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JERUSALEM — Israel unleashed its largest wave of airstrikes across Lebanon since agreeing to a ceasefire with Hezbollah last week, killing at least 11 people on Monday after the Lebanese militant group fired a volley of projectiles as a warning over what it said were Israeli truce violations.
The projectiles were apparently the first time that Hezbollah took aim at Israeli forces after the 60-day ceasefire went into effect last Wednesday. The increasingly fragile truce aimed to end more than a year of war between Hezbollah and Israel — part of a wider regional conflict sparked by the devastating Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
Read More: Will a Hezbollah-Israel Ceasefire Last?
In the United States, President-elect Donald Trump demanded the immediate release of Israeli hostages held by the Palestinian militant Hamas group in Gaza, saying on social media that if they are not freed before he takes office in January there would be “HELL TO PAY.”
It was not immediately clear whether Trump was threatening to directly involve the U.S. military in Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza. The U.S. has given Israel crucial military and diplomatic support throughout the nearly 15-month conflict.
A new exchange of fire threatens Lebanon ceasefire
Lebanon’s Health Ministry said an Israeli airstrike on the southern village of Haris killed five people and wounded two while another airstrike on the village of Tallousa killed four and also wounded two.
Israel’s military carried out a string of airstrikes late Monday against what it said were Hezbollah fighters, infrastructure and rocket launchers across Lebanon, in response to Hezbollah firing two projectiles toward Mount Dov — a disputed Israeli-held territory known as Shebaa Farms in Lebanon where the borders of Lebanon, Syria, and Israel meet. Israel said the projectiles fell in open areas and no injuries were reported.
Hezbollah said in a statement that it fired on an Israeli military position in the area as a “defensive and warning response” after what it called “repeated violations” of the ceasefire deal by Israel. It said complaints to mediators tasked with monitoring the ceasefire “were futile in stopping these violations.”
Before the Hezbollah projectiles, Israeli carried out at least four airstrikes and an artillery barrage in southern Lebanon, including a drone strike that killed a person on a motorcycle, according to Lebanese state media. Another strike killed a corporal in the Lebanese security services.
Israel has said its strikes are in response to unspecified Hezbollah violations, and that under the ceasefire deal it reserves the right to retaliate.
Lebanon’s parliament speaker, Nabih Berri, accused Israel of violating the truce more than 50 times in recent days by launching airstrikes, demolishing homes near the border and violating Lebanon’s airspace.
Officials in the U.S. — which along with France helped broker the truce and heads a commission meant to monitor adherence to the deal — played down the significance of Israeli strikes. White House national security spokesman John Kirby said, “Largely speaking, the ceasefire is holding.”
“We’ve gone from dozens of strikes down to one a day maybe two a day,” Kirby told reporters, referring to Israeli strikes. “We’re going to keep trying and see what we can do to get it down to zero.”
Under the deal, Iran-backed Hezbollah has 60 days to withdraw its fighters and infrastructure from southern Lebanon. During that time, Israeli troops are also to withdraw to their side of the border.
‘RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!’
In a post on his Truth Social site, Trump called for Palestinian militants to free all of the roughly 100 Israeli hostages still held inside Gaza, around two-thirds of whom are believed to be alive.
If not, Trump said, “Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!”
Hours earlier, the Israeli government confirmed the death of Omer Neutra, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen, whose body is still believed to be held by Hamas in Gaza, according to the Israeli government. The Biden administration is mounting a last-ditch effort to try to restart talks between Israel and Hamas.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office declined to comment on Trump’s post though President Isaac Herzog welcomed it.
Fears of hunger mount in Gaza
In Gaza, meanwhile, alarm is mounting over increasing hunger. The amount of food allowed in by Israel has plunged over the past two months, compounded by a decision Sunday by the United Nations to halt aid deliveries from the main crossing into the territory because of the threat of armed gangs looting convoys.
Experts have already warned of famine in the northernmost part of Gaza, which Israeli forces have almost completely isolated since early October, saying they’re fighting regrouped Hamas militants there.
Displaced families have set up tents surrounded by piles of garbage on the streets of Gaza City. Bilal Marouf, 55, said he and 11 family members fled the Israeli offensive “barefoot and naked.”
“We had nothing. Hunger and thirst killed us, and we did not have a single shekel, nor clothes, nor a mattress, nor a blanket,” he said, speaking near his tent.
Israel’s campaign in Gaza, triggered by Hamas’ Oct 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel, has driven almost the entire population of the territory from their homes. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians now live in squalid tent camps, relying on international aid.
