Netanyahu firm on new phase of Hezbollah war as UN warns of catastrophe

Israel on Friday stood firm on the need for a new and expanded phase of its almost year-long war with Hezbollah as the UN warned of catastrophe and the US called for diplomacy.

“Our goals are clear; our actions speak for themselves,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant also underscored that point in a separate statement, explaining, “We will continue pursuing our enemies in order to defend our citizens – even in the Dahieh in Beirut. 

“The series of operations in the new phase of the war will continue until we achieve our goal: ensuring the safe return of Israel’s northern communities to their homes,” Gallant stated.

They spoke as Israel pivoted in the direction of a military solution to return the more than 60,000 Israelis to their homes in northern Israel, a move that appeared to mark a sharp break with the Biden administration.

The region was braced for retaliatory escalation after the IDF claimed that it killed ten senior Hezbollah commanders along with Ibrahim Aqil, leader of the movement’s Radwan special forces unit, during a targeted airstrike in Beirut.

“This elimination is intended to protect the citizens of Israel,” an army spokesperson said in a brief statement to the press, adding that Israel was not seeking regional escalation.

Earlier in the week, an unusual series of explosions that targeted beepers, radios, and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah fighters was set off across Lebanon, killing 37 people, including at least two children, and injuring more than 3,000 people, many of whom were members of Hezbollah.

Israel has not claimed responsibility for the beeper explosions, but is widely presumed to be responsible for those attacks. In light of the escalating military situation in northern Israel, Netanyahu delayed his departure for the UN until Wednesday, when he is expected to address the high-level opening of the UN General Assembly on Thursday. The security cabinet is expected to meet on Sunday.

US President Joe Biden told reporters on Friday that Israelis and Lebanese civilians must be able to safely live in their border communities.

“We’ve tried from the beginning to make sure that the people of northern Israel, as well as southern Lebanon, are able to get back to their homes and go back safely,” Biden told reporters at the start of his cabinet meeting at the White House.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, and “Our whole team is working with the intelligence community to try and get it done, and we are going to keep at it until we get it done, but we have a ways to go,” the president said.

US National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby told reporters that Washington was not involved in IDF military attacks on Lebanon, including the one that killed Aqil. America had also previously denied any involvement in the beeper explosions.

“There was no US involvement,” Kirby said, adding that “we believe that there is still time and space for diplomacy to work.

“We don’t want to see escalation. We don’t want to see a second war, a second front in this war opened up at the border with Lebanon,” Kirby stressed, adding that “everything we’re doing is going to be involved in trying to prevent that outcome.

“There is no reason for an expanded military conflict in Lebanon to be inevitable,” he stated.

"To protect the citizens of Israel"

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that

Israel’s actions in Lebanon this week could spark a regional war, in comments delivered by his spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.

“We are very concerned at the heightened escalation across the Blue Line, including the deadly strike we saw in Beirut today,” Dujarric told reporters.

“We urge all parties to de-escalate immediately. All must exercise maximum restraint. We also urge the parties to immediately return to the cessation of hostilities and to fully implement [UN] Security Council Resolution 1701; the region is on the brink of a catastrophe,” he said.

“All efforts should be made in urgently pursuing diplomatic activity. All efforts should focus on urgently finding a diplomatic activity.”

The UN Security Council held a special session on the Israeli-Lebanese crisis on Friday in New York.

UN political affairs chief Rosemary DiCarlo warned the Security Council that if violence continues between Israel, Palestinian terror group Hamas and Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah, then “we risk seeing a conflagration that could dwarf even the devastation and suffering witnessed so far.”

UN human rights chief Volker Turk said it was “difficult to conceive how, in these circumstances, such attacks could possibly conform with the key principles of distinction, proportionality, and precautions in attack, under international humanitarian law.”

Turk called for an independent, thorough and transparent investigation and for those who ordered and carried out the attacks to be held to account.

Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib accused Israel of carrying out the attacks, telling the council: “No one in this world is safe anymore.” He showed the council a large picture of a bloody hand with missing fingers.

“We came to the council to protect our common humanity and to ask you to condemn the terrorist Israeli attacks clearly and unequivocally, to hold Israel accountable for planning and implementing these attacks and for violating the sovereignty of Lebanon and its territorial integrity,” he said.

Reuters contributed to this report.