Smoke rising over the Israeli side of the border with Lebanon during cross-border strikes between Hezbollah and Israeli forces on Tuesday.Credit...Avi Ohayon/Reuters
As the war has raged in Gaza, another battle has unfurled in parallel along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon — a risky game of tit-for-tat that has intensified in recent weeks, with a far stronger foe.
In a measure of the danger of a full-scale war erupting, President Biden dispatched one of his senior aides, Amos Hochstein, to Israel on Monday and to Lebanon on Tuesday to press for a diplomatic solution.
Unlike Hamas, the Palestinian militia fighting Israel in Gaza, Hezbollah has troops who are battle-hardened combatants, and the group possesses long-range, precision-guided missiles that can strike targets deep inside Israel.
Despite apparent efforts by both sides to keep the cycle of strikes and counterstrikes from spiraling into a full-blown war beyond the one raging in Gaza, civilians in Israel and Lebanon have been killed, and more than 150,000 people have been forced from their homes along the border.
But as the fighting in recent days has intensified, so too have fears that a miscalculation could draw the sides into deeper conflict. Hezbollah has said it will not negotiate a truce until Israel ends its military campaign in Gaza, which is likely to continue for weeks or months.
A stronger, better armed militia
Israeli military officials had long anticipated that well-trained gunmen might one day tear across their border, heading for towns and military bases, as Hamas did on Oct. 7. But they tended to look to the north, fearing Hezbollah’s elite fighters rather than the relatively weaker Palestinian armed group.
In the wake of the Hamas-led attack, the Israeli military began rushing forces by convoy and helicopter to cover its northern border, fearing that Hezbollah would take the opportunity to invade. The following day, Hezbollah began launching strikes on northern Israel in a show of solidarity, leading Israel to counterattack in Lebanon.
Analysts say Hezbollah is much stronger now than it was in 2006, the last time the group fought a major war with Israel. That war, which lasted about five weeks, killed more than 1,000 Lebanese and more than 160 Israelis, and displaced over one million people. But a war between the two sides today, they said, could devastate both Israel and Lebanon.
During the 2006 war, Hezbollah fired roughly 4,000 rockets, mostly toward northern Israel, over the course of five weeks, said Assaf Orion, a retired Israeli brigadier general. The group could now likely fire just as many, including heavy missiles that cause serious damage, all over Israel within only a day, he added.
Brig. Gen. Shlomo Brom, a former top Israeli military strategist, said the sheer number of munitions in Hezbollah’s arsenal — particularly its cache of drones — could overwhelm Israel’s formidable aerial defenses in the event of a full-scale war. Hezbollah’s troops are also experienced fighters; many of them fought in the Syrian civil war on the side of the Assad regime, which is also backed by Iran.
“In a no-holds-barred war, there will be greater destruction both on the civilian home front and deeper inside Israel,” General Brom said. “They have the ability to target more or less anywhere in Israel and will aim for civilian targets, just as we will target southern Beirut,” he added, referring to capital districts known to be Hezbollah strongholds.
For Hezbollah, a major escalation is similarly concerning. The Lebanese economy was slumping even before the current crisis, and many Lebanese have little desire for a reprise of the 2006 war. Moreover, analysts say Iran, Hezbollah’s patron, may not be interested in an escalation, preferring to deploy its proxy at a more opportune moment.
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Soldiers carrying the coffin of Taleb Abdallah, a senior Hezbollah commander, in Beirut last Wednesday, a day after he was killed in an Israeli strike in southern Lebanon.Credit...Wael Hamzeh/EPA, via Shutterstock
Last week, an Israeli strike killed a senior Hezbollah commander, Taleb Abdallah, prompting Hezbollah to step up its attacks on Israel in retaliation. Over the next few days, Hezbollah fired hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel in coordinated strikes, wounding several soldiers and civilians.
“Both sides are constantly challenging the other’s red lines. For now it seems neither side wants full-blown war,” General Orion said.
“But you can easily stumble into it, even if it’s not something they want in principle,” he added.
Despite the risks, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has faced rising pressure at home to intensify the country’s military campaign against Hezbollah. In the wake of the Oct. 7 attack, Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defense minister, endorsed a pre-emptive war in Lebanon but was overruled. On Tuesday, the Israeli military announced that top commanders had approved operational plans for a potential offensive in Lebanon, without specifying when or if the plans would be used.
Tens of thousands of Israelis from northern border communities remain scattered across the country with no timeline for returning to their homes. And far-right members of Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition have called for more muscular action, including the establishment of an Israeli-run “security zone” inside Lebanese territory.
