Israel’s military launched strikes on a Hizbullah commander in Beirut and expanded its bombing campaign to the Lebanon-Syria border despite a last-minute diplomatic push for a ceasefire to prevent full-blown war.
The strikes came after Israeli officials quickly poured cold water on hopes of a breakthrough with the joint US-French plan to pause the rising hostilities.
Landing in New York, where he is due to address the UN General Assembly on Friday, Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu vowed Israel would press on with its offensive.
“Our policy is clear: we’re continuing to strike Hizbullah with all [our] strength, and we won’t stop until we achieve all our objectives – first and foremost the return of the northern residents to their homes securely,” he said. “This is the policy. Let no one mistake it.”
The Israeli military said the strikes in Beirut had killed Muhammed Srour, whom it said had been the head of Hizbullah’s aerial command, and had previously been a commander in its surface-to-air missile unit.
Residents said they had heard three blasts in the southern suburb of Dahiyeh, which Hizbullah controls. Hizbullah did not immediately comment on the Israeli claims. Lebanese officials said the strike had killed two people, and injured 15.
The strikes are part of a massive escalation launched by the Israeli military in Lebanon over recent days, which has displaced 90,000 people and fuelled fears that the year-long hostilities between Israel and the Lebanese militant group are on the verge of spiralling into a broader regional conflict.
In an effort to defuse tensions, US president Joe Biden and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday put forward a proposal for a 21-day ceasefire between the two sides.
US officials hope the truce will allow time to negotiate a more durable ceasefire between Israel and Hizbullah, and also put pressure on Hamas to accept the terms of a ceasefire-for-hostages deal with Israel in Gaza.
But the proposal was met with a chorus of criticism in Israel. Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s ultranationalist finance minister, said the campaign should “end in one scenario: crushing Hizbullah and removing its ability to harm the residents of the North”.
“The enemy must not be given time to recover from the heavy blows he received and to reorganise for the continuation of the war in 21 days’ time,” he wrote on X on Thursday morning.
Their comments were echoed by a string of other far-right members of Israel’s government with settlements minister Orit Strock saying there was “no moral mandate for a ceasefire, not for 21 days and not for 21 hours”.
Mr Netanyahu depends on the far-right members of his coalition to remain in power. Ministers from his Likud party also spoke out against the plan.
While the US-French proposal, which was backed by the G7, EU, Australia, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Qatar, did not set a deadline for the two sides to respond, US officials had previously said that they expected the Israeli and Lebanese governments to do so “in the coming hours”.
People familiar with the situation said the US hoped that Mr Netanyahu would use his speech at the UN to announce that Israel’s war in Gaza was moving into a new phase, which might persuade Hizbullah – which has insisted it will not stop firing at Israel until the war in Gaza is over – to agree a temporary truce.
The burst of diplomatic activity follows a major Israeli offensive against Hizbullah. The militant group initiated the hostilities when it began firing rockets at Israel on October 8th last year in support of Hamas, which had launched its attack on Israel the previous day.
But over the past week, Israel has assassinated a string of senior Hizbullah commanders, and on Monday it launched a broad bombing campaign targeting what it said were the militant group’s weapons stores in Lebanon, killing more than 600 people.
On Wednesday, the head of Israel’s army told troops to prepare for a possible ground operation in Lebanon. The military said on Thursday morning that it had conducted further strikes overnight, hitting 75 Hizbullah targets in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.
Lebanon’s health ministry said 20 people were killed, 19 of them Syrian nationals, in an Israeli attack that levelled a building in the town of Younine in the Bekaa Valley. That was the deadliest strike in a day of bombings that also killed seven others elsewhere in Lebanon’s south, according to a Financial Times tabulation of health ministry statements.
Until this week Israel had rarely targeted the Bekaa Valley, a Hizbullah stronghold along Lebanon’s eastern border with Syria, previously concentrating most strikes in the south.
The IDF said it had also struck targets on Lebanon’s border with Syria relating to Hizbullah weapons transfers, while a Lebanese minister said at least one of the strikes landed on the Syrian side of a bridge connecting the two countries.
Hizbullah has also begun firing deeper into Israel. On Wednesday, it aimed a ballistic missile at Tel Aviv, Israel’s commercial hub, for the first time, which was shot down by air defences. On Thursday, Hizbullah fired barrages of rockets and attack drones at various sites in northern Israel. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2024
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