Israel announced on Tuesday that it had expanded its ground offensive against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, after deploying additional troops there and calling on residents to avoid the coastal area.
On the first anniversary Monday of the deadly Hamas attack on Israeli territory, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to continue the fight until victory against Lebanese Hezbollah and the Palestinian Islamist movement, both supported by Israel. ‘Iran.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Tuesday that Hezbollah was now “a battered and broken organization” after intense Israeli strikes targeting it.
Despite the blows inflicted on Hamas and Hezbollah, whose leaders were killed, these movements continue to fire rockets against Israel, which borders the Gaza Strip to the south and Lebanon to the north.
The Israeli army announced that the 146e division began Monday “limited and localized operations against Hezbollah terrorist targets and infrastructure in southwest Lebanon”, bordering the Mediterranean.
This division is the fourth that Israel has deployed since the start, on September 30, of its ground offensive in southern Lebanon, a region from which the Israeli army withdrew in 2000 after 22 years of occupation.
In the coastal town of Saida, 40 kilometers south of Beirut, fishing boats and the few boats remained at the dock, the day after Israel’s call on Monday to avoid the southern coast.
“We are fishermen with no other source of income and now all our work has stopped,” testified Hamza Sonbol, a fisherman.
At the same time, Israel carried out airstrikes on southern and eastern Lebanon, as well as the southern suburbs of Beirut, Hezbollah’s three strongholds.
The Islamist movement claimed responsibility for rocket attacks on military sites as well as the city of Haifa, in northern Israel. Around 85 projectiles were fired, according to the Israeli army. Most rockets are regularly intercepted.
Hezbollah also claimed to have pushed back Israeli soldiers “infiltrating” into southern Lebanon near a position of UNIFIL, the UN peacekeeping force.
“Sacred Mission”
“Our capabilities are good, contrary to what the enemy says, who claims to have weakened us,” assured Naïm Qassem, Hezbollah’s number two, in a televised speech.
According to him, the leadership of the movement is “perfectly organized” despite the “painful” Israeli strikes, an allusion to the death of several Hezbollah leaders including its number one, Hassan Nasrallah, killed on September 27 in an Israeli raid on the southern suburbs of Beirut.
After weakening Hamas during a devastating offensive launched in Gaza in retaliation for the attack of October 7, 2023, the Israeli army moved most of its operations to Lebanon in mid-September, against Hezbollah.
Israel seeks to distance Hezbollah from the border areas of southern Lebanon and to stop its rocket fire towards northern Israel to allow the return of some 60,000 displaced residents to this region.
The spiral of cross-border violence for a year turned into open war on September 23, when Israel launched a massive bombing campaign on Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon.
Since October 2023, more than 2,000 people have been killed in Lebanon, including more than 1,110 since September 23, according to an AFP count based on official figures. More than a million people have been displaced.
“We have defined the goals of the war and we are achieving them: to overthrow Hamas, to bring all the hostages home, the living and the dead. This is a sacred mission,” Netanyahu said on Monday.
The Hamas attack on October 7, 2023 led to the death of 1,206 people on the Israeli side, the majority civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures and including hostages who died or were killed in captivity in the Gaza Strip.
Of the 251 people kidnapped, 97 are still detained in Gaza, 34 of whom were declared dead by the Israeli army.
“Enough of the massacres”
On the anniversary of the attack, Hamas, in power in Gaza since 2007, promised a “long, painful and costly battle of attrition” for Israel.
In the Gaza Strip, besieged and in the grip of a humanitarian disaster, Civil Defense announced Tuesday the death of 17 Palestinians, including children, in an attack on a house in Bureij, in the center.
“It was like an earthquake. All the people here are civilians and children! “, exclaimed Mohamed Abou Khader in the middle of the destruction. “We want the war to stop. We have had enough of the massacres. »
At least 41,965 Palestinians were killed, the majority civilians, in the Israeli offensive in Gaza, according to data from the Hamas government’s Health Ministry, deemed reliable by the UN.
The war against Hamas and Hezbollah is accompanied by an escalation between Iran and Israel, which said it was preparing a response to the attack launched by Tehran with 200 missiles on 1er October, against its territory.
“Any attack on Iranian infrastructure will result in a stronger response,” warned the head of Iranian diplomacy, Abbas Araghchi.
According to Tehran, the attack on 1er October was a response to the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah and that, on July 31 in Tehran, of Hamas leader Ismaïl Haniyeh, in an attack attributed to Israel.
Western leaders emphasize Israel’s right to defend itself, while affirming the Palestinian right to statehood and the need to end Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.