Shlomi Madar, 58, was greeted by a desolate city when he visited his border hometown, Kiryat Shmona, on Tuesday. He has lived in a Tel Aviv hotel for the past eight months, hoping to return home but unsure whether he would ever feel safe enough to do so.
“You can feel the tension in the air. It’s just insane,” said Mr. Madar, a bus driver. “We’re not going back anytime soon — who would want to return? Who would trust it?”
Since October, more than 80 Lebanese civilians and 11 civilians in Israel have been killed in the fighting, according to U.N. and Israeli government statistics. About 300 Hezbollah fighters have been killed, according to the group, as have at least 17 Israeli troops, according to the Israeli government.
An U.S. diplomatic push
Mr. Hochstein, a senior adviser to President Biden, met with senior Lebanese officials in Beirut to press for a diplomatic solution on Tuesday, a day after meeting with Mr. Netanyahu in Jerusalem.
Israel has demanded that the group withdraw its forces north of the Litani River in Lebanon, in accordance with the Security Council resolution that ended the 2006 war — a demand Hezbollah is unlikely to grant. The resolution stipulated that only United Nations forces and the Lebanese Army would be allowed in the area, but both sides have accused the other of violating it.
While in Beirut, Mr. Hochstein did not meet with the leaders of Hezbollah, which the United States and the European Union consider a terrorist organization. Instead, he met with members of Lebanon’s government — including the prime minister, Najib Mikati — whose influence on Hezbollah is limited.
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Amos Hochstein, left, a senior adviser to President Biden, with Nabih Berri, speaker of Lebanon’s Parliament, in Beirut on Tuesday.Credit...Bilal Hussein/Associated Press
“The situation is serious,” Mr. Hochstein told reporters in Beirut. “We have seen an escalation over the last few weeks, and what President Biden wants to do is to avoid a further escalation to a greater war.”
For Lebanese civilians whose homes lie along the border, many of whom have been displaced by the violence, Mr. Hochstein’s visit offered only a sliver of hope that the fighting might end soon.
“Every time we heard about these visits, we’d pack to return back home,” said Taghrid Hassan, a teacher from the inland border community of Aitaroun, Lebanon, now living in the coastal city of Tyre. “Then our hope fades away from these empty promises.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lashed out at the Biden administration on Tuesday for withholding some weapons from Israel.He said he had told the American secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, last week that it was “inconceivable” that the Biden administration was holding up delivery of some heavy bombs and artillery shells to Israel, which he called “America’s closest ally, fighting for its life.” He said Mr. Blinken in turn had assured him the White House “is working day and night to remove these bottlenecks.” In Washington, Mr. Blinken declined to say at a news conference whether he had given that assurance. He said only “one shipment” of 2,000-pound bombs was still under review over concerns about their use in densely populated parts of Gaza, but other weapons shipments were still flowing.
Amos Hochstein, a senior adviser to President Biden, met on Tuesday with senior Lebanese officials in Beirut, as he pressed for a diplomatic solution to the increasingly deadly aerial attacks between Israel and Hezbollah on the border with Lebanon, which have stoked fears of another full-blown war. Mr. Hochstein said the success of peace talks to end Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza held the key to defusing the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah as well. “It will take everyone’s interest in ending this conflict now, and we believe there is a pathway, diplomatically, to do it,” Mr. Hochstein said at a news conference.
With aerial attacks between Israel and Hezbollah escalating over the last week, the two sides traded threats on Tuesday. Hezbollah posted a video on social media purporting to show its drones flying over the Haifa port and sensitive Israeli military locations. Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, responded to the video in a post noting that the port is operated by international corporations. “We are getting very close to the moment of deciding on changing the rules of the game against Hezbollah and Lebanon,” he said. “Hezbollah will be destroyed and Lebanon will be hit hard.”
The United States imposed new sanctions on Monday aimed at cutting off weapons, supplies and funding to the Iranian-backed Houthis, who control much of Yemen and have been striking commercial ships in the Red Sea to show support for Palestinians in Gaza.
The $230 million temporary pier that the U.S. military built on short notice to rush humanitarian aid to Gaza has largely failed in its mission, aid organizations say, and will probably end operations weeks earlier than originally expected. In the month since it was attached to the shoreline, the pier has been in service only about 10 days. The rest of the time, it was being repaired after rough seas broke it apart, detached to avoid further damage or paused because of security concerns.
Searching the rubble of a destroyed home in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip, on Tuesday.Credit...Mohammed Saber/EPA, via Shutterstock
More than eight months of fighting between Israel and Hamas has destroyed buildings and infrastructure across the Gaza Strip, leaving more than 39 million tons of debris and exacerbating an already dire health crisis there, according to a preliminary assessment of the environmental impact of the conflict released by the United Nations on Tuesday.
