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Israel Strikes Near Beirut as Diplomatic Push Shows No Sign of Success

November 1, 2024
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Israeli warplanes struck near Beirut for the first time in several days and airstrikes killed at least 13 people in central Lebanon on Friday, according to the Lebanese authorities, as diplomatic efforts to reduce the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah showed no sign of success.

Negotiations to reach a temporary truce between Israel and Hamas, Hezbollah’s ally in the Gaza Strip, also hit another impasse on Friday.

Hamas appeared to rule out the possibility of a limited cease-fire in order to exchange hostages held in Gaza and Palestinian prisoners, according to a statement released through the group’s official media.

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The Biden administration had sent key envoys including the C.I.A. director to the region this week, in a push to at least generate some momentum in talks to end Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza and its spiraling conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

But the envoys departed the region on both fronts without any apparent or immediate results in either conflict.
Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese armed group backed by Iran, continued to fire scores of rockets and drones at Israel, setting off air-raid sirens across the country’s north. The Israeli strikes in Lebanon caused “massive destruction” and flattened buildings, according to Lebanese state media.
The strikes near Beirut hit the southern outskirts of Lebanon’s capital, a cluster of neighborhoods known as the Dahiya, where Hezbollah largely holds sway. In central Lebanon, Israeli jets bombarded targets in several villages, killing at least 13 people and wounding 26, according to the Lebanese health ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.

The Israeli military has widened its campaign against Hezbollah in recent days, expanding beyond Lebanon’s border villages and the militant group’s strongholds to port towns and cities where the group has supporters, including Baalbek, Tyre and Sidon.
Israel’s fight with Hezbollah began after Hamas led the Oct. 7, 2023, attack into Israel last year, killing about 1,200 people and taking another 250 hostage. Hezbollah then began firing on Israeli positions in solidarity, leading to months of cross-border exchanges, until Israel dramatically escalated its attacks into Lebanon, killing the group’s longtime leader in late September and starting a ground invasion on Oct. 1.

Neither Israel nor Hezbollah, despite the heavy blows the group has been dealt, has indicated a willingness to back down.

The militant group’s new leader, Naim Qassem, suggested on Wednesday he was open to finding terms for a truce only “with the conditions that we see as appropriate and suitable.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, in turn, may be waiting for the results of the U.S. presidential election next week before deciding what approach to take in the war, analysts say.

Amos Hochstein, the Biden administration’s lead envoy on the Lebanon talks, left Israel after meeting with Mr. Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders alongside Brett McGurk, another senior U.S. official. Political analysts said his swift return to Washington — rather than heading to Beirut for further diplomacy — suggested that the negotiators were not close to an imminent deal.
Najib Mikati, the caretaker prime minister of Lebanon, said Friday that the renewed Israeli airstrikes in Beirut indicated that the Israel had rejected “all efforts being expended for a cease-fire.” He pledged again to implement the long moribund United Nations resolution that ended the previous war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.

On Thursday, Mr. Netanyahu had told graduating officers at the Israeli military’s command school that Israel was determined to “enforce security, thwart attacks against us, and act against the arming of our enemies.”

“Hezbollah will not sit on our northern border, at positions a few meters from our border, from which it could invade. This will not happen anymore,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a televised address.

Deadlock has similarly prevailed in cease-fire talks between Israel and Hamas, which have been fighting now for over a year.

In Gaza, more than 42,000 people have been killed since then, according to local health officials, and hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes, many facing the prospect of famine.

Negotiators had sought to jump-start talks over the past few weeks to reach at least a temporary truce in the wake of Israel’s killing of Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, in October.

Egypt publicly issued a new proposal on Sunday for a two-day cease-fire to free a small number of hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.

On Thursday, William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director and a top American negotiator, met with officials in Cairo.

But the following day, the Hamas statement indicated that the Palestinian armed group was sticking to its consistent, month-slong stance: