Israel and Hezbollah Trade Cross-Border Strikes

[Pelican Press 0]

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******* and Hezbollah Trade Cross-Border Strikes

******** forces and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon traded cross-border strikes on Wednesday, fueling concerns about a wider regional conflagration as negotiators struggle to broker a cease-***** in the Gaza Strip.

******* said that it had struck weapons storage facilities used by Hezbollah, the powerful Iranian-backed militia, in eastern Lebanon for the second time this week. The overnight airstrikes, close to the Syrian border, ******* at least one person and injured 30 others, including children, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said in a statement.

Hezbollah said that in response it had targeted an ******** military base in the ********-controlled Golan Heights.

*******’s military said that dozens of rockets had crossed into the area from Lebanon, but that they had struck a civilian neighborhood, not near a military target, damaging two houses in Katzrin, a town of about 8,000 people in the region. Magen David Adom, the ******** emergency medical service, said a 30-year-old man in Katzrin had been treated for shrapnel wounds.

“Attacks against our civilians will not go unanswered,” said an ******** military spokesman,

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The cross-border strikes highlighted how months of diplomatic efforts, led in part by the ******* States, have ******* to either broker a stop to the war in Gaza between ******* and ******, or ease hostilities along the Lebanese border. ******* and Hezbollah have dramatically increased the pace of their attacks since October, when Hezbollah began ******* into *******, saying it was acting in solidarity with ****** and the people of Gaza.

President Biden called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of ******* on Wednesday to discuss the efforts to secure a cease-***** and the release of hostages held in Gaza, the White House said.

But despite a fresh push for a deal by Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken this week, mediators have made no apparent breakthrough in talks to secure a truce between ******* and ******, Hezbollah’s ally, or the release of hostages.

The war, the military draft needed to wage it, and the government’s efforts to free the hostages have also exposed deep fissures in ******** society.

On Wednesday, hundreds of ultra-Orthodox ******** men opposed to mandatory military service protested outside a conscription center in Jerusalem, clashing with police officers and counterprotesters. ******** news media reported that officers used water cannons to disperse crowds and beat some protesters with batons, and the police said five people were arrested.

*******’s military began sending conscription orders to ultra-Orthodox men ages 18 to 26 last month, after the Supreme Court in June ordered an end to exemptions that had been in place for them for decades. Military service is required for most Israelis over 18, with some exceptions, such as for most ***** citizens and many ultra-Orthodox Jews.

The divide over military service poses a problem for Mr. Netanyahu, who has struggled to balance the demands of his ultra-Orthodox allies with his ultranationalist supporters and secular ******** Jews, many of whom believe the ultra-Orthodox exemption is unjustified and no longer viable.

While trying to keep his governing coalition together, Mr. Netanyahu has also faced protests by families of the hostages in Gaza who have been demanding that he make a cease-***** deal to bring their relatives home. On Tuesday, some of the families joined a march in front of ******** military headquarters in Tel Aviv, calling on Mr. Netanyahu to make an agreement.

Mr. Netanyahu and ****** have accused each other of sabotaging peace talks by repeatedly raising new demands. The prime minister has vowed that ******* will continue to ****** in Gaza until it achieves a “total victory” over the group, destroying its military and governing capabilities, even boasting to supporters that he has resisted pressure to end the war.

Mr. Netanyahu has also said he is determined to push Hezbollah back from the Lebanese border, and to allow displaced Israelis to return to their homes. Some ******** officials have suggested that could mean an invasion of Lebanon.

*******’s most recent strikes against Hezbollah landed about 40 to 60 miles north of the border in the Bekaa Valley, deeper inside Lebanon than many of the near-daily attacks the two combatants have exchanged since the war in Gaza began.

The ******** military said it had detected secondary explosions after its strikes on Wednesday, which it said indicated that there were large weapons caches at the sites. At least three areas were targeted, including the town of Nabi Chit, according to Lebanon’s state-run news agency.

The Lebanese authorities, bracing for more *********, have expedited plans to relocate civilians, distribute food and water, and maintain health services if the fighting escalates, said Bachir Khodr, the governor of the Baalbek-Hermel region of Lebanon, where a round of ******** strikes landed on two consecutive nights this week.

“We are getting ready for war,” he said in an interview on Wednesday. “We hope it doesn’t happen, but in case it does, we are ready.”

In another strike in the Lebanese port of Sidon on Wednesday, the ******** military said it had ******* Khalil al-Miqdah, a commander in the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a militant group that has fought alongside Hezbollah and is associated with the ************ ****** faction. Mr. al-Miqdah worked closely with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the ******** military said in a statement.

That statement could not be independently verified, though the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades confirmed Mr. al-Miqdah’s ******.

Hezbollah began ******* into northern ******* on Oct. 8, a day after ****** led the deadly ******** on southern *******. Since then, more than 160,000 people have fled the fighting on both sides of the ********-Lebanese border. Hezbollah has said it would stop ******* rockets if ******* halted its war with ****** in Gaza.

“This is a classic day in the war. Just a little more intense,” Inbar Kedem, who was camping in the Golan Heights with friends, celebrating the end of his service in the ******** Air Force, said in an interview on Wednesday. Mr. Kedem said they had seen rockets intercepted, part of a familiar routine in *******.

*******’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said on Wednesday that ******’s Rafah Brigade in southern Gaza had been defeated, and that more than more than 150 tunnels had been demolished under Gaza’s border with Egypt. ******* has said that ****** uses those tunnels to smuggle weapons into Gaza.

Mr. Gallant said the ******** military was “looking to the north now,” indicating that it might be finishing its three-month offensive in southern Gaza. In May, the International Court of Justice ordered ******* to “immediately” halt its offensive in the city of Rafah, amid widespread criticism that it had left nowhere for civilians to shelter and had cut off major aide routes into the territory.

Farther north in Gaza, the ******** military on Wednesday ordered Palestinians to “immediately” leave parts of another city, Deir al-Balah, warning that it would act “forcefully” against militants in the area. The latest orders have raised expectations of an ******** advance in the area, where at least 28 people have been ******* since Tuesday, according to the ************ Civil Defense agency, a part of the ******-run Interior Ministry in Gaza.

In Gaza City, the ******** military said it had struck ****** militants operating inside a former school on Wednesday. According to the Civil Defense agency, at least two people were *******. It was the latest ******** strike on a school building in Gaza, many of which have been used as shelters by Palestinians displaced by 10 months of heavy bombardment.

Reporting was contributed by Erika Solomon, Ephrat Livni, Anushka Patil and Michael Levenson.

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