US Envoy Tries to Calm Israel-Lebanon Tensions

Senior Advisor to the US President Amos Hochstein (L) meets with Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri in Beirut. Photo: Parliament of Lebanon/dpa
Senior Advisor to the US President Amos Hochstein (L) meets with Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri in Beirut. Photo: Parliament of Lebanon/dpa
TT

US Envoy Tries to Calm Israel-Lebanon Tensions

Senior Advisor to the US President Amos Hochstein (L) meets with Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri in Beirut. Photo: Parliament of Lebanon/dpa
Senior Advisor to the US President Amos Hochstein (L) meets with Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri in Beirut. Photo: Parliament of Lebanon/dpa

Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon killed three Hezbollah fighters on Wednesday, the militant group said, as US envoy tasked with avoiding a devastating regional war returned to Israel after meeting officials in Lebanon.
United States President Joe Biden's senior adviser Amos Hochstein, met with House Speaker Nabih Berri and other officials in Lebanon and then travelled to Israel in his latest attempt to deescalate tensions. Hochstein told reporters in Berlin on Tuesday that it was a “very serious situation” and that a diplomatic solution to prevent a larger war was urgent.
Hezbollah has new weapons and intelligence capabilities that could help it target more critical positions deeper inside Israel in case of an all-out war, the militant group's leader warned on Wednesday.
Hassan Nasrallah’s comments came as the monthslong cross-border conflict simmering between Hezbollah and Israel appears to be reaching a boiling point, and a day after a top US envoy met Lebanese officials in his latest attempt to ease tensions.
"We now have new weapons. But I won’t say what they are," he said in a televised address commemorating a top Hezbollah commander killed in an Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon last week. “When the decision is made, they will be seen on the front lines.”
Hezbollah has used locally made explosive drones for the first time since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza in October, as well as surface-to-air missiles to chase off Israeli jets.
Nasrallah said in 2021 that Hezbollah has 100,000 fighters but now he claimed the number is much higher, without elaborating. He also said he has rejected offers from allied countries and militias in the region that could add tens of thousands to his ranks.
A nearly 10-minute-long video allegedly filmed by a Hezbollah surveillance drone and released Tuesday shows parts of Haifa — a city far from the Israel-Lebanon border. In his speech Wednesday, Nasrallah said Hezbollah has much more footage — an apparent threat it could reach sites deep in Israel.
Israel’s military chief, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, visited Israeli air-defense soldiers near the border with Lebanon on Wednesday, saying Israel was aware of Hezbollah's capabilities demonstrated in the video and has solutions for these threats.
“We of course have infinitely greater capabilities," he said. "I think the enemy is only familiar with a few of them and (we) will confront them at the right time.”
Hezbollah, an ally of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, has been exchanging strikes with Israel almost daily since the war in Gaza erupted on Oct. 7, with the aim to pull Israeli forces away from the embattled Gaza Strip.
Hezbollah's attacks escalated after Israel expanded its offensive into the southern Gaza city of Rafah in May, and spiked further in June after an Israeli strike killed high-ranking Hezbollah commander Taleb Sami Abdullah, the most senior militant killed so far during the Israel-Hamas war.
Also Tuesday, the Israeli army said it has “approved and validated” plans for an offensive in Lebanon, although the decision to actually launch such an operation would have to come from the country's political leadership.
Nasrallah said a wider war with Lebanon would have regional implications and that Hezbollah would attack any other country in the region that assisted Israel in the war effort, citing Cyprus, which has hosted Israeli forces for training exercises. He suggested Cyprus might allow Israel to use its bases in event of a wider war.
In response, Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides said his island nation “is in no way involved” in any military operations in the region. Cyprus is “part of the solution, not part of the problem” he said, pointing out the Cyprus-Gaza maritime corridor used to deliver aid to the Palestinian territory.
Only a cease-fire in Gaza would halt the Lebanon-Israel border fighting or the attacks on Western and Israel-linked targets from Yemen's Houthis and Iraqi militias allied with Hezbollah.
Israel views Hezbollah as its most direct threat, and the two fought a 34-day war in 2006 that ended in a stalemate. Hezbollah's military capabilities have grown significantly since then, and the United States and Israel estimate the group, along with other Lebanese militant factions, has about 150,000 missiles and rockets. Hezbollah also has been working on precision-guided missiles.
Hezbollah said at least four of its fighters were killed Wednesday in Israeli strikes as Hochstein returned to Israel for a new round of meetings there.
Lebanese state media reported the strikes along the border and near the coastal city of Tyre, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) away. The Israeli military said two Hezbollah launches damaged several vehicles in northern Israel.
Kamel Mohanna, the head of the Amel Association, a nongovernmental organization providing health services in different areas of Lebanon, said the association health center in the town of Khiam was hit and damaged by the Israeli shelling.
Israeli strikes have killed more than 400 people in Lebanon, most of them Hezbollah and other militants, but also over 80 civilians and non-combatants. In northern Israel, 16 soldiers and 11 civilians have been killed by strikes launched from Lebanon.