The Israeli military said it allowed 40 trucks carrying 600 tons of flour for the World Food Program to enter the southern Gaza Strip on Sunday night, as well as 16 other food trucks.
Israel has said it is working to increase the flow of aid. November saw an increase in the average number of humanitarian trucks it let into Gaza, up to 77 daily from 57 the month before, according to official Israeli figures.
But the levels are still nearly the lowest of the entire 15-month war. And the U.N. says less than half of that actually reaches Palestinians because Israeli military restrictions, fighting and robberies make it too dangerous to deliver the aid.
The World Food Program was able to only deliver aid to some 300,000 Palestinians in November across the Gaza Strip due to ongoing Israeli military offensives and the looting of convoys, Carl Skau, WFP’s deputy executive director, said Monday.
In a tent camp in the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah, Palestinians lined up at makeshift mud ovens trying to buy a few loaves of flatbread for their families.
With the price of flour mounting because of scarcity, the bakers — women displaced from further north — said they could bake less bread, and families could afford far less.
“They divide them to their children, one loaf every day,” said one woman baker, Wafaa al-Attar.
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Abou AlJoud reported from Beirut. Associated Press writer Fatma Khalid in Cairo contributed to this report.
JERUSALEM — The ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militants began early Wednesday as a region on edge wondered whether it will hold.
The ceasefire announced Tuesday is a major step toward ending nearly 14 months of fighting sparked by the ongoing war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas.
There were no immediate reports of alleged violations of the truce, and there were signs of celebration in Beirut. But Israel has said it will attack if Hezbollah breaks the agreement.
Read More: Will a Hezbollah-Israel Ceasefire Last?
The ceasefire calls for an initial two-month halt to fighting and requires Hezbollah to end its armed presence in southern Lebanon, while Israeli troops are to return to their side of the border. Thousands of additional Lebanese troops and U.N. peacekeepers would deploy in the south, and an international panel headed by the United States would monitor compliance.
An Israeli military spokesman, in an Arabic-language X post in the first half-hour of the ceasefire, warned evacuated residents of southern Lebanon to not head home yet, saying the military remained deployed there.
The ceasefire began at 4 a.m. Wednesday, a day after Israel carried out its most intense wave of airstrikes in Beirut since the start of the conflict that in recent weeks turned into all-out war. At least 42 people were killed in strikes across the country, according to local authorities.
The ceasefire does not address the devastating war in Gaza, where Hamas is still holding dozens of hostages and the conflict is more intractable.
There appeared to be lingering disagreement over whether Israel would have the right to strike Hezbollah if it believed the militants had violated the agreement, something Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted was part of the deal but which Lebanese and Hezbollah officials have rejected.
Israel’s security Cabinet approved the U.S.-France-brokered ceasefire agreement after Netanyahu presented it, his office said. U.S. President Joe Biden, speaking in Washington, called the agreement “good news” and said his administration would make a renewed push for a ceasefire in Gaza.
The Biden administration spent much of this year trying to broker a ceasefire and hostage release in Gaza but the talks repeatedly sputtered to a halt. President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to bring peace to the Middle East without saying how.
Still, any halt to the fighting in Lebanon is expected to reduce the likelihood of war between Israel and Iran, which backs both Hezbollah and Hamas and exchanged direct fire with Israel on two occasions earlier this year.
Israel says it will ‘attack with might’ if Hezbollah breaks truce
Netanyahu presented the ceasefire proposal to Cabinet ministers after a televised address in which he listed accomplishments against Israel’s enemies across the region. He said a ceasefire with Hezbollah would further isolate Hamas in Gaza and allow Israel to focus on its main enemy, Iran.
“If Hezbollah breaks the agreement and tries to rearm, we will attack,” he said. “For every violation, we will attack with might.”
Biden said Israel reserved the right to quickly resume operations in Lebanon if Hezbollah breaks the terms of the truce, but that the deal “was designed to be a permanent cessation of hostilities.”
Netanyahu’s office said Israel appreciated the U.S. efforts in securing the deal but “reserves the right to act against every threat to its security.”
Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati welcomed the ceasefire and described it as a crucial step toward stability and the return of displaced people.
Hezbollah has said it accepts the proposal, but a senior official with the group said Tuesday it had not seen the agreement in its final form.
