Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday vowed to carry out “full force” strikes against Hezbollah until it ceases firing rockets across the border, dimming hopes for a cease-fire proposal put forth by U.S. and European officials.
Israel carried out a new strike in the Lebanese capital, which it said killed a senior Hezbollah commander, and the militant group launched dozens of rockets into Israel. Tens of thousands of Israeli and Lebanese people living near their countries' border have been displaced by the fighting.
Netanyahu spoke as he landed in New York to attend the annual U.N. General Assembly meeting, where U.S. and European officials were putting heavy pressure on both sides of the conflict to accept a proposed 21-day halt in the fighting to give time for diplomacy and avert all-out war.
Nearly 700 people have been killed in Lebanon this week as Israel dramatically escalated strikes, saying it is targeting Hezbollah’s military capacities. Israeli leaders say they are determined to stop the group's cross-border attacks, which began after Hamas' Oct. 7 attack that ignited the war in Gaza.
Israel’s “policy is clear," Netanyahu said. "We are continuing to strike Hezbollah with full force. And we will not stop until we reach all our goals, chief among them the return of the residents of the north securely to their homes.”
Just before his comments, the Israeli military said it killed a Hezbollah drone commander, Mohammed Hussein Surour, in an airstrike in the suburbs of Beirut. Hezbollah did not immediately comment on the claim. The Health Ministry said two people were killed and 15 wounded in the strike.
The strike gutted an apartment in a residential building in Dahiyeh, the mainly Shiite suburb where Hezbollah has a strong presence, according to Associated Press photos of the scene.
Over the past week, Israel has carried out several strikes in Beirut targeting senior Hezbollah commanders. One strike in eastern Lebanon on Thursday killed 20 people, most of them Syrian migrants, according to Lebanese health officials.
Israel hit 75 sites early Thursday across southern and eastern Lebanon and launched a new wave of strikes in the evening, the military said. Throughout the day, Hezbollah fired some 175 projectiles into Israel, the Israeli military said. Most were intercepted or fell in open areas, sparking some wildfires, though one rocket hit a street in a town near the northern city of Safed.
Israel has talked of a possible ground invasion into Lebanon to drive Hezbollah -- an Iranian-backed Shiite group that is the strongest armed force in Lebanon -- away from the border. It has moved thousands of troops to the north in preparation. Some 100,000 Lebanese have fled their homes in the past week, streaming into Beirut and points further north.
The escalation has raised fears of a repeat – or worse – of the 2006 war between the two sides that wreaked destruction across southern Lebanon and other parts of the country and saw heavy Hezbollah rocket fire on Israeli cities.
“Another full-scale war could be devastating for both Israel and Lebanon,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said after talks with his British and Australian counterparts in London.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was at the U.N. meeting with Israeli officials over the truce proposal. Speaking in an interview with MSNBC, he said major powers, the Europeans and Arab nations were united, “everyone speaking with one clear voice about the need to get that cease-fire in the north.”
“I can’t speak for him,” Blinken said of Netanyahu.
Hezbollah has not yet responded to the proposal. Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati welcomed it, but his government has no sway over the group.
Netanyahu’s office downplayed the initiative, saying in a statement that it was only a proposal.
One of Netanyahu’s far-right governing partners threatened on Thursday to suspend cooperation with his government if it signs onto a temporary cease-fire with Hezbollah – and to quit completely if a permanent deal is reached. It was the latest sign of displeasure from Netanyahu’s allies toward international cease-fire efforts.
“If a temporary cease-fire becomes permanent, we will resign from the government,” said National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, head of the Jewish Power party.
If Ben-Gvir leaves the coalition, Netanyahu would lose his parliamentary majority and could see his government come toppling down, though opposition leaders have said they would offer support for a cease-fire deal.
Hezbollah has insisted it would halt its strikes only if there is a cease-fire in Gaza, where Israel has battled Hamas for nearly a year. That appears out of reach despite months of negotiations led by the United States, Egypt and Qatar.
One day after Hamas’ Oct 7 attack on southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza, Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel, bringing Israeli counterfire and a cycle of reprisals that has gone on near daily since. Hezbollah says its barrages are a show of support for Palestinians and that it is targeting Israeli military facilities, though rockets have also hit civilian areas.
Before this week, the cross-border exchanges had killed about 600 people in Lebanon, mostly militants but including more than 100 civilians, and about four dozen people in Israel, roughly half of them soldiers and the rest civilians. The fighting also forced tens of thousands to flee homes on both sides of the border.
Israel says its escalated strikes across Lebanon the past week are targeting Hezbollah rocket launchers and other military infrastructure. Since Monday, strikes have killed more than 690 people in Lebanon, around a quarter of them women and children, according to local health authorities.
