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    Israel’s Military Says It Struck Beirut’s Suburbs

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    The attack was the second in less than a week, raising fears that a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah could unravel.The Israeli military said early Tuesday that it had conducted a strike on the southern outskirts of Beirut, the second attack near Lebanon’s capital in less than a week.Israel and Hezbollah agreed to a cease-fire in November, raising hopes that Lebanon’s deadliest war in decades could be over. But the recent strikes have prompted fears that the truce could unravel.The Israeli military said the latest strike, in the Dahiya area in Beirut’s southern suburbs, had targeted a Hezbollah operative who had directed and assisted Hamas in planning a “significant and imminent” attack against Israel.Israel acted to eliminate the operative because he posed an “immediate threat,” the military said on social media. It added that the Dahiya area was a key stronghold for Hezbollah, a Lebanese militant group and political party backed by Iran.Hezbollah made no immediate comment on the strikes on its semiofficial page on Telegram, a social media platform.On Friday, the Israeli military launched airstrikes in the same area, and ordered residents in a densely populated neighborhood to evacuate. The attack was hours after rockets were fired at northern Israel from Lebanese territory.Hezbollah denied any involvement in that attack on Israel and said it remained committed to the cease-fire. The Israeli military said it had targeted a site that stored Hezbollah’s drones.Also on Friday, at least three people were killed in separate Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.Hezbollah began firing rockets and drones at Israeli positions, in solidarity with its Palestinian ally, after Hamas led an attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, igniting the war in Gaza. The fighting escalated into full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah, with an Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon. More

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      Rockets Fired From Lebanon Prompt Israeli Strikes

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      The volley broke months of relative quiet in northern Israel after a U.S.-backed truce. Israel retaliated by attacking sites it said were linked to Hezbollah.Israeli forces struck sites in southern Lebanon on Saturday that it said were linked to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, hours after rockets were fired from Lebanon into Israel for the first time in months.The attacks were the latest example of how the renewed Israeli offensive in Gaza was rippling across the Middle East. They also disrupted months of relative calm in northern Israel, where residents displaced by more than a year of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah have begun returning home.The Israeli military said that it had shot down three rockets from Lebanon, and there were no reports of casualties. The volley was the first of its kind since last November, when Israel and Hezbollah agreed to a cease-fire brokered by the United States and France.Hezbollah denied any involvement in the rocket fire, which followed Israel’s resumed offensive in Gaza this week against the Lebanese group’s Palestinian ally Hamas. Those Israeli attacks have already killed more than 600 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials, who do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.After the Hamas-led assault on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which ignited the Gaza war, the militant group’s allies across the Middle East began attacking Israel in solidarity. Last year, that escalated to a full-blown war between Israel and Hezbollah, in which Israel assassinated Hezbollah’s leadership and launched a ground invasion into southern Lebanon.Under the terms of the cease-fire, the Lebanese government is supposed to prevent armed groups like Hezbollah from attacking Israel from Lebanon.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 Says It Will Keep Troops ‘Temporarily’ in 5 Points in Lebanon

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      The announcement raised the specter of renewed fighting in southern Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia.The Israeli military said on Monday that it will keep forces in five locations in southern Lebanon after a deadline for its full withdrawal lapses on Tuesday. The announcement raised fears of a resurgence in violence in southern Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah. After more than a year of war, the two sides reached a cease-fire in late November that was contingent on both Israel and Hezbollah ceding control of southern Lebanon to the Lebanese military by the end of January. Hezbollah had long dominated the region, while Israel had captured large parts of it after invading Lebanon in September.In late January, mediators announced a three-week extension to that agreement, giving Israel more time to complete its withdrawal. The truce has frequently been punctured by bursts of violence — including an Israeli airstrike on Monday that killed a Hamas leader in southern Lebanon — but neither side has reverted to full-scale war.Now, the specter of renewed conflict looms once more after the Israeli military announced that it will keep some troops in Lebanon beyond the Feb. 18 deadline, potentially preventing some Lebanese civilians from returning home.“We will leave small amounts of troops deployed temporarily in five strategic points along the border in Lebanon so we can continue to defend our residents and to make sure there’s no immediate threat,” said Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, a military spokesman, in a briefing for reporters on Monday afternoon.Colonel Shoshani named several locations spread along most of the length of the 75-mile border, including places across the border from Israeli villages that were badly damaged by Hezbollah rocket fire during the war. He said that Hezbollah had not lived up to its own side of the November agreement and still posed a threat to Israeli residents in those areas. He declined to say how long the occupation would last. It is unclear to what extent Hezbollah has a presence in those areas.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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      Netanyahu Tells Trump Israel Must ‘Complete Its Victory’