“After reviewing the agreement signed by the enemy government, we will see if there is a match between what we stated and what was agreed upon by the Lebanese officials,” Mahmoud Qamati, deputy chair of Hezbollah’s political council, told the Al Jazeera news network.
“We want an end to the aggression, of course, but not at the expense of the sovereignty of the state,” he said, referring to Israel’s demand for freedom of action. “Any violation of sovereignty is refused.”
Warplanes bombard Beirut and its southern suburbs
Even as ceasefire efforts gained momentum in recent days, Israel continued to strike what it called Hezbollah targets across Lebanon while the militants fired rockets, missiles and drones across the border.
An Israeli strike on Tuesday leveled a residential building in central Beirut—the second time in recent days warplanes have hit the crowded area near downtown. At least seven people were killed and 37 wounded, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry.
Israel also struck a building in Beirut’s bustling commercial district of Hamra for the first time, hitting a site around 400 meters (yards) from Lebanon’s Central Bank. There were no reports of casualties.
The Israeli military said it struck targets linked to Hezbollah’s financial arm.
The evacuation warnings covered many areas, including parts of Beirut that previously were not targeted. Residents fled. Traffic was gridlocked, with mattresses tied to some cars. Dozens of people, some wearing pajamas, gathered in a central square, huddling under blankets or standing around fires as Israeli drones buzzed overhead.
Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee issued evacuation warnings for 20 buildings in Beirut’s southern suburbs, where Hezbollah has a major presence, as well as a warning for the southern town of Naqoura where the U.N. peacekeeping mission, UNIFIL, is headquartered.
UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti said peacekeepers will not evacuate.
Israeli forces reach Litani River in southern Lebanon
The Israeli military also said its ground troops clashed with Hezbollah forces and destroyed rocket launchers in the Slouqi area on the eastern end of the Litani River, a few kilometers (miles) from the Israeli border.
Under the ceasefire deal, Hezbollah is required to move its forces north of the Litani, which in some places is about 30 kilometers (20 miles) north of the border.
Hezbollah began firing into northern Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, saying it was showing support for the Palestinians, a day after Hamas carried out its attack on southern Israel, triggering the Gaza war. Israel returned fire on Hezbollah, and the two sides have exchanged barrages ever since.
Israel escalated its bombardment in mid-September and later sent troops into Lebanon, vowing to put an end to Hezbollah fire so tens of thousands of evacuated Israelis could return to their homes.
More than 3,760 people have been killed by Israeli fire in Lebanon the past 13 months, many of them civilians, according to Lebanese health officials. The bombardment has driven 1.2 million people from their homes. Israel says it has killed more than 2,000 Hezbollah members.
Hezbollah fire has forced some 50,000 Israelis to evacuate in the country’s north, and its rockets have reached as far south in Israel as Tel Aviv. At least 75 people have been killed, more than half of them civilians. More than 50 Israeli soldiers have died in the ground offensive in Lebanon.
—Chehayeb and Mroue reported from Beirut and Federman from Jerusalem. Associated Press reporters Lujain Jo and Sally Abou AlJoud in Beirut and Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed.
BEIRUT — Diplomats and other officials say there have been several sticking points in ceasefire talks to end the war between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, even as conditions for an agreement appear to be ripe.
Israel’s military has killed nearly all of the militant group’s top leaders, but it continues to fire missiles into Israel. Tens of thousands of Israelis who were evacuated from the border months ago are pressuring their government to go home. And the world wants to stop regional conflict from spreading after more than a year of fighting.
Following the latest visit to the region by a U.S. mediator, Israel hit central Beirutover the weekend, and Hezbollah responded with its biggest barrage in weeks as each applied pressure to reach a deal.
Israel and Hezbollah have exchanged fire almost daily since the day after Hamas-led militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, setting off the war in Gaza.
Israel launched a widespread bombardment of Lebanon two months ago, then a ground invasion. More than 3,500 people in Lebanon have been killed, many of them civilians.
More than 70 have been killed in Israel, over 40 of them civilians. In addition, over 50 Israeli soldiers have been killed in the ground offensive.
Here’s a look at the proposal and the sticking points.
A proposed two-month ceasefire to start
The proposal under discussion to end the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah calls for an initial two-month ceasefire during which Israeli forces would withdraw from Lebanon and Hezbollah would end its armed presence along the southern border south of the Litani River.
The withdrawals would be accompanied by an influx of thousands more Lebanese army troops, who have been largely sidelined in the war, to patrol the border area along with an existing U.N. peacekeeping force.
