UNITED NATIONS (AP) — U.N. peacekeepers are staying in their positions on Lebanon’s southern border despite Israel’s request to vacate some areas before it launched its ground operation against Hezbollah militants, the U.N. peacekeeping chief said Thursday.
Jean-Pierre Lacroix said the commander and liaison officers from the U.N. force, known as UNIFIL, also are in constant contact with their counterparts in the Israeli and Lebanese militaries. He called that key to protecting the U.N.’s more than 10,000 peacekeepers.
The U.N. force is “the only channel of communications between the parties,” he told reporters. “The peacekeepers are also working with partners to do what they can to protect the population.”
UNIFIL was created to oversee the withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon after Israel’s 1978 invasion. The U.N. expanded its mission following the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, allowing peacekeepers to deploy along the Israeli border.
A U.N. Security Council resolution ending that war demanded that all armed groups — including Hezbollah — be disarmed and that the Lebanese army deploy throughout the country to the Israeli border. After 17 years, neither has happened.
Lacroix, who is undersecretary-general for peace operations, said UNIFIL had anticipated “a limited, targeted ground operation” and had thoroughly discussed whether U.N. peacekeepers should stay or not, deciding they should stay for now.
“We’re constantly reviewing the situation” on the ground in terms of the safety and security of the peacekeepers, he said. He added that contingency plans are ready but refused to discuss them.
Lacroix also stressed that Israel and Hezbollah have an obligation to protect the U.N. peacekeepers.
Israeli ground forces crossed into southern Lebanon early Tuesday, which along with stepped-up airstrikes marked a significant escalation against Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants and of the war in the Middle East. The fighting comes as the region braces for Israel’s response to Iran's ballistic missile attack.
Hezbollah began firing across the border after Iranian-backed Hamas militants carried out attacks on Israel on Oct. 7 and then Israel retaliated with its military offensive in Gaza.
Lacroix said that there were a few “issues” after Israel's ground operation in Lebanon began, which he wouldn’t go into, but that the U.N. liaison mechanism with its Israeli and Lebanese counterparts was “effective in addressing those issues.”
Lacroix said UNIFIL at the moment is not carrying out patrols, which it would normally do, but its positions are manned. In some places, the number of peacekeepers has been reduced by about 20%, he said.
When Lacroix was asked whether Israeli fire was coming too close to its bases or positions, he replied that one of the added values of the liaison operation is “to prevent and deal with possible incidents that would have the potential of affecting the safety, the security of our peacekeepers.”
The liaison officers also are dealing with other activities, including military movements, he said.
Lacroix said UNIFIL had been supporting civilian efforts to supply humanitarian assistance to people in southern Lebanon. The peacekeepers are still trying to help and “are playing a role as much as possible,” he said.
Smoke rises following Israeli bombardment in southern Lebanon as seen from northern Israel, Thursday, Oct. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Baz Ratner)
CHICAGO (AP) — Melania Trump revealed her support for abortion rights Thursday ahead of the release of her upcoming memoir, exposing a stark contrast with her husband, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, on the crucial election issue.
In a video posted to her X account Thursday morning, the former first lady defended women's “individual freedoms” to do what they want with their bodies — a position at odds with much of the Republican Party and her own husband, who has struggled to find a consistent message on abortion while wedged between anti-abortion supporters within his base and the majority of Americans who support abortion rights.
“Individual freedom is a fundamental principle that I safeguard,” Melania Trump said in the video. “Without a doubt, there is no room for compromise when it comes to this essential right that all women possess from birth: individual freedom. What does ‘my body, my choice’ really mean?”
The video appears to confirm excerpts of her self-titled memoir reported by The Guardian on Wednesday.
Melania Trump has rarely publicly expressed her personal political views and has been largely absent from the campaign trail. But in her memoir, set to be released publicly next Tuesday, she argues that the decision to end a pregnancy should be left to a woman and her doctor, “free from any intervention of pressure from the government,” according to the published excerpts.
“Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to determine what she does with her own body?” she wrote, according to The Guardian. “A woman’s fundamental right of individual liberty, to her own life, grants her the authority to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes.”
Melania Trump writes that she has “carried this belief with me throughout my entire adult life.”
These views contrast sharply with the GOP's anti-abortion platform and with Donald Trump, who has repeatedly taken credit for appointing the three Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade and boasted about returning the abortion question to the states. Democrats have blamed the former president for the severe deterioration of reproductive rights as abortion bans were implemented in large swaths of the country following the overturning of the landmark case, which had granted a constitutional right to abortion.
Donald Trump said Thursday that he had talked to his wife about the book and told her to “go with your heart.”
“We spoke about it. And I said, you have to write what you believe. I’m not going to tell you what to do. You have to write what you believe,” he told Fox News, adding, “There are some people that are very, very far right on the issue, meaning without exceptions, and then there are other people that view it a little bit differently than that.”
Vice President Kamala Harris ' campaign noted Trump's role in ending Roe v. Wade in a statement reacting to Melania Trump's defense of abortion rights.
“Sadly for the women across America, Mrs. Trump’s husband firmly disagrees with her and is the reason that more than one in three American women live under a Trump Abortion Ban that threatens their health, their freedom, and their lives,” Harris campaign spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said in a statement. “Donald Trump has made it abundantly clear: If he wins in November, he will ban abortion nationwide, punish women, and restrict women’s access to reproductive health care."
Donald Trump on Tuesday said he would veto a federal abortion ban, the first time he has explicitly said so after previously refusing to answer questions on the subject. Abortion rights advocates are skeptical, however, saying Trump cannot be trusted not to restrict reproductive rights.
Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said the memoir is another example of “the Trumps playing voters like a fiddle.”
“As president, (Trump) made it his mission to get Roe v. Wade overturned,” she said in a statement. “Melania stood by him, never once publicly disavowing his actions until weeks before an election where our bodies are again on the ballot and they are losing voters to this issue. Read between the lines.”
Democratic strategist Brittany Crampsie called the memoir's release a “clear attempt to appeal to more moderate voters and to moderate JD Vance’s very clearly extreme views on the issue." But she was skeptical that the move would work in favor of Trump, saying his shifting views “have already confused voters and sowed distrust.”
Melania Trump also defends abortions later in pregnancy, asserting that “most abortions conducted during the later stages of pregnancy were the result of severe fetal abnormalities that probably would have led to the death or stillbirth of the child. Perhaps even the death of the mother."
“These cases were extremely rare and typically occurred after several consultations between the woman and her doctor,” she writes.
These views appear diametrically opposed to her husband, who has often parroted misinformation about abortions later in pregnancy, falsely claiming that Democrats support abortion “after birth,” though infanticide is outlawed in every state.
The national abortion group SBA Pro-Life America denounced the former first lady’s views on abortion, including her comments on abortion later in pregnancy, but said their “priority is to defeat Kamala Harris.”
“Women with unplanned pregnancies are crying out for more resources, not more abortions,” the organization’s president Marjorie Dannenfelser said in a statement. “We must have compassion for them and for babies in the womb who suffer from brutal abortions.”
Mary Ruth Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law who focuses on reproductive rights law and history, said it is unclear if the memoir’s release so close to the election was an attempt to help Donald Trump. But she did note that Melania Trump's split from Trump on the issue is not uncommon historically.
There is “a pretty deep history of first ladies being more supportive of abortion rights than their husbands,” including Betty Ford, a vocal abortion rights supporter and the wife of former President Gerald Ford, Ziegler said.
Donald Trump promoted his wife's book at a September rally in New York, calling on supporters to “go out and get her book.” It is unclear if the former president has read the book.
“Go out and buy it,” he told the crowd. “It’s great. And if she says bad things about me, I’ll call you all up, and I’ll say, ‘Don’t buy it.’”
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FILE - First lady Melania Trump speaks during a campaign rally in Atglen, Pa., Oct. 27, 2020. (AP Photo/Laurence Kesterson, File)
