By The New York Times (World News) | Created at 2024-09-27 10:30:07 | Updated at 2024-09-30 07:23:25
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to address the United Nations General Assembly on Friday, a speech that will be closely watched after he offered mixed signals on efforts by the United States and other nations to broker a three-week pause in the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.
World leaders have used the annual U.N. meeting in New York this week to call for an urgent end to the fighting in the Gaza Strip and in Lebanon, and to warn of the risk of a larger regional war in the Middle East. The cease-fire proposal from the United States and its allies is a possible first step, but its prospects are uncertain and both Israel and Hezbollah have reason to reject it.
Mr. Netanyahu and politicians across the Israeli political spectrum on Thursday appeared to pour cold water on a deal, with the Israeli leader insisting that the military would keep striking Hezbollah militants in Lebanon with “all our might.”
In the early hours of Friday, his office issued a statement saying it “appreciates the U.S. efforts” and would continue discussions on a possible cease-fire “in the coming days.” The comments suggested that he is trying to balance demands from Israel’s most important ally, the United States, and the right-wing lawmakers who help keep his governing coalition in power.
Hezbollah, the powerful Iran-backed Lebanese militia, was not formally asked to accept the proposal, and did not publicly respond to it. Israel and Hezbollah have been trading fire since the war in Gaza began last October. But over the past 10 days, Israel has moved more decisively against the group, launching one of the biggest bombing campaigns in modern military history and targeting Hezbollah commanders.
Here’s what else to know:
Bombing in Gaza: The war in Gaza has not stopped, even as Israel’s attention has shifted to Lebanon in the north. The Israeli military said on Thursday that it had struck a school used as a shelter in Gaza, which it said housed a Hamas command center. It was the latest in a series of Israeli strikes on former schools. Palestinian Civil Defense officials said 35 people had been killed in Israeli strikes across the enclave on Thursday, including 15 in the bombing of the former school, including women and children.
Sirens in Tel Aviv: Yemen’s Houthi militia, which like Hezbollah and Hamas is backed by Iran, launched a missile at Tel Aviv for the second time in two weeks early Friday morning. The launch set off sirens across central Israel, but the Israeli military said that it had intercepted the missile and that it caused no damage. Such attacks were once rare but have become more common: It was the second time in three days that an Iran-backed group had aimed a missile at the city.
Hezbollah losses: The militant group on Thursday confirmed the death of Mohamed Hussein Sarour, who the Israeli military said had overseen the group’s drone operations. Hezbollah provided no details on his role, but referred to him by an honorific reserved for the group’s senior members. He is the most recent in a string of commanders to be killed by Israel in recent days.
Around half of the nearly 1,600 people killed in Lebanon since the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah began last October have died in the past 10 days alone, according to Lebanese government figures. Hospitals in the southern Lebanese city of Tyre have been inundated with so many bodies that they are now reporting a shortage in mortuary refrigerators, Lebanon’s state-run news agency reported.
The Israeli military said it had struck dozens of sites in Lebanon on Friday after a volley of Hezbollah rocket fire toward the Haifa area. It also said almost a dozen rockets were fired toward the Lower Galiliee, a region containing the cities of Tiberias and Nazareth, on Friday morning, but most were shot down by Israel’s air defense.
Hezbollah has stepped up its attacks against Israeli civilian communities in recent days, a response, the group said, to Israel’s bombardment of Lebanese towns and cities. Hezbollah on Friday targeted the northeastern Israeli city of Tiberias, which has not been evacuated, with a rocket salvo. Magen David Adom, Israel’s main emergency medical organization, said that a 25-year-old man was being treated for shrapnel wounds.
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A White House spokesman said the Biden administration believed Israel’s government was “on board” with a proposal for a 21-day cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah when the United States and 10 other countries unveiled the idea Wednesday night.
John Kirby, the White House’s national security spokesman, said the allies would not have made the proposal public otherwise.
“I didn’t say it in exactly those words, but I’m not going to disagree with your assessment,” Mr. Kirby told a reporter during a briefing on Thursday afternoon.
