Tension rises as Israel, Hezbollah exchange fire

Latest strikes come after Biden envoy visited Beirut in bid to reduce conflict.

Lebanese civil defence members search the rubble in the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike on the village of Sarein, near Baalbek on Tuesday. Picture: AFP

Hostilities flared between Israel and Hezbollah militia, threatening to broaden ­Israel’s war to its northern border amid an impasse in negotiations to reach a cease-fire in Gaza.

Hezbollah launched about 100 Katyusha rockets at northern Israel on Tuesday, the heaviest barrage since the war in Gaza began against Hamas – an ally of the Lebanese group – five months ago.

Hezbollah said its rockets were a response to an Israeli airstrike on Monday night in Baalbek in northeastern Lebanon. Israel retaliated later on Tuesday with more strikes against two Hezbollah military command centres and weapons depots, also in Baalbek, which residents of the area say had been used to support its war efforts in Syria. Israel said the Monday strike in Baalbek was retaliation for drones dispatched to the Golan Heights.

US President Joe Biden’s special envoy, Amos Hochstein, visit­ed Beirut last week in an effort to halt cross-border fire between Hezbollah and Israel.

Hezbollah has said it would halt attacks on Israel if there were a ceasefire in Gaza, but Mr Hochstein said a truce in the enclave didn’t guarantee calm in Lebanon, and a diplomatic solution between the militia and Israel was necessary.

Israel and Hezbollah have been engaged in tit-for-tat strikes since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, calibrated around unspoken red lines to avoid escalating the conflict into an all-out war. Israel in recent weeks has hit targets far inside Lebanese territory, well beyond the border region usually at the centre of the conflict between the two sides.

The fresh escalation stretches the unstated rules of escalation between the opposing forces, and is partly a result of political pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to confront Hezbollah, which is a more powerful force than Hamas, and whose presence on the border has forced 100,000 citizens in northern Israel to evacuate their homes.

This mass displacement “is unprecedented since the formation of the country. It’s a very serious pressure factor on the Israeli government to reshape the security landscape along the Lebanon-­Israel border,” said Daniel Sobelman, an Israel-based research fellow with the Middle East Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School.

A similar number of Lebanese citizens has been displaced on the Lebanese side of the border.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s nat­ional security minister, criticised Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on Tuesday for not responding more forcefully to the latest Hezbollah rocket barrage.

“Gallant, the military is your responsibility. What are you waiting for?” Ben-Gvir said in a video on X. “Over 100 rockets launched at the State of Israel, and you sit quietly?”

Israel insists Hezbollah withdraw all its forces north of Lebanon’s Litani River, 29km from the Israel-Lebanon border, as mandated under a UN resolution that ended the 2006 war. In recent weeks, Israel has hit Hezbollah targets far from that zone. Baalbekis about 100km from the border. Israel also bombed the city two weeks ago.

The Wall Street Journal