Israel, for fear of attacks, announced on Saturday that its forces were on alert ahead of the anniversary of the Hamas attack on October 7, after saying it was preparing a response to the missile attack from Iran.
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On the front with Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israeli Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi affirmed his determination to strike “without respite” the pro-Iranian movement, of which 440 fighters have been killed since Monday according to Israel.
On Saturday evening, the Lebanese national news agency ANI reported five Israeli strikes targeting the southern suburbs of Beirut and its surroundings, including four “very violent”, shortly after Israeli calls to evacuate several neighborhoods of this Hezbollah stronghold, violently bombarded for more than a week.
AFP
AFP images show plumes of smoke rising from targeted areas as well as a large fireball projected into the sky.
“This week we will commemorate the anniversary of the war and October 7. We are ready to increase our forces in preparation for this day,” for fear of attacks, said army spokesperson Daniel Hagari, without further details.
In a message on the occasion of 1is Monday’s anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel, which sparked the war in Gaza, Israeli President Isaac Herzog denounced “the permanent threat posed to the State [d’Israël] Iran and its terrorist proxies, who are […] determined to destroy our one and only Jewish nation-state.”
Israel is “preparing a response” to Tuesday’s missile attack from Iran, Israel’s sworn enemy and ally of Hamas and Hezbollah, an Israeli military official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
AFP
“Iran has already twice launched hundreds of missiles on our territory and our cities […]. Israel has the duty and the right to defend itself and respond to these attacks. And that is what we will do,” declared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
From Damascus, the head of Iranian diplomacy Abbas Araghchi warned that “for every action, there will be a proportional and similar reaction from Iran, and even stronger”.
Contact with Safieddine lost
According to Tehran, the approximately 200 missiles fired towards Israel are a “legitimate” response to the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, killed on September 27 by an Israeli raid in the southern suburbs of Beirut, and to that of Ismaïl Haniyeh on July 31, the leader of Hamas, killed in an explosion in Tehran blamed on Israel.
Iran launched a missile attack against Israel in April in response to a strike against its consulate in Damascus, blamed on Israel.
US President Joe Biden has advised Israel against attacking Iranian oil sites. His predecessor and Republican candidate to succeed him, Donald Trump, suggested strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
After having weakened the Islamist movement Hamas during a retaliatory offensive still underway in the besieged Gaza Strip, Israel shifted most of its operations in mid-September to the Lebanese front, opened by Hezbollah in support of Hamas on October 8, 2023.
Its army launched a campaign of violent and deadly aerial bombardments on Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon, and a ground offensive in southern Lebanon on September 30.
On Friday, it violently shelled the southern suburbs, targeting, according to the Israeli news site Ynet, Hachem Safieddine, potential successor to Nasrallah who was considered the most powerful man in the country. The Israeli army has not confirmed this information.
But a Hezbollah official said on condition of anonymity that contact with Hachem Safieddine had been “lost” since Friday’s strikes.
“Shame”
In the Gaza Strip, hungry and ravaged by 12 months of war, 12 people, including children, died in new Israeli strikes, according to rescuers.
Since the start of the war, 41,825 people have been killed in the devastated territory, according to the Hamas government’s health ministry.
French President Emmanuel Macron called on Saturday to stop deliveries to Israel of weapons used in Gaza, angering the Israeli prime minister.
Emmanuel Macron.
AFP
Exchanges quickly took on the appearance of a crisis between the two countries. So much so that the Élysée published a clarification in the evening assuring that France “is the unwavering friend of Israel” and deploring Netanyahu’s “excessive” words.
“Shame,” shouted the Israeli leader to the French president and other Westerners demanding arms embargoes against his country.
In mid-September, the Netanyahu government included among its war objectives the return of tens of thousands of displaced people to their homes in northern Israel, bordering southern Lebanon. He wants to put an end to Hezbollah’s rocket fire and keep its fighters away from the border regions of southern Lebanon.
The Israeli army claimed to have, since September 30, “eliminated around 440 terrorists, including 30 commanders” during its land and air operations against Hezbollah.
“We must inflict additional damage on the enemy, without concessions and without respite” for Hezbollah, General Halevi said, while Netanyahu claimed that the army had destroyed “a large part” of its arsenal.
For its part, the Lebanese movement reported clashes with Israeli soldiers and announced the firing of rockets, notably on an air base and a military industrial company in northern Israel.
Since October 2023, more than 2,000 people have been killed in Lebanon, including more than a thousand since the intensification of Israeli strikes on Hezbollah strongholds on September 23, according to the authorities. Around 1.2 million people have been displaced.
“We have been on the streets for 13 days,” said Salma Salmane, 30, a displaced person who fled the southern suburbs to a neighborhood in central Beirut. “We are living a never-ending nightmare.”
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy called reports of Israeli strikes “deeply disturbing” in a message published in X.
On Monday, Netanyahu is due to deliver a speech to the nation to commemorate the Hamas attack, which resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data. Of the 251 people kidnapped during the attack, 97 are still hostages in Gaza, including 33 declared dead by the army.
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