The belief that Israel was willing to agree to a three-week pause in the fighting was shaken on Thursday morning, when the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, appeared to dismiss the idea of a cease-fire that would end some of the most intense bombardment of Lebanon in more than a decade. He
“We continue to hit Hezbollah with all our might,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a statement released on Thursday as he arrived in New York City to deliver a speech at the U.N. General Assembly on Friday morning. “We will not stop until we achieve all our goals, first of all the safe return of the residents of the north to their homes. This is the policy, and no one will mistake it.”
Mr. Kirby acknowledged that the prime minister’s comments were at odds with the American diplomats’ understanding on Wednesday evening.
“We had every reason to believe that in the drafting of it and in the delivery of it, that the Israelis were fully informed,” he said, “fully informed and fully aware of every word in it. And we wouldn’t have done it, as I said, if we didn’t believe that it would be received with the seriousness with which it was composed.”
He added that it was unclear why Mr. Netanyahu had made the comments.
“I certainly can’t begin to speculate about what considerations went into that statement, whether they were political or operational or otherwise,” Mr. Kirby said. “Those are questions that he needs to be asked and should be given the opportunity to answer.”
Mr. Kirby declined to say whether President Biden or other members of the U.S. administration had been disappointed with Mr. Netanyahu’s remarks. He said that American diplomats were continuing to press the case for a cease-fire, including with their Israeli counterparts.
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In his address to the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday, Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, challenged the international community to stop sending weapons to Israel and accused the country of carrying out a “war of genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
“It is the crime of a full-scale war of genocide that Israel is perpetrating,” Mr. Abbas said in his nearly half-hour speech. “A crime that has killed more than 40,000 martyrs in Gaza alone, and thousands remain under the rubble. A crime that has injured more than 100,000 others to this day.”
“Stop the genocide, stop sending weapons to Israel,” Mr. Abbas said, accusing the United States of being complicit in Israel’s violence. “This madness cannot continue; the entire world is responsible for what is happening to our people in Gaza and the West Bank, which is under daily aggressive violations.”
When Mr. Abbas took the podium, he was greeted by a long period of applause. When he concluded, more applause followed, as well as a standing ovation and chants of “Free, free Palestine.”
The majority of the U.N.’s 193-member states have demonstrated support in symbolic resolutions for the plight of Palestinians caught in the middle of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. And many states have harshly criticized Israel for the catastrophic humanitarian toll its bombardment has taken on the enclave.
Mr. Abbas called on the international community to intervene to end the raging conflict in the Middle East, which is threatening to engulf Lebanon. Since October, the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah has launched strikes into Israel out of support for Hamas, an ally.
Israel has retaliated with devastating cross-border strikes and assassinations, and has carried out detonations of electronic devices carried by Hezbollah members in Lebanon, killing hundreds and injuring thousands of people.
The United States, along with European and Middle East allies, was working on a proposal for a 21-day halt to the fighting between Hezbollah and Israel. Iran’s foreign minister, in an emergency session of the Security Council on Wednesday, also called for Israel to halt the fighting.
In his speech, the Palestinian leader listed conditions for a comprehensive cease-fire, including the full withdrawal of Israel’s military from Gaza, an end to the forced displacement of civilians, protection for humanitarian agencies in Gaza, international protection and scaled humanitarian aid delivery with full access across Gaza.
Danny Dannon, Israel’s ambassador to the U.N., who responded to Mr. Abbas’s speech, noted that Mr. Abbas had not mentioned the word Hamas once in his 26-minute speech.
“Since the massacre of Oct. 7, Abbas has failed to condemn Hamas for their crimes against humanity,” Mr. Dannon said in a statement. He accused the Palestinian Authority of supporting and funding terrorist groups while talking about peace at the U.N.
While Mr. Abbas received something of a hero’s welcome at the General Assembly, diplomats said that they anticipated that many member states, particularly Arab and Muslim countries, would boycott or walk out of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel’s address to the assembly, scheduled for Friday morning.
On the sideline of the General Assembly, the U.N. Security Council held an informal meeting with members of the League of the Arab States to discuss the crisis in the Middle East and efforts for a cease-fire in Gaza and Lebanon.
