Summary:
Israel is conducting a deeper military incursion into Lebanon than previously disclosed, massing armored vehicles along the border for a potential larger ground operation. While currently described as a defensive posture to protect Israeli communities, the activity indicates preparations for an expanded offensive aimed at weakening Hezbollah. The conflict has resulted in significant casualties in Lebanon and ongoing rocket fire into Israel.
Main Topics Covered:
1. Israel's military advance into Lebanon and preparations for a potential larger ground incursion.
2. The conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, including cross-border attacks and casualties.
3. Israeli efforts to weaken Hezbollah, with the stated long-term goal of enabling the Lebanese Army to disarm the group.
4. Evacuation warnings to Lebanese civilians and the call-up of Israeli military reserves.
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Israel Pushes Farther Into Lebanon, and Readies for More
Days into its offensive against Hezbollah, Israel is massing armored vehicles near the Lebanese border for a potentially much larger ground incursion.
The Israeli military has pushed farther into Lebanon to fight Hezbollah than it had previously disclosed, according to two Israeli military officials, and is massing armored vehicles along the border for a potentially much larger ground incursion.
The military insists that soldiers who have already advanced several miles into Lebanon in some areas are only providing a forward line of defense for civilian communities along the frontier. The soldiers, they say, are setting up ambushes that take advantage of the region’s hills and valleys to ensure that Hezbollah fighters cannot approach the international border without being spotted and stopped.
But what the military calls a purely defensive posture could soon change, given the Israeli military activity along the border, though a senior military official said that no order has yet been given for such an advance.
The Israeli military officials, who insisted on anonymity to share planning details, have expressed hope that if they can weaken Hezbollah enough, the Lebanese Army would have a better chance of successfully disarming the Iranian-backed militant group.
Prime Minister Nawaf Salam of Lebanon on Monday announced a series of measures against Hezbollah, including a ban on all its security and military activities and a demand that it hand over its weapons to the Lebanese state.
Israel opened up a second front in its war with Iran on Monday night, hours after Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy force in Lebanon, launched rockets and missiles at Haifa and Tel Aviv.
At least 77 people have been killed in Lebanon and more than 500 wounded, according to the Lebanese health ministry. Israel said that Hezbollah was launching dozens of rockets, missiles and drones a day, and that an anti-tank missile wounded two of its soldiers on Wednesday.
A third Israeli soldier was evacuated by air after being injured by an anti-tank missile on Thursday, according to two military officials, who said Hezbollah was putting up heavy resistance.
The Israeli military has warned tens of thousands of Lebanese civilians to flee their homes, saying anyone south of the Litani River — about 18 miles from the Israeli border — needed to move north of the river.
On Thursday, the Israeli military also warned residents of the Dahiya, a neighborhood in southern Beirut where many Hezbollah officials live, to “save your lives and evacuate your residences immediately.”
Military officials at first insisted that ground troops entering Lebanon were taking up positions only a few hundred meters past the border. But troops have moved a few miles beyond the border in some places, according to two Israeli officials and visual evidence verified by The New York Times.
The Israeli military said in a statement Thursday that it “will not reveal the specific locations of I.D.F. forces,” a reference to the Israel Defense Forces.
Preparations for a more significant incursion into Lebanon could be seen Thursday in northern Israel. Soldiers set up checkpoints and turned aside some civilian traffic as flatbed trucks carrying armored vehicles — including tanks, armored personnel carriers, and mine-clearing and earth-moving equipment — clogged roads leading to the frontier.
Artillery fire could be heard occasionally on the Israeli side, followed seconds later by shell blasts in Lebanese territory.
The military also announced the call-up of its 146th Division, an armored unit of reservists that is part of Israel’s Northern Command.
For now, Israel says it is targeting Hezbollah fighters and leaders mainly with airstrikes. But commanders appear eager to complete what they say they were unable to finish before the November 2024 cease-fire: going house to house in a string of Lebanese villages closest to the border, scouring them for weapons caches and other Hezbollah infrastructure.
In Israeli border communities, which were battered by Hezbollah rocket and missile barrages from October 2023 until the cease-fire took effect, residents and local officials expressed similar hopes.
In Metula — the northernmost tip of the Galilee panhandle, surrounded on three sides by Lebanon — David Azoulay, head of the municipal council, expressed hope that Israel would seize the opportunity to destroy Hezbollah once and for all, allowing the Lebanese army to take real control of southern Lebanon.
“Every building which has Hezbollah weapons should be destroyed to its foundations,” he said.
A few miles away, in Manara, a hilltop kibbutz that sits on the border overlooking Meiss Al Jabal, a Lebanese town, Yochai Wolfin, the community’s elected manager, stood a stone’s throw from burned-out or crumbling apartment houses that he said had been damaged or destroyed by antitank missiles fired from Meiss Al Jabal.
Seven out of every 10 homes had been damaged in Hezbollah strikes, he said.
Mr. Wolfin said this week’s opening of a second front against Hezbollah had cheered the kibbutz’s families, many of whom still had not returned home after being evacuated to the south on Oct. 8, 2023, the day after Hamas led its attack on Israel from Gaza.
“On Oct. 7, the sense of security was very high, but actual security was very low,” Mr. Wolfin said. “Today, security is much higher, and our sense of security is growing.”
Naor Shamia, 53, a physics and math teacher who moved to Manara in 2011 and leads its civil emergency team, said he was delighted that the military had begun acting against Hezbollah.
“When I hear the noise, the sound of bombing, I’m sleeping quite well,” he said. “When I hear the sound of silence, that’s when I start to be worried.”
Abdi Latif Dahir contributed reporting from Beirut, and Ronen Bergman from Tel Aviv.
David M. Halbfinger is The Times’s Jerusalem bureau chief, leading coverage of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. He also held that post from 2017 to 2021. He was the politics editor from 2021 to 2025.
Natan Odenheimer is a Times reporter in Jerusalem, covering Israeli and Palestinian affairs.
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