Middle East Crisis: Israel and Hezbollah Exchange Strikes Amid Fears of Escalation
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The Israeli military said it had hit weapons facilities, prompting Hezbollah to target an Israeli base.
The Israeli military and Hezbollah traded cross-border strikes on Wednesday, leaving at least one person dead deep inside eastern Lebanon, as tensions between the adversaries continued to fuel concerns about a wider regional conflagration.
Israel said that it had struck weapons storage facilities used by Hezbollah, the powerful Iranian-backed militia, in eastern Lebanon for the second time this week. The overnight airstrikes, in an area close to the Syrian border, killed at least one person and injured 30 others, including children, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said in a statement.
In response, Hezbollah said it had targeted an Israeli military base in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. Israel’s military said that two houses had been damaged in the village of Katzrin on Wednesday and that at least one person had been injured when dozens of projectiles crossed into the area from Lebanon.
An Israeli military spokesman, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, posted on social media a photo of what he said was a house damaged in Katzrin and said, “There was no other target in the area other than a civilian neighborhood and kids on their summer vacation.”
He added: “Attacks against our civilians will not go unanswered.”
The tit-for-tat strikes, and the Israeli official’s threat of further retaliation, highlighted how months of diplomatic efforts have failed to ease hostilities along the Israel-Lebanon border. And they came as the Biden administration has intensified its push for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza in hopes of averting a broader Middle East war, although Israeli and Hamas officials have been cool to the latest U.S. proposal.
The sites of the most recent Israeli strikes, in a range of about 40 to 60 miles north of the Israel-Lebanon border in the Bekaa Valley, are deeper inside Lebanon than many of the near-daily attacks the two countries have exchanged since the war in Gaza began. Hezbollah, like other groups in the region backed by Iran, has been attacking Israel in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza, leading to the cross-border fire from both countries. Hamas is also backed by Iran.
The military said in a statement that it had detected secondary explosions after its strikes on Wednesday, which it said indicated that there were large amounts of weapons at the sites. At least three areas were targeted, including the town of Nabi Chit, according to Lebanon’s state-run news agency. There was no immediate comment from Lebanese officials on exactly what was hit.
On Monday, the Israeli military also said it had targeted a number of Hezbollah’s weapons storage facilities in the Bekaa Valley. Lebanon’s Health Ministry said those strikes injured nearly a dozen people, including two children.
Tensions have escalated sharply in the region in recent weeks since the killings of Fuad Shukr, a senior commander in Hezbollah, and Ismail Haniyeh, a top leader of Hamas. Israel has claimed responsibility for Mr. Shukr’s death and is widely believed to be responsible for Mr. Haniyeh’s. Hezbollah and Iran have vowed to retaliate more forcefully than before against Israel.
In a separate strike on Wednesday, the Israeli military said it had killed a commander in the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a militant group associated with the Palestinian Fatah faction that has fought alongside Hezbollah. The commander, Khalil al-Miqdah, who was killed in the strike in the southern Lebanese port city of Sidon, worked closely with Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards, the Israeli military said in a statement. That claim could not be independently verified, though the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades confirmed Mr. al-Miqdah’s death in a statement.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken toured the region this week to push for a cease-fire in Gaza, but there appeared to be no breakthroughs in talks. Officials familiar with the latest U.S.-backed proposal said it left major disagreements between Hamas and Israel unresolved.
On Tuesday, a senior Iranian military official, Gen. Ali Mohammad Naeini, the spokesman for the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, suggested that an attack on Israel might have been placed on hold.
Key Developments
Strike on school sheltering displaced Gazans kills at least 2 people, and other news.
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At least two people were killed in another Israeli airstrike on a school sheltering displaced people in Gaza City, according to Gaza’s civil defense. Israel’s military said it had conducted a “precise strike” Wednesday that hit Hamas militants operating a command and control center from inside the Salah al-Din school. Across the embattled Gaza Strip, tens of thousands of people displaced by Israeli bombardment have sought shelter in schools. Israel has stepped up strikes on schools serving as shelters in recent weeks, accusing Hamas of operating inside them. The result has often been a high civilian death toll, according to Gazan medics. The civil defense forces said Wednesday’s strike also wounded 15 people, 10 of them children.