Ahmed Aboul Gheit, secretary general of the league, told reporters after the meeting, “Everybody who spoke, Council members, as well as the four Arab representatives, focused on the call and the need to implement an immediate cease-fire, support of the French American effort to call for a cease-fire lasting at least 21 days.”
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Despite fatigue among its ranks and diminished stockpiles after nearly a year of war, the Israeli military still has the capacity to launch an invasion of Lebanon, having wound down its military operations in the Gaza Strip in recent weeks, security experts said.
“Israel has sufficient resources to undertake a ground invasion,” said Brig. Gen. Yaacov Ayish, former commander of the Israeli military’s operations directorate. “Nobody wants a war, but this is a war that has been imposed on us.”
For just under a year, Israel has been fighting Hamas in Gaza, in an effort to dismantle the militant group after it led brutal attacks on Israel on Oct. 7 last year. Then in August, Israel ramped up its operations against militants in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Now, Israel military leaders have suggested Israel could launch a ground invasion of Lebanon with the aim of undermining Hezbollah, the armed group that dominates the country.
Hezbollah has been firing rockets and drones on Israeli territory in solidarity with Hamas since Oct. 8, a day after the Hamas-led attacks on Israel left 1,200 people dead, setting off the war in Gaza. Since then, Hezbollah and Israel have been engaged in back-and-forth air attacks, killing combatants and civilians, destroying homes and setting farmland on fire.
Over the past week, the Israeli military has greatly expanded its attacks on Hezbollah by launching a major bombing campaign, with the declared aim of returning some 60,000 displaced residents of northern Israel to their homes.
The airstrikes, the most significant by Israel since its 2006 war with Hezbollah, have killed senior commanders in the group and blown up its weapons stores. The Lebanese health ministry has said more than 600 people have been killed, including women and children.
But the security experts expressed skepticism about a potentially drawn out Israeli invasion without a clear end goal in sight.
“Fighting a short battle is possible,” said Brig. Gen. Assaf Orion, a former senior official in the Israeli military’s planning directorate. “But if it drags from weeks to months to years, I’m doubtful.” He added that he did not believe Israel’s stockpiles could sustain a yearslong incursion.
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A senior Israeli security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational details, said that while the military had used more munitions than it originally expected in Gaza, it had managed its stockpiles, taking into consideration the possibility of a major operation in Lebanon.
On Wednesday, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, the Israeli military’s chief of staff, suggested that the country’s forces were gearing up for a possible ground invasion.
“You hear the jets overhead; we have been striking all day,” General Halevi told soldiers along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon. “This is both to prepare the ground for your possible entry and to continue degrading Hezbollah.”
The military has also called up two brigades to the north and allowed an Israeli television reporter to interview soldiers simulating a ground incursion in a forested region.
General Ayish said that in his view a ground invasion should focus on clearing the border region of Hezbollah’s fighters and destroying its weapons infrastructure, including tunnels carved into the rocky underground.
“We need to take all actions necessary to disrupt Hezbollah’s ability to attack our communities in the north,” said General Ayish, who now is a senior vice president at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America.
Israel could later withdraw to its territory, he added, leaving open the possibility to carry out pinpointed attacks against Hezbollah if it attempts to reconstitute itself by the border.
Still, a diplomatic agreement, General Ayish and other experts said, was needed to ensure that residents of northern Israel can return to their homes.
“I don’t think Israel should try to defeat Hezbollah militarily,” said Ofer Shelah, a former member of Israel’s Parliament, the Knesset, and an author of books on military affairs. “So what you need to do is a diplomatic effort alongside the military one.”
Hezbollah has repeatedly said it would not agree to stop firing on Israel until Hamas and Israel agree to a cease-fire in Gaza. Efforts to achieve a truce have faltered time after time as Israel and Hamas have staked out incompatible positions.
And Israeli officials have indicated he wants to pressure Hezbollah into halting its attacks on Israel, even without a truce in Gaza.
Many of the experts doubt that Hezbollah would back off its position, even if Israel escalated further.
“There’s no separating between Gaza and Lebanon,” Mr. Shelah said.
Natan Odenheimer contributed reporting.
