Updated September 22, 2024 at 15:14 PM ET
HAIFA, Israel — The Israeli military and the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah are trading fire in the most significant escalation on the Israeli-Lebanese border in almost a year of war.
In south Lebanon, residents described how explosions from the intense Israeli aerial bombardment overnight lit up the dark sky. In northern Israel, sirens warning of incoming rocket fire wailed throughout the night and into Sunday morning, as Hezbollah fired barrages of missiles deeper into Israel than it has for nearly 20 years.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video statement that Israel had “inflicted on Hezbollah a sequence of blows,” and said Israel was focused on its objective to return tens of thousands of Israelis displaced by the fighting in the north to their homes.
But Hezbollah has said it will not stop its fire until Israel ceases its war in Gaza. The group said Sunday that its escalation on northern Israel is a response to Israeli attacks in Lebanon this past week. Booby-trapped pagers and walkie-talkies and an airstrike on a densely populated neighborhood in Beirut resulted in the deaths of two of the group’s senior commanders, and killed dozens of Hezbollah operatives and civilians and wounded thousands more.
The Israeli military said Sunday that 150 rockets, cruise missiles and drones were launched toward Israeli territory. Most were fired from Hezbollah in Lebanon, but Iranian-backed militias in Iraq also claimed responsibility for some of the drone attacks.
The onslaught sent civilians scrambling to bomb shelters. And, in a sign of just how significant this escalation in the north is, Israel closed schools and restricted gatherings in the north. It’s ordered hospitals there to move patients and staff to protected areas.
At Rambam hospital in Haifa — the biggest hospital in northern Israel, about 20 miles from the Lebanese border — soldiers and medical staff turned an underground parking garage into a medical arena. They set up everything from a delivery room for births to an intensive care unit. Hospital staff said over 1,000 patients would soon be moved to this fortified underground facility. Those patients, staff say, include some people on ventilators.
In an interview with NPR, Dr. Avi Weissman, the deputy director of Rambam hospital, called the move “a really, really, complicated” mission, but said he is “happy” to be able to protect Israeli citizens "even at the worst times.”
Israel’s air defense system intercepted the majority of projectiles in this recent attack, but a rocket did damage a building and set cars on fire in Kiryat Bialik, a town just north of Haifa. Israel's Magen David Adom rescue service said four people were wounded by shrapnel in the barrage.
The United Nations special coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, urged for calm. "With the region on the brink of an imminent catastrophe, it cannot be overstated enough: there is NO military solution that will make either side safer," she wrote in a post on X.
But it’s a warning that neither Israel or Hezbollah are heeding.
On Sunday, Hezbollah’s deputy leader, Naim Kassem, declared the group in an “open-ended battle of reckoning” with Israel and vowed to expand operations in south Lebanon. Speaking at the funeral of Ibrahim Akil, a top Hezbollah commander killed in Israel’s airstrike on Beirut last week, Kassem said Israel’s military objective to return evacuated Israelis to their homes in the north will only result in “more displacement.”
“We admit that we are pained. We are humans. But as we are pained — you will also be pained,” Kassem said.
Israel has also doubled down on its position. Calling its focus on Hezbollah a “new phase” in the war, it has begun diverting military resources from its war against Hamas in Gaza. Last week the Israeli military deployed its 98th Division, which includes paratroopers and commando brigades, to the northern border.
Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said on Sunday that Israel’s airstrikes on south Lebanon were aimed at "Hezbollah’s ability to attack Israel."
In a live televised press conference, Israeli military chief of staff Herzi Halevi said Israel would continue to strike Hezbollah in Lebanon to degrade its rocket-launching and fighting capacities and distance Hezbollah militants from the Israeli border area.
"We will return civilians securely to their homes,” he said. "If Hezbollah didn’t understand that in last two weeks — it will face another blow and another blow until this organization will understand.”
Amir Avivi, a retired Israeli brigadier general, told NPR: “There is a clear understanding that we cannot bring back the citizens safely home [to north Israel] without pushing Hezbollah out of south Lebanon.” He said Israel was seeking to force Hezbollah to withdraw with these ever intensifying aerial attacks.
But that if that doesn’t work, the next step, he said, could be a ground invasion. He said the Israeli military may want to force Hezbollah to retreat some 18 miles from the border to a boundary along the Litani River that was set in United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 during the 2006 war.
“Israel is basically putting in front of Hezbollah a very clear message,” Avivi said. “Either you withdraw or it's a full-scale war.”
Additional reporting by Jawad Rizkallah and Jane Arraf in Beirut, and Yaara Litwin in Tel Aviv.
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