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      Drone Hits Building Near Netanyahu’s Home in Coastal Israel

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      A drone from Lebanon struck a building near the private residence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Saturday, his office said, highlighting the continuing challenge posed to Israel’s air defense by unmanned vehicles.Mr. Netanyahu and his wife were not home at the time of the strike, according to the prime minister’s office, which said that there had been no injuries.The episode came nearly a week after a Hezbollah drone attack killed four people and wounded dozens of others at a military base in northern Israel.The military said it had intercepted two additional drones launched on Saturday, which set off air-raid sirens at a military base in Glilot, just north of Tel Aviv. But that did not trigger sirens in Caesarea, the coastal location of Mr. Netanyahu’s home. The military said the incident was “under review.”Israel possesses some of the most advanced and effective air defense technology in the world, a multilayered system that has intercepted nearly all of the thousands of drones, missiles and rockets fired at it over the past year by Iran and its regional proxy forces, including Hezbollah in Lebanon.But drones — which are cheaper for its adversaries to acquire and operate — have occasionally evaded Israel’s air defenses. Experts say they pose a particular challenge for Israel because they emit less heat, often contain less metal and fly at lower altitudes and slower speeds than the rockets and missiles its air defenses are primarily designed to thwart.On Saturday, as the Israeli military tried to determine how one drone had evaded the system in Caesarea, it said that dozens of other “projectiles” had entered Israel from Lebanon.Firefighters tended to an area in northern Israel on Saturday.Gonzalo Fuentes/ReutersMost of them were either intercepted or allowed to fall into unpopulated areas, but one man was killed and another injured during a rocket barrage fired toward the city of Acre, according to Magen David Adom, Israel’s emergency service.Israel’s vulnerability to drones was also illustrated in June, when Hezbollah broadcast footage of sensitive installations in Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city, that it captured from a drone that hovered over the northern city seemingly without being detected.The Hezbollah drone episode that killed four soldiers nearly a week ago occurred at a military training base near Binyamina, just outside Caesarea.And in July, Israel was stunned when a drone launched by the Houthi militia in Yemen, another Iranian proxy, slammed into an apartment building near a United States Embassy branch office in a popular beachfront neighborhood of Tel Aviv, killing one person and injuring eight others.Rawan Sheikh Ahmad More

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      Hamas Says Its Demands Are Unchanged as Biden Pushes for Gaza Cease-Fire

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      A top deputy to the killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar vowed that his “banner will not fall” and that the group would hold to its cease-fire conditions.A top Hamas official vowed on Friday that the killing of the group’s leader, Yahya Sinwar, would change nothing for its war with Israel, saying that it would fight on even as President Biden pressed for a deal to stop the conflict in the Gaza Strip and free the remaining hostages there.In Hamas’s first official comments since Israel announced Mr. Sinwar’s death on Thursday, his deputy, Khalil al-Hayya, said that the group maintained its conditions for a cease-fire. He said Hamas still insisted on an end to Israel’s onslaught in Gaza, as well as its complete withdrawal from the territory and the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel.“We are continuing Hamas’s path,” Mr. al-Hayya, who lives in exile in Qatar, said in televised remarks in which he praised Mr. Sinwar for dying on the battlefield and added that his “banner will not fall.” It remained unclear when Hamas would announce a successor to Mr. Sinwar, who was fatally shot by Israeli soldiers in southern Gaza on Wednesday.Mr. Sinwar orchestrated the Hamas assault on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, during which about 1,200 people were killed and another 250 were taken to Gaza as hostages. The assault led to Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza, which has killed 42,000 people, according to local health officials, and left much of the territory in ruins.Mr. Biden and top members of his administration have expressed hope that Mr. Sinwar’s death could provide an opening toward ending the war, which has spread to include allies of Hamas like the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which began firing rockets into Israel last October, and Iran, which backs both militant groups.American officials, as well as many Israelis, have been pushing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to reach a cease-fire deal that would secure the release of the 101 hostages still being held in Gaza, at least a third of whom are believed to be dead.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Just Over the Border from Israel, a Hezbollah Cache of Explosives and Mines

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      Israel’s military showed journalists parts of what it said was Hezbollah’s deeply entrenched military infrastructure across the border in southern Lebanon.We had entered southern Lebanon early Sunday afternoon in a convoy of armored vehicles through a gap punched by Israeli forces in the snaking border wall.A rustic nature trail in a forest of thorny trees and thickets led to a small clearing. Here, in the western sector of southern Lebanon, about 300 yards north of the border with Israel, Israeli forces showed us what they described as a secret military outpost of Hezbollah’s, equipped with large amounts of explosives and mines.The outpost was the second of two sites that the Israeli military showed to international journalists during a supervised visit to the area, two weeks after Israel invaded southern Lebanon in pursuit of Hezbollah. The sites were in a sparsely populated, leafy mountainous area near the Mediterranean coast that it now controls.At the outpost, the Israelis had displayed the mines, as well as a metal chest marked “Explosive,” with English and Russian writing and numbers, containing ammunition. Boots, helmets, a solar panel charger and other gear were also on display. According to the military officials at the scene, the small dugout had room for about 10 fighters — an explosives team, they said, whose mission was to blow a gap in the concrete border wall.The stated aim of Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon was to degrade the military capabilities of Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia, and to push its fighters further north. Israel has not said how far into Lebanon its forces will advance or how long they will stay.Military officials on the ground said they were surprised at the extent of Hezbollah’s entrenchment in forward positions a short walk north of the border wall — evidence, they said, that Hezbollah had made meticulous preparations to carry out its long-threatened plan to invade northern Israel.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Israeli Jets Pummel Hezbollah Targets in Southern Lebanon

