Israel said it attacked Hezbollah before they could attack, so early Sunday morning they fired a wave of rockets and drones across southern Lebanon. Hezbollah said they were doing this to get back at Israel for killing one of their top leaders last month.
A heavy exchange of fire made it look like an all-out war might break out, involving the US, Iran, and militant groups from all over the area.
It could also make it impossible to reach a peace agreement in Gaza, where Israel has been at war with Hezbollah-backed Hamas for more than 10 months.
By the middle of the morning, it looked like the fight was over. Both sides said they had only attacked military targets. But things were still tense, and it wasn’t clear right away how many people had been hurt or how much damage had been done. The attacks on Lebanon killed at least three people.
The Israeli military said that Hezbollah was going to attack Israel with a lot of rockets and weapons. Soon after, Hezbollah said it had attacked Israeli military positions as a first reaction to the killing of one of its founders, Fouad Shukur, in a July airstrike in Beirut.
The strikes happened while Egypt was hosting new talks to end the war between Israel and Hamas. If there is a cease-fire in Gaza, Hezbollah has said it will no longer fight. Iran backs both of these groups and also rebels in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen who could join any bigger fight.
At the start of a Cabinet meeting, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the military had destroyed “thousands of rockets that were aimed at northern Israel.” He also told the people of Israel to follow the Home Front Command’s orders.
He said, “We are determined to do everything to defend our country, to make sure that the people of the north can safely return to their homes, and to keep following a simple rule: whoever hurts us, we will hurt them.”
People in northern Israel heard air raid sirens, and Israel’s Ben-Gurion international airport shut down and rerouted flights for about an hour because of the fear of attack. In northern Israel, the Home Front Command has raised the alert level and told people to stay near bomb bunkers.
An Israeli military spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, said that Hezbollah planned to attack places in northern and central Israel. He said that early reports showed that Israel had “very little damage,” but that the military was still on high alert. In the strikes on Sunday, he said, about 100 Israeli planes took part.
The Health Ministry of Lebanon said that the strikes in southern Lebanon killed two people and hurt two more. As a separate event, a car attack killed a fighter for the Amal group, which is linked to Hezbollah.
Hezbollah said that a “large number” of drones and more than 320 Katyusha rockets were used in the attack, which was aimed at several locations in Israel. It said the operation was going after “a top-level Israeli military target that will be made public later” as well as “enemy sites, barracks, and Iron Dome (missile defense) platforms.”
Hezbollah later said that what it called the “first stage” of retaliatory strikes was over. It said that this would allow it to fire more attacks deeper into Israel. Later, though, it was said that “military operations for today have been completed.”
The group said that all of the drones it fired at them exploded and hit their targets, but it didn’t say how many. It made a list of 11 military bases, barracks, and posts in northern Israel and the Golan Heights, which Israel has taken over. It also didn’t believe Israel’s claim that its preemptive strikes had stopped a bigger Hezbollah attack. Hezbollah didn’t back up what it said with proof.
Randa Slim, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C., said that the exchange on Sunday morning was “still within the rules of engagement and unlikely to lead to an all-out war at this point.”
An NSC spokesman in the U.S., Sean Savett, said that President Joe Biden was “closely monitoring events in Israel and Lebanon.”
“At his direction, top U.S. officials have been in constant contact with their Israeli counterparts,” Savett said. “We will continue to support Israel’s right to defend itself, and we will continue to work for peace in the region.”
It was reported by the Pentagon that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin talked with his Israeli colleague, Yoav Gallant, about how Israel could defend itself. It was planned for Gen. CQ Brown, who is the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to visit Israel, Egypt, and Jordan during his trip to the area.
In the past few weeks, a lot of officials from the US and Europe have been to Israel and Lebanon to try to stop the tensions from rising, which they fear could lead to a regional war.
When Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, it set off the war in Gaza, and Hezbollah attacked Israel almost right away. A lot of people on both sides of the border have had to leave their homes because Israel and Hezbollah have been shooting at each other almost every day. Both sides had been careful not to start a full-scale war until Sunday.
Hezbollah and Israel fought until they both lost in the summer of 2006. They are thought to be much stronger now than they were back then. It is thought to have about 150,000 rockets and can hit anywhere in Israel, according to both the US and Israel. Along with precision-guided weapons and drones that can get past Israel’s defenses, the group has also made other things.
When Iran fired hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel earlier this year, the U.S.-led alliance helped Israel shoot them down. Israel has one of the best armies in the world and a very strong multi-tiered missile defense system. In the past few weeks, the U.S. military has been putting more troops in the area.
Israel has promised a harsh reaction in case of all-out war. This response is likely to destroy important civilian infrastructure, especially in south Beirut and southern Lebanon, which are home to Hezbollah’s main strongholds. In the event of a fight, hundreds of thousands of people on both sides would likely have to move.
Hezbollah is a close ally of Iran, which has also said it will punish Israel for killing Ismail Haniyeh, a top Hamas leader, in an explosion in Tehran last month. Israel has not said whether it was involved or not.
A cease-fire in Gaza is seen as very important by the US and other leaders to avoid a bigger conflict in the Middle East. Egypt was going to hold high-level talks in Cairo on Sunday to try to work out the kinks in a plan for a ceasefire and the release of many Hamas inmates.
CIA head William Burns, Qatar’s Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, and Egypt’s top intelligence official Abbas Kamel were all set to attend the talks, according to two Egyptian officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk about the private talks.
Hamas sent a group to Cairo, Egypt, to hear from Egyptian and Qatari officials, but they are not directly involved in the talks.
Officials said it wasn’t clear right away if David Barnea, the head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, would still be able to make it because of the tensions between Israel and Hezbollah.
