Middle East crisis live: Hezbollah says its hands are still ‘on the trigger’ amid uneasy ceasefire

Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, has named a temporary successor who would take over from him should he die or leave his post, addressing concerns of a possible power vacuum after his departure.

According to Reuters, in a statement released late on Wednesday, Abbas said the chair of the Palestinian National Council should serve as interim president for no more than 90 days, during which presidential elections should be held.

The current chair of the Palestinians’ top decision-making body is Rawhi Fattouh, 75, who also served briefly as a stopgap leader after the death of Yasser Arafat in 2004.

Abbas, 89, has been Palestinian president since 2005 and has had regular health problems in recent years, prompting repeated speculation on who would replace him when he finally stands aside. He does not have a deputy and a source told Reuters earlier this month that Saudi Arabia had pressed him to appoint one.

Reuters reports that Wednesday’s announcement clears up uncertainty over what should happen when he dies, but Fattouh was not named as his deputy, meaning there was still no visibility on who could replace Abbas in the long term.

Israel’s agriculture minister, Avi Dichter, a member of the inner security cabinet, told a group of foreign reporters this week that the Israeli army would take over the West Bank if someone from the militant group Hamas tried to become president.

Abbas was elected to a four-year term in 2005, but no presidential ballot has been held since and he is now deeply unpopular, with a September opinion poll showing 89% of Palestinians in the West Bank wanted him to resign, reports Reuters.

In its first statement since a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah took effect on Wednesday, the Lebanese militia proclaimed “victory” without making any direct mention of the ceasefire.

The militia said its fighters “remain fully equipped to deal with the aspirations and assaults of the Israeli enemy” and that its forces would monitor Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon “with their hands on the trigger”.

The statement came as thousands of people displaced from southern Lebanon began returning home despite warnings from the Israeli military that they should stay away while its forces remained in the area. The Lebanese army asked displaced people to avoid frontline villages and towns near the UN-drawn blue line that separates the two countries.

The 60-day ceasefire agreement brokered by the US between Israel and Hezbollah came into force at 4am local time on Wednesday, and represents a major milestone in the 14-month-old conflict.

Here are some of the latest developments:

• The UN’s secretary general, António Guterres, said the Lebanon ceasefire was the “first ray of hope” in the regional conflict after the “darkness of the past months”. “It is essential that those who signed the ceasefire commitment respect it in full,” Guterres said on Wednesday. He reiterated his call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. In a sign of how volatile the situation remains, Israeli forces opened fire on a number of cars that attempted to enter what it said was a restricted area on Wednesday.

• Doubts over whether the ceasefire would hold were widespread on both sides. Supporters of Hezbollah, which has suffered heavy losses since October 2023, celebrated the group’s survival and waved its yellow and green flag across southern Beirut on Wednesday. Iran, Hezbollah’s ally, welcomed the end of Israel’s “aggression” in Lebanon. In Israel, the ceasefire has met a more mixed reaction where rightwingers and residents of Israel’s north have criticised the agreement. Dozens of people gathered outside the Israeli army’s headquarters in Tel Aviv on Tuesday night to protest against the ceasefire.

• The French government has claimed that Benjamin Netanyahu has immunity from arrest warrants issued by the international criminal court (ICC) for war crimes on the grounds that Israel is not an ICC member. The claim came soon after Netanyahu’s cabinet agreed to a French-backed ceasefire in Lebanon and is in contrast to Paris’s attitude towards last year’s ICC war crimes warrant issued against Vladimir Putin, another leader of a non-member country.

• Netanyahu said Israel had submitted to the ICC its intention to appeal against the arrest warrants, and demand a delay in their implementation. In a statement from his office, he said: “Should the ICC reject the appeal, this will underscore to Israel’s friends in the US and around the world how biased the ICC is against the state of Israel.”

• The ceasefire in Lebanon came after Israel launched the heaviest day of raids on Beirut, including a series of strikes in the city’s centre. At least 42 people were killed in Israeli strikes on Beirut and the south of Lebanon before the ceasefire began. Hezbollah also fired rockets into Israel, triggering air raid sirens.

• In Gaza, the death toll passed 44,282 on Wednesday. Gaza’s health ministry said an additional 104,880 Palestinians have been injured since October 2023. An Egyptian security delegation is reportedly expected to travel to Israel on Thursday to discuss a Gaza ceasefire deal. The US will renew a push for a ceasefire in the Palestinian territory, president Joe Biden said.

• At least 12 Palestinians, including children and women, were killed in an Israeli strike on a school in central Gaza City on Wednesday, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa. A pregnant woman and two other Palestinians were killed in Israeli bombing in Beit Lahia in northern Gaza and Khan Younis in the south on Wednesday, Wafa reported.

• Two journalists were injured when Israeli forces “opened fire” on a group of journalists covering a border town of Khiam in south-east Lebanon on Wednesday, Lebanon’s National news agency said. A video journalist told AFP that he was shot at while reporting in Khiam and that it was clear that the group were journalists.

• The Biden administration is reportedly pushing ahead with a $680m arms sales package to Israel. The package includes thousands of joint direct attack munition kits (JDAMs) and hundreds of small-diameter bombs, Reuters reported.