Jason Burke & William Christou
The Guardian / September 24, 2024
Israel hits targets in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah fires rockets into northern Israel and Lebanese PM heads to UN.
Thousands of Lebanese people fled the continuing bombing in the country’s south on Tuesday as Israel said it was conducting “extensive strikes” on Hezbollah targets, including on the southern suburbs of Beirut, for the second day in a row and third time this week.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, vowed to maintain the offensive against Hezbollah and said the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was leading Lebanon “to the edge of the abyss” while world leaders meeting at the United Nations general assembly in New York called for the de-escalation of the conflict, which has claimed hundreds of lives this week.
“I say to the people of Lebanon: Our war is not with you. Our war is with Hezbollah,” Netanyahu said on Tuesday afternoon, speaking at an Israeli military intelligence base. “I told you yesterday to evacuate homes in which there is a missile in the living room and a rocket in the garage. Whoever [does not] will no longer have a home.”
The new strike in Dahieh, Hezbollah’s stronghold in the Lebanese capital, was typical of those which have targeted leaders of the group over recent months. A missile hit the top floor of an apartment building in the Ghobeiri neighbourhood, with images of the strike showing a collapsed roof with a large smoke cloud billowing from it.
Videos posted to social media showed crowds of people gathered in a rubble-filled street and badly burned human remains.
“This is the aggression of Israel. This is Israel! Don’t you see what they are doing to us? Despite all of this, we will wipe them from the earth,” a man screamed in the video.
Lebanon’s health ministry said in a statement that the “Israeli enemy raid on Ghobeiri in Beirut’s southern suburbs killed six people and injured 15”. Israel’s military said the attack had killed Ibrahim Muhammad Qubaisi, also known as Abu Issa, the commander of Hezbollah’s rocket and missile division.
Israel struck hundreds of Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon overnight and during Tuesday, with the death toll from the recent wave of attacks now nearing 560 people.
Hezbollah, which is sponsored by Iran, said it had targeted several Israeli military targets including an explosives factory about 35 miles (56km) into Israel and the Megiddo airfield near the town of Afula, which it attacked three separate times.
Officials in Israel said more than 50 missiles and rockets were fired from Lebanon into northern parts of the country on Tuesday morning, most of which were intercepted.
The fighting has raised fears that the US, Israel’s close ally, and Iran will be drawn into a wider conflict. On Tuesday Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, expressed fears of a regional conflagration but said Hezbollah, which Iran helped to found in 1983, “cannot stand alone” against Israel.
“Hezbollah cannot stand alone against a country that is being defended and supported and supplied by western countries, by European countries and the United States,” Pezeshkian told CNN.
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, described the escalating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah as almost a “full-fledged war”, as world leaders gathered in New York for the opening of the 79th UN general assembly.
Israel’s UN ambassador said on Tuesday it was exploring “concrete ideas” for de-escalating the conflict. “As we speak there are important forces trying to come up with ideas and we are open-minded for that,” Danny Danon told reporters. “We are not eager to start any ground invasion anywhere … We prefer a diplomatic solution.”
But diplomatic efforts appear to have had little impact so far, with Lebanon recording more casualties on Monday than in any other single day since the 15-year civil war that started in 1975.
Israeli officials have said the recent rise in airstrikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon is designed to force the group to agree to a diplomatic solution, cease its own attacks on Israel or unilaterally withdraw its forces from close to the contested border.
Many experts and officials question the assumption that air power or other military operations can achieve such strategic aims. Others point out that Hezbollah has repeatedly pledged to stop firing into Israel if there is a ceasefire in Gaza.
About 60,000 people were evacuated from northern Israel in the days after the 7 October raid by Hamas into southern Israel that triggered the current conflict, and they have been prevented from returning by the ongoing exchanges of fire across the contested border with Lebanon. In Lebanon, approximately 100,000 people had been displaced even before the escalation of the conflict in recent days.
Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defence minister, has said the campaign of airstrikes will continue until the residents are back in their homes.
“This is the most difficult week for Hezbollah since its establishment – the results speak for themselves,” Gallant said. “Entire units were taken out of battle as a result of the activities conducted at the beginning of the week in which numerous terrorists were injured.”
The Israeli military said Israeli strikes had hit long-range cruise missiles, heavyweight rockets, short-range rockets and explosive drones.
Though Hezbollah has remained defiant, the group was already reeling from heavy losses last week when thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by its members exploded.
That operation killed 42 and wounded several thousand. It was widely blamed on Israel, which has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility.
In Lebanon, displaced families slept in shelters hastily set up in schools in Beirut and the coastal city of Sidon. With hotels quickly booked to capacity or rooms priced beyond the means of many families, those who did not find shelter slept in their cars, in parks or along the seaside.
Fatima Chehab, who came with her three daughters from the area of Nabatieh, said her family had been displaced twice in quick succession.
“We first fled to stay with my brother in a nearby area, and then they bombed three places next to his house,” she said.
Some people waited for hours in gridlocked traffic to get to what they hoped would be safety.
Issa Baydoun fled the village of Shihine in southern Lebanon when it was bombed and came to Beirut in a convoy of cars with his extended family. They slept in the vehicles on the side of the road after discovering that the shelters were full.
He rejected Israel’s contention that it hit only military targets.
“We evacuated our homes because Israel is targeting civilians and attacking them,” Baytown said. “That’s why we left our homes, to protect our children.”
The Israeli military has warned residents in eastern and southern Lebanon to evacuate ahead of its widening air campaign against what it said were Hezbollah weapons sites.
Israel and some analysts have said that Hezbollah has deliberately stored missiles and other armaments in homes or other civilian buildings to use local communities as a “human shield”.
Well-wishers in Lebanon offered up empty apartments or rooms in their houses to those displaced in social media posts, while volunteers set up a kitchen at an empty petrol station in Beirut to cook meals for the displaced.
In the eastern city of Baalbek, the state-run National News Agency reported that queues formed at bakeries and petrol stations as residents rushed to stock up on essential supplies in anticipation of further airstrikes.
Meanwhile, the border crossing with Syria saw big traffic jams as a result of people escaping from Lebanon to the neighbouring country.
The Alma Centre, a security research centre in Israel, said Hezbollah had launched more than 300 rockets deep into northern and central parts of the country in the past 24 hours. New alarms warning of rockets sounded in the northern Israeli towns of Kiryat Shmona and Margaliot late on Tuesday afternoon.
Jason Burke is the International security correspondent of The Guardian
William Christou is a Beirut-based journalist
