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Israel Strikes Back at Lebanon After Rocket Barrage Tensions Subside Along Israel-Lebanon Border but Rise Again in West Bank
(about 7 hours later)
Israel bombarded targets in Lebanon and Gaza overnight in retaliation for a barrage of rockets fired from Lebanon that was seen as the most serious escalation in years along Israel’s northern border. But much of the fighting had subsided by Friday morning and all sides appeared intent on containing the cross-border violence. After a rare and alarming outbreak of violence along the Israel-Lebanon border, the situation across the region remained volatile on Friday, when two Israelis were killed in a drive-by shooting in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, however, a new attack stirred tensions. The Israeli military said that shots had been fired on a car carrying Israelis in the Jordan Valley, and the ambulance service Magen David Adom said that two women had been killed and a third critically injured. The Israeli government said that it was treating the shooting as a “terrorist” attack, suggesting that Palestinians were suspected. But fears of a wider escalation on multiple fronts involving Israel, Lebanon and Palestinians in Gaza subsided, at least for the moment. Palestinian militias stopped firing rockets toward Israel, tensions cooled at a sensitive Jerusalem holy site, and the Israeli military ended its counterattacks on Lebanon and Gaza.
Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that dominates the Gaza Strip, praised the shooting and described it as a response to Israel’s “crimes” against Muslim worshipers at a holy site in Jerusalem and to the airstrikes on Lebanon and Gaza. But it stopped short of taking responsibility. The shooting in the West Bank capped a rare and alarming sequence of violence across the region this week, with interconnected escalations in Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon.
Frictions have steadily climbed over the course of this week, starting with an Israeli police raid in the early hours of Wednesday at the holy site, the Aqsa Mosque compound, which is known to Jews as the Temple Mount. Palestinians had barricaded themselves inside a prayer hall of a mosque ahead of an expected visit to the compound by Jewish pilgrims marking the start of Passover, which coincides this year with the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. An Israeli police raid on Wednesday in Jerusalem on the Aqsa mosque compound, a sensitive holy site known to Jews as Temple Mount, outraged Palestinians marking the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. That prompted militias in Lebanon — led by Hamas, according to the Israeli military — to fire an unusually large barrage of 34 rockets at Israel on Thursday, at least two of which landed in built-up areas.
In an apparent response to the police raid, militias based in southern Lebanon on Thursday fired more than 30 rockets across Israel’s northern border, causing damage to property but no fatalities. The Israeli military attributed the rocket fire from Lebanon to branches of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, two militias based in Gaza that also have a presence in Lebanon. Both of those groups had condemned the raid at the holy site. The gravity of that salvo — as Jews celebrated the Passover holiday — led Israel to strike back at the militias in southern Lebanon early on Friday, as well as at Hamas military sites in the Gaza Strip.
The military said it believed that the groups had acted with the knowledge of Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia that dominates southern Lebanon. Experts said the confrontation along Israel’s northern border was the gravest involving Israel and Lebanon-based militias in 17 years, and it left the region braced for the possibility of a longer battle across multiple arenas.
Israeli warplanes retaliated before 1 a.m. on Friday with strikes on several sites in Gaza, most of them connected to Hamas’s military wing. Roughly four hours later, Israeli planes struck what the military said were three sites controlled by Hamas in southern Lebanon, close to where the rocket barrage originated on Thursday afternoon. But by Friday afternoon, those fears had ebbed, at least temporarily, as all sides signaled they were not seeking an immediate escalation.
Experts said it was the most serious escalation along the Israel-Lebanon border since 2006, when Israel fought a monthlong war against Hezbollah. It raised fears of a wider conflict on multiple fronts between Israel, Palestinian militias and their allies. Both Israel and the militias avoided causing the kind of damage that could lead to all-out war. Palestinian groups in Gaza fired short-range rockets instead of targeting major cities in central Israel, while Israel also kept its strikes away from Gazan city centers. No injuries were reported on either side, though a hospital on the edge of Gaza City said it had suffered collateral damage after a nearby Israeli strike.
The violence further complicated an already volatile security situation in the region. It came at a time of rising tensions in Jerusalem, unusually high violence in the occupied West Bank and divisions within the Israeli military and the broader society over a contentious plan by the Israeli government to overhaul the country’s judiciary. Friday prayers that drew tens of thousands of worshipers to the Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem also passed without incident.
“Israel’s reaction, tonight and in the future, will exact a significant price from our enemies,” Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said after his military’s warplanes hit Gaza. In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, however, a new attack stirred tensions.
The Israeli response did not immediately prompt more rocket fire from Lebanon, but it did lead armed groups in Gaza to launch 44 short-range rockets toward Israel, according to the Israeli military. Two Israeli sisters, both also British passport holders, were shot and killed and a third woman was critically injured as they drove through the Jordan Valley, the easternmost part of the West Bank. The Israeli government said that it was treating the shooting as a terrorist attack, suggesting that it believed the perpetrators were Palestinians.
Most were intercepted by Israeli air defense systems or landed in open areas and only one hit a building, as both sides avoided causing the kind of damage that would turn the confrontation into all-out war. Hamas praised the shooting and said it was a response to Israel’s mosque raid in Jerusalem earlier this week and also to the Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon and Gaza. But it stopped short of taking responsibility.
The Lebanese government, which has only limited influence over Hezbollah-dominated southern Lebanon, condemned the rocket fire emanating from its territory in an apparent effort to deflect any plans for further launches and Israeli retaliation. Hamas, the dominant Palestinian militia in Gaza, also warned of further reprisals against Israel if there were more police raids at the Aqsa mosque compound. And the Israeli military called up reservists, including those from the air force and air defense services, as a precaution against further attacks.
