The News
Israeli airstrikes, apparently targeting Hezbollah’s headquarters and its leader Hassan Nasrallah, demolished several residential buildings near Beirut on Friday.
The attacks, which Lebanon said killed two people and injured dozens, came shortly after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly during which he vowed to press on with his military campaigns in Lebanon and Gaza, defying growing international pressure for ceasefires.
It wasn’t clear if Nasrallah was in the targeted buildings; videos showed panicked civilians rushing to safety after large explosions rocked the capital.
Israel is “fighting for its life,” Netanyahu told the UN, an organization that he famously hates, and which he decried as an “antisemitic swamp” during the address.
“We face savage enemies who seek our annihilation,” he said, issuing stark warnings to Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah that Israel would continue fighting them for as long as they remain a threat. “I have a message for the tyrants of Tehran: If you strike us, we will strike you,” Netanyahu declared. He emphasized that the war in Gaza would only end with the elimination of Hamas.
A day after rejecting a US-backed call for a ceasefire with Hezbollah, Netanyahu did not mention the plan, but vowed to defeat the group, dimming allies’ hopes of preventing an all-out war.
Many UN delegates left the chamber in protest as Netanyahu began to speak, and the UN chair had to repeatedly call for order.
SIGNALS
Conflict compounds economic and social hardship in Lebanon
Since 2019, Lebanon has faced a devastating economic crisis that caused a 98% devaluation in its local currency, plunging over three quarters of the population into poverty after successive governments allowed debt to pile up for decades. Up to half a million people people could have been displaced because of Israeli offensives, Lebanon’s health minister told CNN, with Israeli strikes in the past week forcing tens of thousands to leave — many of them refugees from Syria who had already fled their home to escape the civil war in the neighboring country. “This society will break,” the head of the Norwegian Refugee Council told the BBC Global News Podcast. “Beirut is so overwhelmed, so are the other cities. This madness has to stop.”
Ground invasion of Lebanon may be imminent, but Israel’s strategy is unclear
The recent addition of two regimens to the Israeli army’s Northern Command, which is responsible for fighting Hezbollah, may suggest that a ground invasion of Lebanon is approaching — although the apparent lack of a clear strategy by Israel makes it hard to tell, Al Jazeera noted. Several analysts told the outlet that they didn’t foresee troops being sent in imminently. “We’re still on the brink, but I don’t think a decision has been made to launch an invasion,” Israeli political analyst Ori Goldberg said. Netanyahu and the military want Hezbollah to take an action that would force Israel’s hand, he added, “but Hezbollah is not doing that, Iran is not doing that.”
Hostilities between UN and Israel hit boiling point
Disagreements between Israel and the UN — which Netanyahu on Friday called a “contemptuous farce” and a “swamp of antisemitic bile” — are nothing new, The Guardian’s diplomatic editor wrote. But tensions have increased since the beginning of the war in Gaza, turning the conflict into a “visceral” one. And the Israeli PM also has to face a perhaps bigger issue: US anger after he rejected plans for a three-week ceasefire in Lebanon. “The US clearly feels he reneged on a deal, and not for the first time since 7 October,” The Guardian wrote, adding that “it will not be the first time the west has thought Netanyahu is making a strategic mistake, but then proved unable or unwilling to force him to rethink.”