US President Donald Trump has delivered a rare public rebuke of Israel’s military conduct in Lebanon, warning that Israel is killing too many civilians in its war with Hezbollah and does not need to destroy entire apartment buildings in pursuit of individual targets.
Speaking to reporters at the G7 summit in France, Trump said: “Israel’s fighting Hezbollah too long, and too many people are being killed. And you don’t have to knock down an apartment house every time you’re looking for somebody. Because there are a lot of people in those apartment houses, and they’re not all Hezbollah, that I can tell you.”
Trump said Israel doesn’t need to knock down an apartment building every time it’s looking for someone in Lebanon, since plenty of the people living there aren’t Hezbollah. pic.twitter.com/0YS7ByqPnP
— Catch Up (@CatchUpFeed) June 16, 2026
The remarks were seen as an unusually blunt criticism from a US president who has otherwise presented himself as one of Israel’s strongest allies. They also appear to acknowledge what human rights groups and international law experts have long argued: that Israel’s practice of bombing residential buildings in the name of targeting fighters is a violation of international humanitarian law.
