Israeli 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-fire in the Gaza Strip.
Israel 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, killed 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 Israeli military base in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.
Israel’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 Israeli 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 Israeli military spokesman, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani.
The cross-border strikes highlighted how months of diplomatic efforts, led in part by the United States, have failed to either broker a stop to the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, or ease hostilities along the Lebanese border. Israel and Hezbollah have dramatically increased the pace of their attacks since October, when Hezbollah began firing into Israel, saying it was acting in solidarity with Hamas and the people of Gaza.
President Biden called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Wednesday to discuss the efforts to secure a cease-fire and the release of hostages held in Gaza, the White House said. Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, joined the call.
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 Israel and Hamas, 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 Israeli society.
On Wednesday, hundreds of ultra-Orthodox Israeli men opposed to mandatory military service protested outside a conscription center in Jerusalem, clashing with police officers and counterprotesters. Israeli 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.
Israel’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 Arab 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 Israeli 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-fire deal to bring their relatives home. On Tuesday, some of the families joined a march in front of Israeli military headquarters in Tel Aviv, calling on Mr. Netanyahu to make an agreement.
Mr. Netanyahu and Hamas have accused each other of sabotaging peace talks by repeatedly raising new demands. The prime minister has vowed that Israel will continue to fight 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 Israeli officials have suggested that could mean an invasion of Lebanon.
Israel’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 Israeli 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 violence, 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 Israeli 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 Israeli military said it had killed Khalil al-Miqdah, a commander in the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a militant group that has fought alongside Hezbollah and is associated with the Palestinian Fatah faction. Mr. al-Miqdah worked closely with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the Israeli military said in a statement.
That statement could not be independently verified, though the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades confirmed Mr. al-Miqdah’s death.
Hezbollah began firing into northern Israel on Oct. 8, a day after Hamas led the deadly assault on southern Israel. Since then, more than 160,000 people have fled the fighting on both sides of the Israeli-Lebanese border. Hezbollah has said it would stop firing rockets if Israel halted its war with Hamas 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 Israeli Air Force, said in an interview on Wednesday. Mr. Kedem said they had seen rockets intercepted, part of a familiar routine in Israel.
Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said on Wednesday that Hamas’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. Israel has said that Hamas uses those tunnels to smuggle weapons into Gaza.
Mr. Gallant said the Israeli 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 Israel 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 Israeli 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 Israeli advance in the area, where at least 28 people have been killed since Tuesday, according to the Palestinian Civil Defense agency, a part of the Hamas-run Interior Ministry in Gaza.
In Gaza City, the Israeli military said it had struck Hamas militants operating inside a former school on Wednesday. According to the Civil Defense agency, at least two people were killed. It was the latest Israeli strike on a school building in Gaza, many of which have been used as shelters by Palestinians displaced by 10 months of heavy bombardment.
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