In the latest of a series of reports from U.N. agencies clarifying the scale of devastation in Gaza and the health dangers posed by the war there, the U.N. Environmental Program found that the millions of tons of rubble contained unexploded ordnance, asbestos and other hazardous substances, as well as human remains.
The U.N. agency also found that the war had interrupted “almost all” environmental management systems and services, and created new hazards, and said that all water sources in Gaza have been disrupted, as have wastewater treatment and disposal facilities.
The environmental report follows a post on social media last week from UNRWA, the U.N.’s main agency for Palestinians, saying that as of early June, 330,000 tons of waste had accumulated in or near populated areas across Gaza, “posing catastrophic environmental and health risks.” Also last week, the U.N. Satellite Center reported that about 65 percent of the total road network in Gaza had been damaged as of last month.
“The collapse of sewage, wastewater and solid waste management systems and facilities has had major impacts on the environment and people,” the report said. It noted an increase in the rates of acute respiratory infection, diarrhea among children under 5, scabies, lice and jaundice reported by the World Health Organization since early in the conflict.
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A woman salvaging items from a growing waste dump along a tent displacement camp west of Nuseirat, in central Gaza, last month.Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Gazans and humanitarian groups operating in the enclave have reported rationing water supplies, forcing people “to forgo personal hygiene and sanitation needs” and to use alternative water sources for drinking, including agricultural wells with brackish water, which exposes them to pesticides and other chemicals, the report said. Water supplies have also been contaminated by military activities, the U.N. agency said, including the flooding and destruction of the tunnel system built by Hamas, which the Israeli military has targeted.
UNRWA has accused the Israeli military of impeding its efforts to address environmental and health hazards in Gaza. The agency has cited a lack of access to fuel, compounding sanitation problems, and said the Israeli military has blocked UNRWA’s access to landfills at a time when many of its sanitation centers, machinery and trash trucks have been destroyed.
Aggravating the difficulties for humanitarian agencies, Gaza has become the most dangerous place in the world for aid workers, the U.N. said on Monday, noting that at least 250 have been killed in Gaza since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel set off the conflict, including nearly 200 who worked for UNRWA.
The U.S. military rescued most of the 22 crew members of a Greek-owned vessel, the Tutor, last week, as seen in a photo released by the U.S. Navy. The bulk carrier was attacked by Houthi fighters in the Red Sea, and has been drifting.Credit...U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, via Reuters
An abandoned merchant ship drifting off the coast of Eritrea in the Red Sea is believed to have sunk a week after Yemen’s Houthi militia struck it with missiles and drones, a British maritime agency said on Tuesday. Oil and debris were spotted at the ship’s last location.
The ship, a Greek-owned bulk carrier named the Tutor, was at least the second commercial vessel to be completely lost to Houthi attacks, which have crippled global maritime trade in the Red Sea’s crucial shipping lane. The Houthis, who control much of Yemen, have been striking ships to show support for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The group is part of the Iranian-led “axis of resistance,” along with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
In March, the Houthis sank the British-owned Rubymar after hitting it with anti-ship ballistic missiles in the Bab-el-Mandeb strait, an important waterway between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
The United States and Britain have for months led a campaign to cripple the Houthis’ military capability with targeted strikes on the group’s missile launches and other sites in Yemen. But the Houthis have remained defiant and have managed to escalate their attacks in the Red Sea, striking and sinking ships using drones and missiles. The U.S. Central Command said on Tuesday that it had stepped up airstrikes against the Houthis, destroying eight of their drones in the previous 24 hours.
Sabrina Singh, the deputy press secretary for the Pentagon, said at a press briefing on Monday that the Houthis had launched about 190 attacks in the Red Sea since Nov. 19.
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, the agency that announced that the Tutor had sunk, said on Tuesday that U.S. military authorities had sighted maritime debris and oil floating in the ship’s last reported location. The bulk carrier came under attack on June 12 and had been drifting in the Red Sea. The U.S. military rescued most of the Tutor’s 22 crew members, who were mostly from the Philippines, but a search is still on for one.
Last week, the U.S. military said that another ship, a Ukrainian-owned bulk carrier, the Verbena, was hit by two Houthi missiles in the Gulf of Aden, severely injuring a crew member, who was later evacuated to another ship. The Verbena, which was carrying lumber from Malaysia to Italy, caught fire after the missiles hit and was last reported to be drifting about 35 miles northeast of Djibouti.
One of the Houthis’ most audacious operations was in November, when gunmen hijacked a cargo ship, the Galaxy Leader, and took its 25 crew members hostage. The crew is still captive in Yemen.
A view of damage in the southern Lebanese village of Kfarkila, seen from the armored vehicle of a U.N. peacekeeping patrol.