Israel begins ground offensive in Lebanon

The Israeli military pressed its ground incursion into southern Lebanon on Tuesday, calling the operations “limited incursions” targeting Hezbollah militants.

The military said late Monday when it began its operations that it is aimed at Hezbollah targets that pose an immediate threat to communities in northern Israel. The incursion follows Friday's airstrike that killed longtime Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

The operation, approved by political and security officials, involves ground raids by Israeli commandos against Hezbollah targets and infrastructure in villages in southern Lebanon. The Israeli air force and artillery troops are providing back up to the ground forces.

The Israeli military has closed off the area of three Israeli towns near the border with southeast Lebanon. Israeli authorities say about 63,000 Israelis remain displaced from the border area with Lebanon due to Hezbollah rocket fire, and the U.N. says about one million Lebanese have been displaced from their homes fleeing Israeli airstrikes.

An Israeli security official, speaking anonymously, told NPR that Israeli troops have entered Lebanon targeting Hezbollah military compounds close to the border. The official said the military is “acting in a limited area focusing on the villages right by the border. Some homes are 100 meters from the border, some dozens of meters from the border, and some hundreds of meters from the border.” The official said that a ground incursion into Beirut is “not on the table."

On Monday, Hezbollah’s deputy leader, Naim Kassem, said in a televised address that "the resistance forces are ready for a ground engagement." That was despite a series of devastating Israeli attacks on Hezbollah leaders and members in recent weeks.

The Lebanese army had moved back from some checkpoints at the southern border with Israel amid intense artillery shelling by Israeli forces. A Lebanese army official, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly, told NPR this was a "redeployment" from forward positions vulnerable to an Israeli incursion.

The Israeli offensive follows days of intensifying fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. Israeli strikes across Lebanon have killed more than 1,000 people in less than two weeks and forced many to flee their homes, according to Lebanon's Health Ministry. The strikes have targeted Hezbollah and its weapons, killing leader Hassan Nasrallah and several top officials, but they have also killed many civilians.

Israel and Hezbollah began trading attacks back and forth across the Israel-Lebanon border after the Oct. 7 assault on Israel led by the Palestinian militant group Hamas. In support of Hamas, Hezbollah says it will continue firing rockets into northern Israel until there's a cease-fire in Israel's military campaign in Gaza.

Israel says it will keep targeting Hezbollah until the tens of thousands of Israelis who have evacuated can safely return to their homes in northern Israel, after fleeing attacks from militants on the Lebanese side of the border.

Lebanese in the south of the country are forced to evacuate

On Tuesday, an Israeli military spokesperson asked residents of a number of villages in southern Lebanon to evacuate and move north of the Awali river.

Many Lebanese have opened up their homes to receive the displaced. In the Bekaa valley, in the east of the country, Wisam Tarif’s sprawling white stone villa is now filled with people forced to flee towns in the area, and with those from the south of the country. Mattresses and blankets are everywhere.

Tarif lives in a mixed Sunni and Christian village. Many of those that have come from the south of the country are Shia Muslims. “We’ve received everyone,” he says. “There are women and children, so we share our food, we share our resources.”

Tarif’s villa has a panoramic view over this part of the Bekaa valley. Before the war it offered a tranquil escape, overlooking the Qaroun reservoir and a fertile plain that hosts wineries and crops. Now, Tarif says, they are surrounded by Israeli bombardment. A video he sent NPR shows three airstrikes, seconds apart, that turn buildings in a nearby village to clouds of dust.

In the nights before Nasrallah was killed, Tarif says, there was lively debate among the displaced people he hosts. Even some Hezbollah supporters expressed anger, he says, that the Iran-backed group was likely storing weapons in civilian areas, and so making those areas targets of Israeli strikes.

But the morning after Nasrallah’s killing, Tarif says, the atmosphere was different: “People are very much in shock. People are just silent, shocked, worried. A combination of anxiety and fear, as they ask what will come next now?”