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A merchant ship in the Red Sea was on fire and drifting on Wednesday west of the Yemeni port of Hudaydah after its crew exchanged fire with men on two small boats and the ship was then hit by an “unknown projectile,” Britain’s maritime trade operation said. The vessel was a Greek-flagged oil tanker, The Associated Press reported. Since late last year, the Houthi militia, which is backed by Iran, has staged a series of missile and other attacks from bases in Yemen against commercial ships in the Red Sea, claiming to be attacking in support of Gaza. The attacks have disrupted a vital global shipping route.
Ultra-Orthodox men protest a draft in Jerusalem and clash with police.
Hundreds of ultra-Orthodox Israeli men protested outside a conscription center in Jerusalem on Wednesday and clashed with police officers amid rising national tensions about a court decision ordering a draft for the insular community.
Israel’s military began sending conscription orders last month to ultra-Orthodox men aged 18 to 26 after the Supreme Court in June ordered an end to exemptions that had been in place for decades. Military service is mandatory for most Israelis over 18, with some exceptions, such as for most Arab citizens. Before the ruling, over 60,000 ultra-Orthodox religious students of draft age were also formally exempt from service.
At the protest on Wednesday, ultra-Orthodox demonstrators, many of whom appeared to be of draft age, scuffled with officers and also with counterprotesters who want the military to push forward with the draft to end what they see as an unequal sharing of the burden at a time of war and rising regional tensions.
The Israeli police said that they had sent reinforcements to try to maintain order, and Israeli news media reported that officers had sealed off several streets, used water cannons to disperse crowds and beaten some protesters with batons. When asked about the response, the police said in a statement that officers had been “forced to act using various means” as protests continued and demonstrators broke through a blockade, with some protesters throwing water bottles. Five people were arrested, the police statement added.
The protest highlights the increased friction between Israel’s mainstream secular society and the ultra-Orthodox, the fastest-growing part of the population.
Some ultra-Orthodox Israelis do not fully recognize the state of Israel, rejecting secular Jewish sovereignty and military service. Many ultra-Orthodox see full-time Torah study as crucial, arguing that this scholarship is what has ensured the survival of Jews for centuries.
A debate long seen by the rest of Israeli society as one over equality has increasingly become one about security, too. Israel has been in a 10-month war with Hamas in Gaza, and skirmishes with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah have intensified. Fear of a regional war still looms amid concerns that both Hezbollah and its patron, Iran, could launch retaliatory attacks for recent assassinations attributed to Israel.
A video from the Israeli broadcaster Channel 7 showed of one of the altercations at the protests on Wednesday, with one ultra-Orthodox demonstrator asking a counterprotester, “You want me to work for you?”
“Your protection is worthless,” the counterprotester says, in an apparent reference to the Torah. He soon punches the ultra-Orthodox man.
Israel’s military hoped to defuse tensions over the conscriptions of the ultra-Orthodox — some 4,800 are to be drafted this year — by focusing on unmarried male members of the community who are in the work force and not on religious students.
But last week, hundreds of ultra-Orthodox protested outside the Alon military base. Out of 90 ultra-Orthodox candidates for service who were summoned to the base that day, only 12 showed up and completed the processes required for conscription.
Tensions over the draft pose yet another test for the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has struggled to balance the demands of the ultra-Orthodox parties that form a critical part of his coalition with his own nationalist base, some of whom no longer believe the exemptions are viable.
Here’s what to know about the latest U.S. proposal for a Gaza cease-fire.
The Biden administration is pushing again for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, offering a new proposal that it says could bridge the gaps between the two sides. But the latest U.S. effort, which builds on an earlier framework, again appears to have run into difficulty.
Here’s a look at the twists and turns over months of talks and what the main sticking points are this time:
What’s the status of the talks?
Negotiations mediated by the United States, Egypt and Qatar have inched along since early December, when hostilities resumed after a one-week cease-fire during which Hamas released more than 100 people from captivity in Gaza and Israel freed 240 Palestinian prisoners. In late May, President Biden endorsed a new three-phase plan and the U.N. Security Council followed with a resolution supporting it.
The first phase would see a six-week cease-fire and the release of hostages in exchange for Palestinians being held in Israeli prisons. People displaced from northern Gaza would be able to return to their homes, many of which lie in ruins. During that time, Israeli forces would withdraw from populated areas of Gaza.