An international committee would be set up to monitor implementation of the ceasefire agreement and of U.N. Security Council resolution 1701, which was passed in 2006 to end a monthlong war between Israel and Hezbollah but never fully implemented. Hezbollah never ended its presence in southern Lebanon, while Lebanon said Israel regularly violated its airspace and occupied small patches of its territory.
It is not clear whether a new deal would be any more successfully implemented than the one in 2006.
Michael Herzog, Israel’s ambassador to Washington, told Israeli Army Radio on Monday that the deal aimed to improve surveillance and enforcement of the previous resolution. While he said there were still certain points that needed to be finalized, a deal was close and could be clinched “within days.”
A U.S. official said negotiations continued to progress on Sunday, but the parties still need to work out some outstanding issues to close the deal. The official, who insisted on anonymity to discuss the private talks, declined to detail the outstanding issues.
Israel wants freedom to strike Hezbollah and other disagreements
Two Western diplomats described several points of dispute to The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss ongoing negotiations.
They said Israel was asking for more guarantees to ensure that Hezbollah’s weapons are removed from the border area. Israeli officials, concerned about the possibility of Hezbollah launching the kind of attack that Hamas carried out from Gaza into southern Israel, have said they would not agree to a ceasefire deal that doesn’t explicitly grant them freedom to strike in Lebanon if they believe Hezbollah is violating it.
An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the sensitive talks, said the issue remained a point of contention, although he said the talks were headed in a “positive direction.”
Lebanese officials have said agreeing to such a deal would violate Lebanon’s sovereignty. Hezbollah leader Naim Kassem has said the militant group would not agree to a deal that does not entail a “complete and comprehensive end to the aggression” and does not protect Lebanon’s sovereignty.
Lebanon and Israel have also disagreed over which countries would sit on the international committee overseeing implementation of the deal and Resolution 1701.
In a sign of progress, Israel appeared to have dropped its opposition to France, which has remained close with Lebanon since its colonial rule there ended and has recently been at odds with Israel.
On Monday, an official familiar with the talks, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing behind-the-scenes negotiations, said that France would be part of the monitoring committee. Lebanon’s deputy parliament speaker, Elias Bousaab, also said Israel had accepted France.
But Lebanon has refused to allow Britain, a close ally of Israel. It was unclear Monday if Lebanese officials had dropped their opposition following Israel’s concession.
Meanwhile, Israel does not want to enter into negotiations on 13 disputed points along the border as part of a ceasefire deal, the diplomats said.
The European Union’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, who has a contentious relationship with Israel’s government, said Sunday during a visit to Lebanon that he’s not convinced that Israel is “interested clearly in reaching an agreement for a ceasefire.”
Both sides have an interest in ending the war
A ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, the strongest of Iran’s armed proxies, is expected to significantly calm regional tensions that have led to fears of war between Israel and Iran directly. It’s not clear how it would affect the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Hezbollah had long insisted that it would not agree to a ceasefire until the war in Gaza ends, but it has now dropped that condition.
One diplomat said there are fears that if no ceasefire is reached, the war will expand further into Syria and Iraq as Israel attempts to cut off the supply of weapons from Iran to Hezbollah. Israel has carried out regular airstrikes on Iran-linked groups in Syria and has threatened to strike in Iraq, where Iran-backed militias have periodically launched drone attacks on Israel.
Geir Pedersen, the U.N. special envoy for Syria, said during a visit to Damascus on Sunday that ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon are critical to “avoid Syria being dragged even further into the conflict.”
Meanwhile, analysts say Hezbollah has been weakened but continues to keep up steady fire into Israel, including strikes far from the border.
On Sunday, Hezbollah fired about 250 rockets and other projectiles into Israel, wounding seven people in one of the militant group’s heaviest barrages in months, in response to deadly Israeli strikes in Beirut. Violent clashes continue in southern Lebanon as Israeli forces attempt to take control of strategic towns.
Israel says its goal in the war with Hezbollah is to enable displaced Israelis to safely return home. In Lebanon, a quarter of the population has been displaced, and parts of the country, particularly in south Lebanon and areas south of the capital Beirut, have been destroyed.
In Lebanon, where officials and residents are anxious for war to end, an initial rush of optimism dissipated after the Biden administration’s point man on Israel and Lebanon, Amos Hochstein, left the region last week without a deal.
Many now believe no agreement will be reached before President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January.
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Goldenberg reported from Tel Aviv, Israel. Associated Press writer Aamer Madhani contributed from Washington.