The militias in Gaza avoided firing rockets deep into Israeli territory — a sign that they did not seek a more drawn-out conflict. Israel also avoided targeting dense urban areas, though one strike caused collateral damage to a hospital, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza. No injuries were reported on either side. The violence further complicated an already volatile security situation in the region. It came at a time of rising tensions in Jerusalem, unusually high violence in the occupied West Bank and divisions within Israel’s military and broader society over the government’s contentious plan to overhaul the judiciary.
On Friday morning, Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, a spokesman for the military, said that there had been “a lot of messaging” in diplomatic channels in an effort to defuse the situation, and that Egypt had played a main role. “Quiet will be answered with quiet,” he told reporters in a briefing, adding, “Nobody wants an escalation right now.” Within Israel, the range of threats to its security led to criticism from the political opposition about the extent to which the internal political divisions had made the country more vulnerable to attack.
After several hours of calm along the borders with Gaza and Lebanon, the Israeli military announced at about 11 a.m. that residents in those areas no longer needed to remain close to bomb shelters. The judicial plan has generated widespread anger among military reservists, thousands of whom refused last month to report for volunteer duty in protest. When Yoav Gallant, the defense minister, publicly warned that this disquiet had endangered national security, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired him for insubordination.
No Jewish pilgrims were expected to enter the holy site in Jerusalem on Friday, when it is generally closed to non-Muslim visitors, a factor that security officials hoped could help prevent another round of clashes. But Mr. Netanyahu never formally sent Mr. Gallant a letter of dismissal, meaning that Mr. Gallant remains in limbo, as does the military he technically still oversees. That uncertainty has prompted concerns that Israel appears weak to its opponents, and created rare flashes of disunity between the government and the opposition in the face of an external threat.
“This is yet another reminder that in the Middle East, you don’t turn security into politics,” Benny Gantz, an opposition lawmaker and former defense minister, said in a statement on Friday. ”Israel cannot afford a defense minister on parole amid the challenges at hand.”
Yair Lapid, the leader of the opposition and former prime minister, said the opposition stood united with the government in the face of external threats. But Mr. Lapid added that the government’s “extreme and irresponsible behavior resulted in serious damage to our deterrence.”
Comments from Israel’s enemies have bolstered that argument.
Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Lebanese militia that dominates southern Lebanon and fought a war with Israel in 2006, recently said that he believed Israel was on the verge of collapse, referring to the domestic political crisis over the proposed judicial overhaul that has exacerbated longstanding divisions within Israeli society.
“As we have always predicted, great Israel has fallen,” Mr. Nasrallah said in a speech last month. “There is no trust in the army, political leaders or military leaders,” he added.
Israeli military officials say that Hezbollah has appeared increasingly emboldened in recent weeks. In an unusually brazen operation last month, a man who officials said was likely linked to Hezbollah crossed illegally from Lebanon to Israel and planted a bomb beside an Israeli highway. The attack severely injured an Israeli citizen.
Israel has a long history of conflict with Lebanese groups, and occupied southern Lebanon between 1982 and 2000 to prevent earlier generations of armed Palestinians from using it as a launchpad for attacks on Israel. Israel briefly invaded again during the 2006 war, leaving parts of the country in ruins. But since 2006, tensions have simmered but rarely boiled over.
The immediate trigger for this week’s confrontations was early on Wednesday morning, when the Israeli police raided the Aqsa mosque compound, where Palestinians had barricaded themselves inside a prayer hall. Officers arrested more than 350 Palestinians. Video circulated on social media showed the police using batons to beat people inside the prayer hall, and Palestinians setting off fireworks at the police as they forced their way in.
The Israeli police said it was a legitimate act of law enforcement — to detain troublemakers who had stockpiled stones and fireworks and planned to ambush Jewish visitors expected to enter the site later in the day, as part of a Passover pilgrimage. While the site has been a mosque for more than a millennium, it was also the location of two Jewish temples in antiquity that were at the center of Jewish practice.
But to Palestinians, the raid was an unjustifiable assault on Muslim worshipers during the holiest month in Islam. The raid caused fury across the Middle East — and on Thursday, it appeared to prompt the rare rocket barrage from Lebanon.
Militias based in southern Lebanon fired more than 30 rockets across Israel’s northern border, causing damage to property but no deaths. The Israeli military attributed the rocket fire to branches of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, two militias based in Gaza that also have a presence in Lebanon. Both of those groups had condemned the raid at the holy site.
The military said it believed that the groups had acted with the knowledge of Hezbollah, which has significant influence in southern Lebanon, where it is considered more powerful than the Lebanese Army.
Israeli warplanes retaliated before 1 a.m. on Friday with strikes on several sites in Gaza, most of them connected to Hamas’s military wing. Roughly four hours later, Israeli planes struck what the military said were three sites controlled by Hamas in southern Lebanon, close to where the rocket barrage had originated on Thursday afternoon.
Experts said it was the most serious escalation along the Israel-Lebanon border since the 2006 war.
The Israeli response did not prompt more rocket fire from Lebanon, but it did lead armed groups in Gaza to launch 44 short-range rockets toward Israel, according to the Israeli military.
Most were intercepted by Israeli air defense systems or landed in open areas, and only one hit a building.
Hiba Yazbek contributed reporting from Nazareth, Israel.Hiba Yazbek contributed reporting from Nazareth, Israel.