The campaign opened with what is widely believed to be an Israeli attack on Sept. 18 and 19 detonating thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah, killing at least 39 people and maiming thousands more, including civilians.
Hezbollah in turn has fired hundreds of rockets into Israel. Several people in Israel have been wounded. On Wednesday, the group fired on Tel Aviv for the first time with a longer-range missile that was intercepted.
Early Thursday, an Israeli airstrike hit a building housing Syrian workers and their families near the ancient city of Baalbek in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley. The Lebanese Health Ministry said 19 Syrians and a Lebanese were killed, one of the deadliest single strikes in Israel’s intensified air campaign.
Hussein Salloum, a local official in Younine, said most of the dead were women and children. The state news agency had initially reported that 23 people were dead.
Lebanon, with a population of around 6 million, hosts nearly 780,000 registered Syrian refugees and hundreds of thousands who are unregistered — the world’s highest refugee population per capita.
© Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
37 Comments
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kurisupisu
Is there any country bordering Israel that hasn’t been bombed by Israel?
Banthu
Err... ahh.... Lebanon is a sovereign country and we have this thing called the UN Charter.
Oh oops... I forgot about the blatant hypocrisy that we are supposed to accept.
deanzaZZR
I am guessing 'no' but you have to go back some time to see an Israeli attack on Jordan.
From Article 2 of the United Nations Charter reads:
The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.
All Members, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and benefits resulting from membership, shall fulfill in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present Charter.
All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.Israel flunks all three tests.
The Ripper!
Israel should use whatever means necessary to eliminate these Islamic terrorists who have been shooting rockets daily into civilian populations in Israel since October 7.
Dango bong
the murderous terrorist wanted a fight and they got it.
no civilized people take hostages
until the terrorist groups are eliminated this should not end
Dango bong
Yes Hamas and the murdering members love to follow international law
Dango bong
It seems like some people here forgot how this conflict started....
The Ripper!
Is there any country bordering Israel that hasn’t tried to invade Israel?
Or, that hasn't bombed or committed terrorist acts in Israel?
Or that has not expelled Palestinian Arabs from their country?
Hello Kitty 321
And the US has just given Israel another 8.7 billion dollars worth of arms to liven things up.
Hello Kitty 321
@ dangobongg
It started with Nakba
happyhere
Yes，and continued ever since with Israel continually stealing other people's land.
Rules based order, Blinken et al.?
Aly Rustom
“If a temporary cease-fire becomes permanent, we will resign from the government,” said National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, head of the Jewish Power party.
If Ben-Gvir leaves the coalition, Netanyahu would lose his parliamentary majority and could see his government come toppling down, though opposition leaders have said they would offer support for a cease-fire deal.
There it is laid bare. This is why Netanyahu wants perpetual war. Don't kid yourself peeps. This is going to spread.
Capuchin
1000's of Palestinians including 100's of children held by Israel in "administrative detention", locked up indefinitely, without charge, trial or legal defense.
Then when Israel is done with them they dump the corpses by the truckload back to the Palestinians.
Not a civilized country for that and so many more reasons.
https://www.btselem.org/administrative_detention
https://www.middleeasteye.net/live-blog/live-blog-update/israel-sends-truck-full-unidentified-decomposed-bodies-gaza
Sanjinosebleed
But Netanyahu speaks for Blinken!
ICC arrest warrants now!
Alfie Noakes
That's what it's there for. Israel is literally a massive Western military base in West Asia whose function is to crush and destabilize any attempts at sovereign development or pan-Arabic unity in the area. Apartheid-era South Africa fulfilled exactly the same role for the West in southern Africa. Ukraine is essentially a giant CIA base now, too. Empire proxies all.
WoodyLee
“"If a temporary cease-fire becomes permanent, we will resign from the government,” said National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, head of the Jewish Power party.""
Well that is what Israeli's and the rest of the world are hopping for, but this thug will NOT go easy.
藤原
The flag of this group says who and what they are. The Hezbolla flag is yellow, with green word Alla written in there form of Aribic (not interested in mid east languages so not sure what form it is) and on top of the name is a green I machine gun. That just says who, they are, what they support, and what they will do to achieve all of their goals.
Even in my home country as of late stabbings and other forms of terror have been rising given rise to parties like the AFD. Groups like Hezbolla are a cancer on its host country and plague to there neighbors.
The Ripper!
Israel agreed to the creation of 2-states, but the Arabs rejected it---they wanted all the land--and since then 11 different Arab countries have attacked and tried to destroy Israel multiple times.
Guess which of those countries did not lose any of their land in those wars?
Zaphod
What is a cease-fire supposed to achieve other than a period of re-arming for Hizballah? The typical Western approach to this is so childish. It assumes that what you do not see does not exist.