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      Sirens sounded in northern Israel, warning of incoming fire from Hezbollah.Israel’s air force pounded targets in Lebanon as its soldiers clashed with Hezbollah militants in the southern part of the country, the military said on Sunday. Lebanon’s government said that at least 23 people had been killed over the past 24 hours.The Lebanese Red Cross said overnight that it was responding to a “major strike” in the southern city of Nabatieh, posting an image on social media that showed flames and rubble. Lebanon’s civil defense said on Sunday morning one person had been killed and four others wounded.The civil defense also said its teams had completed a search and rescue operation shortly before dawn after an attack a day earlier on the town of Al-Maaysra in the central Keserwan district. It said that 17 people — including two women and three children — had been killed and 12 others wounded. The Health Ministry listed a series of other attacks in which it said that at least six people had been killed and dozens of others injured since Saturday.On Sunday morning, the Israeli military said that its jets had hit around “200 Hezbollah targets deep in Lebanon and southern Lebanon” over the past day as part of its multipronged fight against the Iranian-backed militant group.Hezbollah started firing on northern Israel in solidarity with its ally Hamas after the Oct. 7 attacks last year, setting off back-and-forth exchanges of fire that displaced communities on both sides of the border. Israel, which is also fighting in Gaza against Hamas, stepped up its bombardment in recent weeks before invading southern Lebanon with ground troops.The Israeli bombardment and ground invasion have killed at least 2,000 people and caused significant destruction and forced hundreds of thousands of Lebanese civilians to flee their homes. Aid agencies have warned it is compounding a humanitarian crisis prompted by the war in Gaza.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Secret Documents Show Hamas Tried to Persuade Iran to Join Its Oct. 7 Attack

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      The Times reviewed the minutes of 10 meetings among Hamas’s top leaders. The records show the militant group avoided several escalations since 2021 to falsely imply it had been deterred — while seeking Iranian support for a major attack.For more than two years, Yahya Sinwar huddled with his top Hamas commanders and plotted what they hoped would be the most devastating and destabilizing attack on Israel in the militant group’s four-decade history.Minutes of Hamas’s secret meetings, seized by the Israeli military and obtained by The New York Times, provide a detailed record of the planning for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack, as well as Mr. Sinwar’s determination to persuade Hamas’s allies, Iran and Hezbollah, to join the assault or at least commit to a broader fight with Israel if Hamas staged a surprise cross-border raid.The documents, which represent a breakthrough in understanding Hamas, also show extensive efforts to deceive Israel about its intentions as the group laid the groundwork for a bold assault and a regional conflagration that Mr. Sinwar hoped would cause Israel to “collapse.”The documents consist of minutes from 10 secret planning meetings of a small group of Hamas political and military leaders in the run-up to the attack, on Oct. 7, 2023. The minutes include 30 pages of previously undisclosed details about the way Hamas’s leadership works and the preparations that went into its attack.The documents, which were verified by The Times, lay out the main strategies and assessments of the leadership group:Hamas initially planned to carry out the attack, which it code-named “the big project,” in the fall of 2022. But the group delayed executing the plan as it tried to persuade Iran and Hezbollah to participate.As they prepared arguments aimed at Hezbollah, the Hamas leaders said that Israel’s “internal situation” — an apparent reference to turmoil over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s contentious plans to overhaul the judiciary — was among the reasons they were “compelled to move toward a strategic battle.”In July 2023, Hamas dispatched a top official to Lebanon, where he met with a senior Iranian commander and requested help with striking sensitive sites at the start of the assault.The senior Iranian commander told Hamas that Iran and Hezbollah were supportive in principle, but needed more time to prepare; the minutes do not say how detailed a plan was presented by Hamas to its allies.The documents also say that Hamas planned to discuss the attack in more detail at a subsequent meeting with Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader at the time, but do not clarify whether the discussion happened.Hamas felt assured of its allies’ general support, but concluded it might need to go ahead without their full involvement — in part to stop Israel from deploying an advanced new air-defense system before the assault took place.The decision to attack was also influenced by Hamas’s desire to disrupt efforts to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, the entrenchment of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Israeli efforts to exert greater control over the Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem, sacred in both Islam and Judaism and known to Jews as the Temple Mount.Hamas deliberately avoided major confrontations with Israel for two years from 2021, in order to maximize the surprise of the Oct. 7 attack. As the leaders saw it, they “must keep the enemy convinced that Hamas in Gaza wants calm.”Hamas leaders in Gaza said they briefed Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s Qatar-based political leader, on “the big project.” It was not previously known whether Mr. Haniyeh, who was assassinated by Israel in July, had been briefed on the attack before it happened.Prelude to WarThe documents provide greater context to one of the most pivotal moments in modern Middle Eastern history, showing it was both the culmination of a yearslong plan, as well as a move partly shaped by specific events after Mr. Netanyahu returned to power in Israel in late 2022.Yahya Sinwar in April 2023 in Gaza City. Documents show that he and other Hamas leaders wanted time to lull Israeli leaders into a false sense of security before attacking Israel. Samar Abu Elouf for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.S. Aims to Revive Failed U.N. Plan for Lebanon War