The second phase envisions a permanent cease-fire, while the third consists of a multiyear reconstruction plan for Gaza and the return of the remains of deceased hostages.
But for months, Israel and Hamas, whose negotiators do not speak directly to each other, have remained far apart on key issues.
What is the new U.S. proposal?
On Aug. 8, with the war in its 11th month, President Biden and the leaders of Egypt and Qatar said they were willing to present a “final” cease-fire proposal. Last week, at talks in Qatar, the United States presented what it called a “bridging proposal” to try to close some of the gaps between Israel and Hamas.
The details of that proposal have not been disclosed publicly, but the Biden administration has tried to put diplomatic heft behind it. Visiting Israel this week, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken warned that this was “maybe the last opportunity” to secure a cease-fire, and later said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had told him during a meeting that he was committed to the U.S. proposal.
But both Israeli and Hamas officials familiar with the talks said the U.S. proposal leaves major disagreements mostly unresolved.
What is the main sticking point?
In broad terms, the U.S. proposal appears to conform to new demands added by Mr. Netanyahu in July that some Israeli troops continue to patrol part of an area of Gaza along the border with Egypt, according to Hamas and Israeli officials.
This has emerged as a crucial issue. Mr. Netanyahu considers an Israeli military presence in the area, which Israel calls the Philadelphi Corridor and Egypt calls Salah Al Din, vital to preventing Hamas from rearming after the war or rebuilding tunnels to Egypt.
Mr. Netanyahu told a group including families of hostages this week that Israel would not withdraw from the border strip “under any circumstances,” the families said in a statement. Mr. Netanyahu’s office confirmed he had said that Israel would not withdraw from Philadelphi.
Hamas rejects a continued Israeli presence in the area and is demanding a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Egypt says that keeping Israeli troops in the Philadelphi Corridor would raise national security concerns and would be unacceptable to the Egyptian public.
Mr. Blinken told reporters on Tuesday that Israel has already agreed to terms of withdrawal and reaffirmed that the United States would “not accept any long-term occupation of Gaza by Israel.”
What are the other disputes?
Other areas of dispute have emerged publicly. Since the start of the war, Israeli forces have established what it calls a security buffer inside Gaza along its eastern border with Israel, demolishing Palestinian homes in the process, and it intends to keep a presence there after the war. Israel also wants to retain the option to return to fighting after the first phase of a cease-fire.
Israeli forces have built a security road, which they call the Netzarim corridor, that cuts across Gaza from east to west. Israeli officials have said they want troops to keep patrolling that road, through which Palestinians must travel between the north and south of the enclave. That would violate Hamas’s insistence on a complete Israeli withdrawal.
Russia Seeks to Turn Humbling Incursion Into Military Gains
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Our Coverage of the War in Ukraine
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Drone Attack on Moscow: Russia said that it repelled a large Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow. Authorities did not report any damage or casualties.
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Ukraine’s Incursion: Russian troops defending a pocket of territory in Russia’s Kursk region were at risk of becoming encircled, military analysts said, after Ukraine bombed bridges that are the only routes for resupply or retreat.
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Kyiv’s Risky Bet: President Volodymyr Zelensky wants to hold Russian territory as leverage in future peace talks. But Russians who know President Vladimir Putin expect him to lash out.
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An Orthodox Schism: Ukraine’s Parliament passed a bill that would ban a Russian-aligned branch of the Orthodox church. Ukrainian officials have accused the church of aiding Russia during the war.
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Women in the Work Force: More and more Ukrainian women are replacing men mobilized in the army. But there are not enough of them to make up for the labor shortage affecting the economy.
How We Verify Our Reporting
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Our team of visual journalists analyzes satellite images, photographs, videos and radio transmissions to independently confirm troop movements and other details.
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We monitor and authenticate reports on social media, corroborating these with eyewitness accounts and interviews. Read more about our reporting efforts.
China’s ‘Road Trip Auntie’ Is Ready for a New Milestone: Divorce
In the four years since she began driving solo across China, leaving behind an abusive marriage and longstanding expectations about women’s duties at home, Su Min, 60, has become an internet sensation known as the “road-trip auntie.”
She has driven to the foot of Mount Everest and camped on the beach in the tropical province of Hainan. She has been featured in an ad campaign about female empowerment and inspired a forthcoming movie starring a famous Chinese actress.