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      Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said he had told President-elect Donald J. Trump in a telephone conversation over the weekend that Israel needed to “complete its victory” over Iranian proxies and bring back hostages held in Gaza.Mr. Netanyahu, who described Mr. Trump as a friend, said in a statement on Sunday that their latest discussion had been “very friendly, warm and important.” The Israeli prime minister has been quick to cultivate his relationship with Mr. Trump, and was among the first leaders to call him after his victory in November.Many analysts have said that the incoming president, who has called for a halt to the war in Gaza, is broadly supportive of the Israeli government’s goal of ending the conflict with Hamas on its terms. This month, Mr. Trump threatened “hell to pay” if the hostages in Gaza were not freed before his inauguration on Jan. 20, prompting praise from Mr. Netanyahu, who said the statement added to pressure on Hamas.Mr. Netanyahu said that he had explained to Mr. Trump in their call on Saturday that Israel had dealt “a tough blow” to both the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and to Hamas, which attacked Israel in October 2023, setting off the war in Gaza. Both groups have been supported by Iran. Mr. Trump did not immediately comment on the call.Israel has largely destroyed Hamas as a military organization, and killed its leader, Yahya Sinwar, in an offensive that has shattered the enclave and killed tens of thousands of people. It also launched an intense campaign of airstrikes and ground attacks in Lebanon that severely weakened Hezbollah, killing its leader, Hassan Nasrallah. The two sides began observing a cease-fire last month. In recent days, amid the fall of Syria’s longtime leader, Bashar al-Assad, Israeli forces have also moved into Syria beyond the Golan Heights and launched airstrikes on military targets in that country.Mr. Netanyahu said he had told Mr. Trump that Israel was “committed to preventing Hezbollah’s rearmament” and used the statement to repeat a warning to Hezbollah and Iran that Israel “will continue acting against you as much as necessary, on any front and at any time.”The Biden administration, in its final weeks, has intensified efforts to reach a cease-fire in Gaza. The White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said last week that the administration aimed to seal a deal this month that would halt fighting in exchange for a return of hostages, although months of talks involving Israel and Hamas have failed to reach a breakthrough. More

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      Hezbollah Loses Supply Route Through Syria, in Blow to It and Iran

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      The militant group’s leader admits that the toppling of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, cut off an important land route from Iran.The leader of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah acknowledged on Saturday that its supply route through Syria had been cut off by rebels who toppled the government last weekend, dealing another blow to Hezbollah and its patron, Iran.Before its collapse, the Syrian government had provided a land corridor for Iran to supply weapons and materiel to Hezbollah in Lebanon, bolstering the militant group’s power and Iran’s influence as its main backer.“Hezbollah has lost the supply route coming through Syria at the current stage, but this is a small detail and may change with time,” the Hezbollah leader, Naim Qassem, said Saturday in a televised speech.He added that Hezbollah — which recently agreed to a cease-fire with Israel after months of war — would look for alternate means of getting supplies or see if its Syria route could be re-established under “a new regime.”He did not specifically mention the coalition of rebel forces that swept into Damascus, the Syrian capital, last weekend, or Syria’s deposed president, Bashar al-Assad, who had for years relied on help from Hezbollah and Iran in his country’s civil war.Hezbollah’s loss of its supply route through Syria, which remains fractured, is another setback for the militant group after a year of conflict with Israel and several months of all-out warfare. In a string of blows from September until late last month, when the cease-fire took effect in Lebanon, Israel detonated the group’s wireless devices, bombarded it with intense air raids, attacked its positions with a ground invasion and killed many of its commanders.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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      Questions dog Trump pick for Middle East adviser with inconsistent résumé

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      President-elect Donald Trump’s appointee to advise him on Middle East affairs, Massad Boulos, is reported to have significant discrepancies between his public profile and documented business background, casting doubt on the thoroughness of the former president’s vetting process.Corporate records reviewed by the New York Times reveal that Boulos, father-in-law to Tiffany Trump, is frequently described as a billionaire mogul, but actually manages a truck dealership in Nigeria that generated less than $66,000 in profit last year. The company, SCOA Nigeria PLC, is valued at approximately $865,000, with Boulos’s personal stake worth just $1.53, according to the securities filings in the Times report.The advisory position, which does not require Senate confirmation, follows Boulos’s prominent role in Trump’s 2024 campaign outreach to Arab American voters, particularly in key swing states like Michigan. Boulos positioned himself as a critical intermediary, helping Trump navigate complex political sentiments within Arab American communities – and doing Arab-language interviews with media in the region.While Boulos has been active in Arab American political circles, his murky business background and lack of diplomatic and policy expertise raises questions about the depth of the vetting process conducted by Trump’s team – who were also said to be caught-off guard by accusations against Pentagon nominee Pete Hegseth.During the campaign, Boulos pounded the pavement in Michigan to tout Trump’s foreign policy record, claiming he was “the only president in modern US history who did not start any wars”, despite Trump resupplying Saudi Arabia with an arms package, including precision bombs and munitions, for its brutal war in Yemen.Boulos’s political connections are multifaceted. He’s reported to maintain relationships with various Lebanese political figures, including Christian politician Sleiman Frangieh, an ally of Hezbollah whom the militant group endorsed for president.Boulos’s own background includes a failed parliamentary run in Lebanon in 2009. It was his son Michael’s marriage to Tiffany in Mar-a-Lago in 2022 that significantly elevated the family’s political profile.A May meeting with dozens of Arab American leaders in Michigan highlighted the challenges of Boulos’s political positioning. The gathering, which included Trump adviser Richard Grenell, reportedly became tense when Grenell repeated controversial comments about removing Palestinians from Gaza’s “waterfront property”, causing frustration among attendees.Trump announced the appointment on Truth Social in early December, describing Boulos as “a skilled negotiator and a steadfast advocate for PEACE in the Middle East”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIf appointed, Boulos would inherit a Middle East in profound crisis, with Israel’s destructive and more than year-long war in Gaza leading to at least 45,000 dead Palestinians and international arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, former defense minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas leader Mohammed Deif. The portfolio also includes a new era for Syria as rebels toppled longtime autocrat Bashar al-Assad and war-torn Lebanon with ongoing strikes between Hezbollah and Israel.The appointment also follows a pattern of Trump selecting family-connected individuals for key positions, with Boulos joining Ivanka Trump’s father-in-law, Charles Kushner, who was named as the potential US ambassador to France. More