Zaphod
kurisupisu
Is there are a country bordering Israel that has not participated in a military attack on Israel or is hosting organizations that try to wipe out Israel? It is fascinating how many people assume the Middle East is just a random group of countries and Israels situation can be compared with, say, Switzerland.
Sanjinosebleed
Was that before or after the Jewish terrorist organisations started slaughtering Palestinians during the nakba??!!! Palestinians are in refugee camps for a reason...
RichardPearce
Netanyahu cannot afford to lose three weeks out of his window to start a war that America will fight for him.
That window closes the day after the election, when all the American media will be obsessing over the results, the disputing of the results, the delay in some results and the reactions in America's cities to the results, making it hard to spin Israel's indiscriminate attacks into target ones, and the targeted responses to Netanyahu's crimes into indiscriminate attacks.
And if Iran has turned on all it's reserve weapons manufacturing capacity, they can literally exhaust the entire JSIP supply, and the American supply stored in Israel that Netanyahu has the keys for, and all the American supply on its bases and ships in the ME in a sustained wave and announce that every member of the armed wing of JSIP can abandon their weapons and wait to see if the ICC investigation results in charges, or die weapons in hand, while the political wing can choose to face ICC trials, or choose permanent exile and the loss of all assets, and running from ICC arrest warrants
Attilathehungry
Sanjin; Palestinians are in camps for two reasons: 1, they were promised that they could return to their former homes in Israel once all the Jews were killed. 2. The 22 other Arab nations in the world do not want to offer them refuge or help.
Neither of those will come to pass. So, Israel decided to commit genocide. A strange kind of genocide that resulted in the population of Palestinians growing by 1000% since 1948.
David Brent
At this point, Israel has nothing to lose and everything to gain by carpet bombing southern Lebanon.
u_s__reamer
Only TWO requests for arrest warrants for Israelis (long time coming but we don't wonder why?) and ZERO requests for their numerous accomplices and enablers in the US, Germany and the UK, to mention just the most egregious of the violators of international law and all humanitarian principles and norms? The "lying eyes and ears" of the world see and hear things very differently than what the deeply complicit gaslighting Western MSM have been reporting before and after October 7.
David Brent
Ah, yes, post-apartheid South Africa is SO much better....(eye roll).
TokyoLiving
Genocidal zionist regime goes for the gas and oil fields from Gaza and Lebanon..
u_s__reamer
The flag of this group says who and what they are...
And the Star of David has morphed into a resurrected Swastika for the victims of Zionist racial terror aided and abetted by Germans on the wrong side of genocide again, for the 3rd time! As the song says, "When will they ever learn?"
burgers and beers
Yet more and more dead and wounded kids in the photos and videos coming out. On cue Biden administration approves billions more in weapons to Israel. Hypocrites.
Wasabi
The better question is : Is there any country bordering Israel that hasn't bombed Israel?
GDBD
What happens if tomorrow US for whatever reason is unable to give that much money/weapon/fire power to Israel. What happens if Israel's neighbours catch up in terms of weapons. It will take only one battle to reverse this injustice that is happening since 75 years. And anyone can see this coming sooner or later.
Attilathehungry
Carpet bombing? Don't make me laugh.
Israel doesn't have the planes necessary to carpet bomb. It makes me think you don't know the meaning of the term. But you heard it from a hysterical anti-Semite so you decided to use it. Israel is targeting its strikes against terrorist leaders and terrorist weapons. Doing so in a way to minimize civilian casualties.
Unfortunately, the cowards of Hezbollah (and Hamas) choose to hide behind women and children. They choose to put weapons in schools, mosques, and basements of hospitals. Any civilian casualties are THEIR fault, not the IDF.
If Hezbollah wants a cease fire, then they should cease firing. Pretty simple. STOP firing rockets indiscriminately into Israel, and Israel will stop bombing your rockets.
Toblerone
parties like the AFD.
Those parties are the only chance of survival for your country.
falseflagsteve
Netnynahu claims to working in Gods will but his Lord is obviously satan. He enjoys these massacres and bland takes. Possibly the most dangerous man on the planet.
u_s__reamer
Carpet bombing? Don't make me laugh.
Israel doesn't have the planes necessary to carpet bomb.
Yeah, Gaza is not Cambodia: "the most moral army in the world" just "mow the lawn" and ask AI "Where's Daddy?" to pierce all the "human shields", wiping out whole families across multiple generations. Israel, "the Home of the Brave" in the eyes of the willfully "blind".
raincloud
Netanyahu is a terrorist with an arrest warrant on his name, and the UN should vow to use full force to carry out that arrest.
Hello Kitty 321
@Attilathehungry
No, they are in the camps because the Israelis forcefully drove them from their homes when they stole the land.