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      At the heart of the frantic diplomatic efforts to halt Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon is a decades-old United Nations resolution that was intended to demilitarize the area and protect Israel from cross-border attacks by Hezbollah.All parties agree that the measure, Security Council Resolution 1701, has been a complete failure. They also agree that reviving it may be the only way out of Israel’s widening war to its north.“The outcome that we want to see is the full implementation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701,” the State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, told reporters on Monday, speaking of Israel’s continuing assault in Lebanon.Mr. Miller said that would mean the withdrawal of Hezbollah forces from the Israel-Lebanon border, and the deployment of U.N. and Lebanese army forces into the buffer zone in southern Lebanon that the resolution had sought to create.The U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1701 in August 2006 as part of a cease-fire that ended Israel’s last war with Lebanon. The resolution called for “an area free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those of” Lebanon’s government and a U.N. peacekeeping force in the area known as the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL.In recent days, the question of how to restore that resolution has consumed senior U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Amos Hochstein, a senior White House national security aide who has been working for months to broker an agreement between Israel and Hezbollah to restore calm along the Israel-Lebanon border. Mr. Blinken has also been working the phones with Arab officials to discuss Lebanon’s political future, in which U.S. officials hope the influence of Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, will be diminished.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Israel’s Security Cabinet to Meet to Discuss Response to Iran Attack

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      The cabinet was expected to authorize Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, the defense minister, to initiate a retaliatory attack at their discretion, officials said.Israel’s security cabinet was set to convene on Thursday evening, officials said, to discuss Israel’s response to an Iranian barrage of some 200 ballistic missiles that sent nearly the entire country into reinforced shelters last week.Senior ministers, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, will discuss the overall plan for Israel’s retaliation, said two officials who spoke on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the discussions.The cabinet was expected to authorize Mr. Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, the defense minister, to initiate the response at their discretion, the officials said.Iran’s attack in early October came in retaliation for Israel’s killing of top leaders in Hamas, Hezbollah and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — all proxy militias funded by Iran. One of them, Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political chief, was assassinated while staying in a state guesthouse in Tehran in July. The majority of the missiles were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome defense system. but a Palestinian was killed in the Israeli-occupied West Bank when a fragment of an Iranian missile fell on him.International mediators and the Biden administration fear a massive Israeli strike could touch off a wider, direct escalation between Israel and Iran. The regional archnemeses’ decades-long shadow war escalated in direct action in April, when Iran launched hundreds of rockets and drones at Israeli territory. Most were intercepted. More

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      Israel Steps Up Attacks in Gaza and Lebanon Ahead of Oct. 7 Anniversary

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      Israel appeared to label much of northern Gaza as an evacuation zone and in Lebanon, Israeli airstrikes targeted Hezbollah strongholds, as the region also braced for Israel to hit back at Iran.Israel intensified its fight on two fronts Sunday, stepping up operations against Hamas in Gaza and carrying out more airstrikes on Hezbollah in Lebanon, as the region braced for Israel to hit back at Iran for its barrage of ballistic missiles last week.The expected strike’s potential to ignite an all-out war between Israel and Iran cast a pall over the eve of the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack, which led to the upending of the Middle East and exposed the limits of American influence in the region.The Israeli military appeared to label the vast majority of northern Gaza as an evacuation zone in what it said was preparation for “a new phase” in the war, after launching a major raid targeting Hamas in the area.In Lebanon, Israeli airstrikes targeted Hezbollah strongholds in southern Beirut, shortly after warning residents there to flee. Israel also said over the weekend that it had killed two Hamas officials in Lebanon.In Israel, two surface-to-surface missiles fired from Lebanon set off sirens in towns up to 50 miles south of the Lebanese border. The missiles were intercepted by Israel’s air defenses, its military said. In the southern Israeli city of Be’er Sheva, a member of the Israeli border police was killed and five other people were taken to the hospital with gunshot wounds in an attack in the city’s central bus station, according to the police and Magen David Adom, Israel’s emergency service.As fighting has escalated and Israel issued restrictions on public gatherings, organizers have scaled back events to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 assault.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More