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      Israeli Strike in North Gaza Kills Dozens, Rescue Group Says

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      Israel was pressing forward with an operation in Gaza to combat what it described as a Hamas resurgence. In Lebanon, an uneasy cease-fire appeared to be largely holding.Dozens of people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes in northern Gaza and more were trapped under debris, according to emergency rescue workers in the territory, as a weekslong Israeli offensive continued to isolate the area.Palestinian Civil Defense in Gaza, an emergency response group, said it believed that more than 75 people had been killed in strikes in Beit Lahia, a farming town north of Gaza City, although it said it had been unable to reach the site because of an Israeli blockade. Civil Defense does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its death tolls, but it said that families were among the dead.“Entire families were wiped out in northern Gaza and we don’t know anything about them,” the group said in a statement on Friday night. “And there are survivors who remain under the rubble for a long time, and there is no civil defense to rescue them.”Rescue workers have been unable to operate in northern Gaza since an Israeli offensive began almost two months ago. Internet and phone service to the area has also been unreliable in recent days, leaving both rescue workers and the families of those killed and missing with few ways to obtain reliable information.The Israeli military dismissed reports of airstrikes in Beit Lahia as “false Hamas propaganda” on Saturday, but said it was continuing its “counterterrorism activity against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.”The military “operates following precise and credible intelligence against Hamas terrorists and terror targets, not against the civilians in Gaza,” the military said in a statement. “We emphasize that the area in question is an active war zone.”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-Hezbollah Cease-Fire Rests on a Wobbly Linchpin: Lebanon’s Army

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      The Lebanese Army is tasked with ensuring that Hezbollah abides by the cease-fire. It has failed at that task before.The fragile peace between Israel and Hezbollah largely hangs on 10,000 soldiers in the Lebanese Army.The last time it was tasked with enforcing a cease-fire, it plainly failed.The current cease-fire, which came into effect on Wednesday, calls for a 60-day truce between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, during which time Israeli forces gradually withdraw from Lebanon, and Hezbollah moves away from Lebanon’s border with Israel.To ensure Hezbollah’s retreat, the agreement relies heavily upon the Lebanese Army, a national military strained under competing priorities and sectarian complexities that has long proved unable — or unwilling — to rein in Hezbollah.In a new buffer zone along the border — a strip of land ranging from a few miles to 18 miles wide — the Lebanese Army is responsible for destroying all Hezbollah military infrastructure, confiscating any unauthorized weapons and blocking the transfer or production of arms. United Nations peacekeeping forces will sometimes accompany the Lebanese soldiers in a supporting role. On Wednesday, the army began deploying more soldiers to the region.But that approach has been tried before — and it did not work.The Israel-Hezbollah cease-fire that ended the 2006 Lebanon War, known as Resolution 1701, also called on the Lebanese Army to keep Hezbollah away from the border, with U.N. peacekeepers assisting. Years later, Hezbollah emerged even stronger than before, with extensive weaponry, infrastructure and tunnels across the border region.Yet despite those past failures, the international community is once again banking on the Lebanese Army. In recent months, the United States and other nations revived an effort to train, equip and fund Lebanese forces.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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      Lebanese Residents of Baalbek Return to a Bombed-Out City

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      Tens of thousands of people who had fled the city of Baalbek returned to bombed-out restaurants, flattened apartment buildings and many of the dead still buried under the rubble.Hammers clanged against brick and metal as the residents of Baalbek set to work repairing their homes, desperate to restart their lives again.A day after a cease-fire ended Lebanon’s deadliest war in decades, tens of thousands of people who fled the violence had already returned on Thursday to the hard-hit city in the country’s east.Teenage girls snapped selfies in front of the ancient Roman temples. Excited young men on motorcycles performed doughnuts in the street, their back tires spinning up dust and shards of glass.But after weeks of pounding Israeli airstrikes, the scars were not easy to ignore: bombed-out restaurants, flattened apartment buildings, trees snapped like twigs. And many of the dead were still buried under the rubble, residents said.“I’m an old woman. I’m not affiliated with anyone. What did I do to deserve this?” said Taflah Amar, 79, as she swept debris from the front of her house, one of the few still standing on her street.“I’ve been crying all day,” she said.“What did I do to deserve this?” said Taflah Ammar, 79, at her home in Baalbek.Diego Ibarra Sanchez 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