As the war continues, some Lebanese fear the impact it will have on the country’s delicate social fabric. Lebanon is home to 18 different religious groups who live in uneasy coexistence after the country’s long history of civil war. The strikes have forced Hezbollah supporters, mostly from conservative Shia Muslim communities, to flee to other parts of the country, forcing different social groups to mix.

For now, as in Tarif’s home, there is coexistence. But many question, under the terrible strain of war, how long this can continue.

Israelis near the border react

For Israelis living near the border with Lebanon, the past 11 months have been filled with sirens and barrages of rockets shot across the border by Hezbollah. Most are intercepted by Israeli air defense systems, but those interceptions still cause dangerous shrapnel to fall and some rockets do get through.

In the town of Rosh Pina, several rockets fell just minutes from the city center a few days ago. Resident Ehud Yotam fought in the Israeli military in Lebanon in the 1990s, when Israeli troops occupied southern Lebanon in an 18-year occupation that started in 1982. He says, based on that experience, an Israeli incursion into Lebanon won’t be quick.

“It’s going to be tough. It's not going to be easy, it's not going to be very smooth, but still it’s necessary,” Yotam says. “We have to do the operation first, and then we can have the time for diplomatic ways.”

When asked how he feels about the large loss of life in Lebanon, he says, “I'm very sad about the people who, from all sides — from Israel, from Lebanon, from Palestine — [it] doesn't matter. Nobody enjoys to see people die. But unfortunately, this is what's going to happen.”

The town of Shlomi is a little more than a mile from the border with Lebanon. The cement wall marking the border between the two countries zigzags on a nearby hilltop. At a gas station in town, 25-year-old Yuval Danino is filling up her car, when suddenly a siren sounds. The gas station employees fling open the back door to the building, and Danino, the workers and a local stray dog all run to the storage room turned bomb shelter.

“This is everyday life here,” Danino says. “This is what it is every single day now.”

She says she wishes a ground incursion wouldn’t happen, because she has family members and friends who are soldiers. She worries about how brutal a ground fight against Hezbollah could be.

“It’s better for the strikes to be from the air, not from the ground. We need to protect our soldiers, not send them to die,” she says.

But, in her opinion, there isn’t a diplomatic option.

“I think the only solution is to eliminate them. It’s either us or them,” she says. “For me, all the Lebanese are complicit in this crime. They grow up hating us and wanting to kill us.”

Fears of escalation are shared by the U.S.

A White House official tells NPR the U.S. supports Israel’s incursion into Lebanon but is warning Israel about “mission creep.” The Israeli ambassador to Washington told Israeli public radio the U.S. has not restricted the duration of Israel’s incursion but that it is concerned about a regional escalation.

A senior U.S. official tells NPR that the Pentagon will send a “few thousand” more troops to the Middle East, focused on air defense capabilities.

The Israeli military is now engaged in warfare on multiple fronts. Israel’s operation in Gaza continues with deadly strikes. On Sunday, Israel’s military said it sent dozens of fighter jets more than 1,000 miles away to Yemen, where it said it bombed power plants and a seaport used by the Houthis to import oil for military purposes. The Houthis said the areas hit were civilian targets and that at least four people were killed and dozens wounded in the Israeli strikes.

Israeli security analysts said Israel’s bombing campaign in Yemen was a message to Iran, showing Israel’s long-range flight capability as a tacit warning to Iran that it, too, was within Israel’s reach.

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a warning Monday to Iran, which backs Hezbollah and Hamas: “There is nowhere in the Middle East Israel cannot reach.”

On Monday, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with Israel’s defense minister about the “serious consequences for Iran” if it launched a strike against Israel. The U.S. is concerned about Iran-backed groups threatening U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria as the conflict between Israel and Iran-backed groups intensifies. Defense secretary Austin said the U.S. supports Israel dismantling Hezbollah infrastructure along the Lebanon Israel border so Hezbollah cannot threaten Israeli border towns. But he called on Israel to ultimately pivot to diplomacy.

Talks of a possible ceasefire in Gaza are on hold.

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