Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed that Israeli air raids targeting Hezbollah rockets in southern Lebanon in the early hours of Sunday morning were “not the end of the story”, after the two sides exchanged their heaviest fire since the war in Gaza began, raising fears of an all-out regional conflict.
The Israeli prime minister did not specify what further action, if any, was planned after the intense exchanges but he suggested Israel’s moves would be aimed at “changing the situation in the north”.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) used 100 jet fighters that hit more than 40 target sites inside Lebanon in sorties over a period of seven hours. Hezbollah launched hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel.
According to Netanyahu, the raids “destroyed thousands of short-range rockets, all of which were designed to attack our citizens and our forces in the Galilee” in northern Israel.
He also said the IDF had “intercepted all of the drones that Hezbollah launched at a strategic target in the centre of the country”.
Netanyahu did not name the target but the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, described it as “a military intelligence base 110km inside Israeli territory” just outside Tel Aviv, an apparent reference to the Glilot military base, home to the Mossad spy agency and military intelligence agencies such as the Unit 8200 electronic surveillance section.
Two Hezbollah fighters and a militant from an allied group were killed in the strikes on Lebanon. An Israeli navy officer was killed and two other service members injured on a patrol boat off the coast of northern Israel that was hit by shrapnel from an Iron Dome interceptor missile.
On Sunday evening the armed wing of Hamas said that it had fired an “M90” rocket at Tel Aviv in response to what it said was the “Israeli massacres against civilians”.
The IDF said sirens sounded in Rishon LeTsiyon, about 15 miles south of Tel Aviv, but the rocket landed “in an open area”.
A Hamas official also said on Sunday evening that it rejected new Israeli conditions put forward in Gaza ceasefire talks, casting further doubt on the chances of a breakthrough in the latest US-backed effort. “We will not accept discussions about retractions from what we agreed to on July 2 or new conditions,” Hamas official Osama Hamdan told the group’s Al-Aqsa TV on Sunday.
In a speech earlier on Sunday, Nasrallah downplayed the impact of Israeli airstrikes and portrayed Hezbollah’s aerial attack, intended to avenge the killing of a senior commander last month, as a success.
Nasrallah said that Hezbollah had used its Katyusha rockets (320 of them according to its official statements) to distract Israel’s Iron Dome air defence system from a mass drone attacks. He added that all the drones involved had been successfully launched and had entered Israeli airspace, but did not say how many, if any, had reached their intended target.
The Hezbollah secretary general claimed the Lebanese Shia militia had decided not to respond to the killing in late July of its commander, Fuad Shukr, with attacks on Israeli civilians or infrastructure but to focus on exclusively military targets.
He added that Hezbollah’s arsenal of guided missiles had not been used and had not been damaged by Israeli airstrikes, so could be used in the future. The impact of Sunday’s salvo would be assessed before a decision on whether to take further action to avenge Shukr.
“If results are not seen to be enough, we will respond another time,” Nasrallah said in a televised address.
While Netanyahu and Nasrallah left open the possibility of further exchanges across the Israeli-Lebanese boundary, Reuters quoted two unnamed diplomats as saying that both sides had been in contact to confirm that each considered the exchange “done” and that neither wanted a full-scale war. Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, also stressed his country did not want an all-out conflict, though it would “act according to developments on the ground”.
However, Netanyahu’s government is under persistent political pressure to create conditions in northern Israel for 80,000 displaced residents to return to their homes. They had been driven out by Hezbollah rocket and artillery fire in solidarity with Hamas, after the Palestinian militant group launched its surprise attack on Israel on 7 October last year.
“Nasrallah in Beirut and [Iranian supreme leader] Khamenei in Tehran need to know that this is an additional step in changing the situation in the north, and returning our residents securely to their homes,” Netanyahu told a cabinet meeting on Sunday. “And I reiterate – this is not the end of the story.”
Military observers in Israel believe that some IDF generals and the defence minister, Yoav Gallant, are in favour of further sorties against Hezbollah military positions following Sunday’s apparent success.
Gallant told IDF officers that Hezbollah had been thrown off balance by pre-emptive Israeli action minutes before the Lebanese militia was due to launch its rocket and drone attack.
“We have destabilized Hezbollah, and their operation failed,” he said, according to Haaretz newspaper. “Thousands of rockets were destroyed, precision missiles were also hit at several points, dozens of drones were taken out, and overall, a very successful result.”
“The enemy planned to launch many hundreds of rockets at the northern communities. The pre-emptive action meant that over fifty per cent, maybe two-thirds of them, were not launched,” Gallant said. He argued that Israel was at a “strategic crossroads” between possible negotiated solutions to the conflict in Gaza and the confrontation with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
“We need to use the negotiations to bring about the release of hostages, and through the release of the hostages, also open the possibility of creating a resolution in the north, and later, to calm the region,” the defence minister said.
Meanwhile, Israel was “operating militarily and preparing as if we will not reach a resolution, and we are ready at any moment for war in the north, whatever may come”, Gallant said. “However, this is not our preferred path, and we are still giving a chance to the possibility of resolving this through an agreement.”
Israel’s allies have expressed support against the threat from Hezbollah while urging restraint to avoid a regional war.
Sean Savett, a spokesperson for the US national security council, said: “President Biden is closely monitoring events in Israel and Lebanon. He has been engaged with his national security team throughout the evening. At his direction, senior US officials have been communicating continuously with their Israeli counterparts.
“We will keep supporting Israel’s right to defend itself, and we will keep working for regional stability,” Savett added.
The US chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Charles Brown, arrived in Israel on Sunday for talks with military officials as part of a tour of Middle East capitals, planned before Sunday’s hostilities. The French press agency AFP quoted an unnamed US military official as saying that Washington had helped track incoming Hezbollah attacks but “was not involved in Israel’s pre-emptive strikes”.
Gallant’s office reported that the minister had talked by phone to the UK defence secretary, John Healey, to brief him on the pre-emptive airstrikes and the thwarted Hezbollah attack.
“Minister Gallant discussed the important cooperation with Britain in ensuring Israel’s security,” the ministry statement said. He also discussed the UK’s important role in maintaining regional stability, and in this regard emphasised the importance of preventing regional escalation.”