Potential Hezbollah Leader Out of Contact Since Friday, Lebanese Source Says

A damaged vehicle lies amidst the rubble in the aftermath of the Israeli strikes, amid ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, in the Chiyah area of Dahiyeh, Beirut, October 5, 2024. REUTERS/Louisa Gouliamaki
A damaged vehicle lies amidst the rubble in the aftermath of the Israeli strikes, amid ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, in the Chiyah area of Dahiyeh, Beirut, October 5, 2024. REUTERS/Louisa Gouliamaki
TT

Potential Hezbollah Leader Out of Contact Since Friday, Lebanese Source Says

A damaged vehicle lies amidst the rubble in the aftermath of the Israeli strikes, amid ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, in the Chiyah area of Dahiyeh, Beirut, October 5, 2024. REUTERS/Louisa Gouliamaki
A damaged vehicle lies amidst the rubble in the aftermath of the Israeli strikes, amid ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, in the Chiyah area of Dahiyeh, Beirut, October 5, 2024. REUTERS/Louisa Gouliamaki

The potential successor to slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has been out of contact since Friday, a Lebanese security source said on Saturday, after an Israeli airstrike that is reported to have targeted him.

In its campaign against the Iran-backed Lebanese group, Israel carried out a large strike on Beirut's southern suburbs late on Thursday that Axios cited three Israeli officials as saying targeted Hashem Safieddine in an underground bunker.

The Lebanese security source and two other Lebanese security sources said that Israeli strikes since Friday on Dahiyeh, a residential suburb and Hezbollah stronghold in southern Beirut, have kept rescue workers from scouring the site of the attack.

Hezbollah has made no comment so far on Safieddine since the attack.

Israeli Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani said on Friday the military was still assessing the Thursday night airstrikes, which he said targeted Hezbollah's intelligence headquarters.

The loss of Nasrallah's rumored successor would be yet another blow to Hezbollah and its patron Iran. Israeli strikes across the region in the past year, sharply accelerated in the past few weeks, have decimated Hezbollah's leadership.

Israel expanded its conflict in Lebanon on Saturday with its first strike in the northern city of Tripoli, a Lebanese security official said, after more bombs hit Beirut suburbs and Israeli troops launched raids in the south.

Israel has begun an intense bombing campaign in Lebanon and sent troops across the border in recent weeks after nearly a year of exchanging fire with Hezbollah. Fighting had previously been mostly limited to the Israel-Lebanon border area, taking place in parallel to Israel's year-old war in Gaza against Palestinian group Hamas.

Israel says it aims to allow the safe return of tens of thousands of citizens to their homes in northern Israel, bombarded by Hezbollah since Oct. 8 last year.

The Israeli attacks have eliminated much of Hezbollah's senior military leadership, including Secretary General Nasrallah in an air attack on Sept. 27.

The Israeli assault has also killed hundreds of ordinary Lebanese, including rescue workers, Lebanese officials say, and forced 1.2 million people - almost a quarter of the population - to flee their homes.

Lebanon's health ministry said on Saturday that Israeli strikes had killed at least 25 people and wounded 127 others the day before.

The Lebanese security official told Reuters that Saturday's strike on a Palestinian refugee camp in Tripoli killed a member of Hamas, his wife and two children. Media affiliated with the Palestinian group said the strike killed a leader of its armed wing, naming him as Saeed Atallah.

The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the strike on Tripoli, a Sunni Muslim-majority port city that its warplanes also targeted during a 2006 war with Hezbollah.

It said in a later statement that it had killed two Hamas members operating in Lebanon, but did not say where they were killed. There was no immediate comment from Hamas.

ISRAEL WEIGHS OPTIONS FOR IRAN

The violence comes as the anniversary approaches of Hamas' attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 people and in which about 250 were taken as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel's subsequent assault on Gaza has killed nearly 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's health ministry, and displaced nearly all of the enclave's population of 2.3 million.

Iran, which backs both Hezbollah and Hamas, and which has lost key commanders of its elite Revolutionary Guards Corps to Israeli air strikes in Syria this year, launched a salvo of ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday. The strikes did little damage.

Israel has been weighing options in its response to Iran's attack.

Oil prices have risen on the possibility of an attack on Iran's oil facilities as Israel pursues its goals of pushing back Hezbollah in Lebanon and eliminating their Hamas allies in Gaza.

US President Joe Biden on Friday urged Israel to consider alternatives to striking Iranian oil fields, adding that he thinks Israel has not yet concluded how to respond to Iran.

Israeli news website Ynet reported on Saturday that the top US general for the Middle East, Army General Michael Kurilla, is headed for Israel in the coming day. Israeli and US officials were not immediately reachable for comment.