But one key step in Ms. Su’s emancipation eluded her: She wavered on whether to file for divorce, worried about how it would affect her family.
Until now. Last month, Ms. Su officially began divorce proceedings.
Her decision, she said, is a testament to how much she has learned to commit to her own happiness, and to the self confidence she has gained on the road.
But her experience in trying to end the marriage also shows the many barriers to independence that Chinese women still face. Ms. Su’s husband at first refused to divorce, and a legal fight loomed. Judges in contested divorce cases often deny petitions or force couples into mediation that disadvantages the woman, studies show, and they frequently ignore claims of domestic violence.
It was only when Ms. Su agreed to pay her husband more than $22,000 that he gave in, she said.
“It’s all I have — how could I not be upset?” Ms. Su said in an interview several days after negotiating the agreement. She was parked near the city of Guiyang in southwestern China, where she had recently toured a sculpture park nestled among green hills.
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Curbing Negative Discourse: Black Myth: Wukong, which is considered China’s first blockbuster video game, tried to forbid influential overseas streamers from discussing certain subjects, including “feminist propaganda.”
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A Mixed Blessing: Fans have mobbed Olympic athletes in public and staked out their homes. State media outlets denounced their “visibly aggressive” behavior.
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A New Great Wall: China has built dozens of new villages along its disputed borders and paid people to move into them, a New York Times analysis found.
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Growing Tech Prowess: Stressing science education, China is outpacing other countries in research fields like battery chemistry, which is crucial to its lead in electric vehicles.
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The Right to Freeze Eggs: Despite a declining birthrate that has alarmed the nation’s leaders, a Beijing court upheld a longstanding rule that only married women may use the procedure.
Still, she said, “even though money is very important, freedom is more important.”
Ms. Su began vlogging after she set out from her home in Zhengzhou, a city in central China, in September 2020. In between shots of turquoise lakes and rolling fields, she explained why she, a retired factory worker with a high school education, had finally struck out on her own. She was tired of living for others, bearing her husband’s demands and shouldering housework. For decades, she had believed that was just how life was for women, but now she was finally ready for a change.
To her surprise, her videos went viral. Women across the country said they saw themselves or their mothers in her story and cheered her on as she rewrote it.
But even as Ms. Su became an accidental icon of women’s awakening, she said that she did not want a divorce. She worried that the responsibility of caring for her husband would fall on her daughter if she left him. Divorce also still carried a stigma among older generations, and Ms. Su’s mother opposed it.
Gradually, though, Ms. Su began to reconsider. After her husband realized she was making money off her vlogs, he asked her for money, she said — and she worried that could continue if she didn’t extricate herself.
Her daughter urged Ms. Su to put herself first, telling her, “You’ve given so much to our family.”
“Every time I talk about this, I want to cry,” Ms. Su said.
Still, deciding to divorce was only the first step.
Chinese law recognizes domestic violence as grounds for one-sided divorce, and Ms. Su tried to make her case. She filmed an argument between herself and her husband, where he admitted to having hit her in the past (and also demanded $70,000 to agree to a divorce). But a lawyer told her that she would need more evidence, such as hospital records.
Even when there is ample evidence, judges rarely rule that domestic violence has occurred, said Ke Li, a professor at the City University of New York who has studied divorce in China.
“Courts still try so hard to protect the integrity of marriage as opposed to women’s rights,” Professor Li said, because the government sees marriage as a foundation for social stability.
If Ms. Su could not count on a finding of domestic violence, she wanted to avoid going to court because a judge would likely then order her to split her assets with her husband, including the rights to her social media accounts. That would mean sharing with him the very platform that had given her the confidence to walk away in the first place.
Ms. Su refused.
“What saved me was not only myself, but the consistent support and company of my fans on this account,” she said in a video announcing her plans to divorce. “This is the thing I’m most proud of in my life. I can’t give it to him.”
After negotiations, her husband agreed to divorce without going to court for $22,000.
This month, Ms. Su is at home in Zhengzhou to finalize the paperwork.
But she is already planning her next destination. She has never been abroad and is eager to see Switzerland and Paris.
“Once this paperwork is done, I can go any time.”
They Spouted Hate Online. Then They Were Arrested.
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Divers Find 4 Bodies From Yacht That Sank Off Sicily
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