, DC, in mid-April, which led to the current status quo of a ceasefire being declared but attacks continuing.

Delegation-level negotiations will begin on May 17 in the US capital, the official said, adding that the talks will address both security and political tracks to resolve issues of a full Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon, borders, prisoners, displaced people and reconstruction.

The Reuters and AFP news agencies, both quoting an unnamed State Department official on Thursday, reported that the upcoming talks are due to be held May 14 and 15.

Israel continued to pound southern Lebanon on Thursday, killing one person and injuring several, according to Lebanese state-run media, a day after it targeted a commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

The strikes put pressure on the Lebanon ceasefire, which emerged in parallel with a US-Iran truce in the wider war in the Middle East. A halt to Israeli strikes in Lebanon is a key Iranian demand in Tehran’s negotiations with Washington.

No peace agreement: Official

The Lebanese official told Al Jazeera that the country’s presidency has been seeking to discuss a final cessation of hostilities with Israel.

The expected step before May 17 is an extension of the truce and an Israeli commitment to a ceasefire, the official said, adding that the recent attack on Beirut’s southern suburbs was an Israeli message intended to obstruct the negotiation process.

Lebanon is not moving towards signing a peace agreement but towards a nonaggression pact, the official said.

The Lebanon ceasefire, announced on April 16 by US President Donald Trump, has led to a reduction in hostilities. The Beirut area, for example, was not struck by Israel for weeks before Wednesday’s attack.

However, since it went into effect, Israel and Hezbollah have traded accusations of violating the ceasefire in other areas, particularly in southern Lebanon.

More than 2,700 people have been killed in the war in Lebanon since March 2, Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health said. About 1.2 million people have been driven from their homes in Lebanon, many of them fleeing from southern Lebanon.

Israel has announced 17 soldiers have been killed in southern Lebanon along with two civilians in northern Israel.

US State Department spokesperson Tommy Piggott tells Al Jazeera that the United States is working to create conditions for “good faith conversations” between Lebanon and Israel, while accusing Hezbollah of trying to derail diplomacy through attacks and threats.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says ceasefire with Iran remains in place despite growing tensions in the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran protests as Trump announces ‘Project Freedom’ to escort stranded ships out of the Strait of Hormuz.

The US president says he will ‘soon be reviewing the plan Iran has just sent to us’, but doesn’t think he can make a deal.

The UNIFIL has faced a growing number of casualties as Israel continues air raids despite a ceasefire and Hezbollah has responded with rockets and drones.

China’s ambassador to the United Nations, Fu Cong, has said there is a need to re-examine the UN Security Council’s decision to terminate the mandate of the longstanding peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, which is due to end later this year.

Speaking to reporters on Friday at the UN headquarters in New York, Ambassador Fu expressed China’s deep concern about the situation in Lebanon as Beijing assumed the council’s rotating presidency for May.

He observed that a genuine ceasefire did not exist in Lebanon, describing the current state of conflict as merely a “lesser fire”.

“We do believe that we should revisit the decision, actually, to withdraw the UNIFIL,” Fu said, using the acronym for the UN Interim Force in Lebanon.

“I think at least the view of the overwhelming majority of the Security Council is that this is not the time to really, to withdraw the UNIFIL out of that part of the country,” Fu said.

China is waiting for a report from the UN secretariat, expected in June, “before we take our position”, he added.

Fu also said, “It is incumbent on Israel to stop this bombardment of Lebanon.”

Created to oversee the withdrawal of Israeli troops after the 1978 invasion, UNIFIL saw its mandate expanded after the 2006 war between Israel and the Lebanese group Hezbollah and was responsible for a demilitarised buffer between the opposing sides.

However, the UNSC unanimously resolved last year to begin withdrawing the UNIFIL mission’s 10,800 international peacekeepers by December 2026.

According to Lebanese authorities, Israeli attacks on Lebanon since March 2 have killed 2,618 people and forced more than one million to flee their homes.

The UNIFIL mission has also faced a growing number of casualties. According to UN officials, at least six peacekeepers have been killed and many others injured since Israel began its attack on March 2.

The deaths include soldiers from various contributing nations, including Indonesia and France, who have been caught in shelling incidents and roadside attacks.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has condemned these incidents, noting that the UN’s “blue helmets” have come under fire while performing essential duties, such as clearing explosive ordnance and escorting logistics convoys.

US President Donald Trump says the latest Iranian peace proposal includes demands he ‘can’t agree to’.

United States President Donald Trump has voiced frustration with Iran’s latest peace proposal, saying “they’re asking for things I can’t agree to”, and cautioning against ending the conflict too early, only for tensions to resurface “in three more years”.

At the same time, Washington has warned that ships paying tolls or fees to Iran to transit the Strait of Hormuz could face US sanctions, signalling a tougher stance on maritime activity linked to Tehran.

Meanwhile, a new Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll shows 61 percent of Americans believe Trump’s use of military force against Iran was a mistake.

Here is what we know:

In Iran

• Fourteen soldiers were killed on Friday during operations to defuse unexploded ordnance in the northwestern Zanjan province, local media reported.
• Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei urged his people to wage economic battle and “disappoint” its enemies, as the war with the US and Israel and years of sanctions take a toll.
• The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy said it would enforce “new rules” over waters near its coast, aiming to turn them into a “source of security and prosperity” for the region.

War diplomacy

• The US Department of State imposed new measures on entities linked to Iranian petroleum exports, including China-based Qingdao Haiye Oil Terminal, accusing it of importing millions of barrels of sanctioned crude and enabling billions in revenue for Tehran. Beijing rejected the move as unlawful “unilateral sanctions”.
• The State Department said it cleared more than $8.6bn in military sales to Israel, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.

In the US

• Trump said he was unhappy with Iran’s new proposal for peace talks, which Iran’s state news agency IRNA said was delivered via mediator Pakistan. “They’re asking for things that I can’t agree to,” he said.
• Analyst Sultan Barakat said Iran and the US are “really desperate” to end the war in a way that allows them to “save face”.
• Trump told top US lawmakers that hostilities in Iran had ended, after coming under pressure from Congress to seek authorisation for the conflict as it headed into its third month.
• The US Treasury Department slapped new sanctions on three Iranian foreign currency exchange firms to try to stem the flow of Tehran’s “financial lifelines”.
• The USS Gerald R Ford left the Middle East after taking part in operations against Iran, a US official said, according to reports. Two other aircraft carriers – the USS Abraham Lincoln and USS George HW Bush – are among 20 US ships still in the region.
• Mark Cancian of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said US military capability “has not changed” as Washington returns to its typical posture of two carrier groups.
• “The Ford carrier group had left the United States last June, and its deployment has been extended twice. The crew and the ship are tired, so the United States is sending the group home,” he added.

In Lebanon

• Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health said 12 people were killed on Friday in Israeli strikes on the country’s south, including in a town where Israel’s army had issued a forced displacement order despite a ceasefire.
• Lebanon’s parliament speaker, Nabih Berri, said Israel is using the ceasefire as cover to intensify attacks.