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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 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

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      Fear Overshadows Oct. 7 Memorial Preparations in Israel

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      People in Israel were bracing on Sunday to mark the first anniversary of the deadly Hamas-led assault on southern Israel, entering a heavily charged week that promises to be filled with mourning as well as fighting.The Oct. 7 attack prompted Israel’s devastating counteroffensive against Hamas in Gaza, and in the year since the conflict has spread to additional fronts and drawn in allies of the Iranian-backed militant group. With the security situation precarious, rapidly changing restrictions on public gatherings in Israel have added a pall of uncertainty to the anguish around planned memorials for victims of the assault that threw the Middle East into turmoil.Israel is simultaneously engaged in ground and air offensives against Hezbollah in Lebanon and, once again, Hamas in northern Gaza, five months after its troops left the area. It also is considering a retaliatory strike against Iran, which backs both groups, after Tehran launched about 180 missiles at Israel last week — escalations that threaten to spiral into war between the two powers and engulf the region.The intensifying fighting and rising tensions have already resulted in the scaling back of a major event planned for Monday, a memorial gathering in a Tel Aviv park organized by families of Oct. 7 victims and of hostages who remain in Gaza. When online registration for the event opened last month, the 40,000 available slots were snapped up within hours.But with Israel’s Home Front Command restricting outdoor gatherings to 2,000 people in the center of the country, the organizers announced that the event would take place without a mass audience and instead would be live streamed, with only invited members of the bereaved families and hostage families physically present.And after the Israeli military said it had intercepted two surface-to-surface missiles fired from Lebanon on Sunday morning, some Israelis were questioning the wisdom of allowing any sizable public gatherings. The missiles set off sirens in Israeli towns up to 50 miles south of the Lebanese border and showed that Hezbollah could still pose a significant threat despite Israel’s recent blows to its leadership and arsenal.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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      On Social Media, Gazans Share Advice for Those Under Fire in Lebanon

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      Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon has forced thousands of people there to grapple with some urgent questions: What should I pack before I evacuate? What should stay behind? And where can I go that might be safe?Gazans have some hard-won answers, and some are sharing them on social media.One of them is Hala Bassam Al-Akhsam, better known as Chef Hala, a Gazan TV and social media personality with 20,000 followers on TikTok. Ms. Al-Akhsam has evacuated from her home in Gaza City three times since Israel invaded Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack last Oct. 7, so she has plenty of experience.In a recent post, she advised Lebanese evacuees to start with a lightweight pouch for valuables and important documents — gold, cash, diplomas and birth certificates. Make one member of the family responsible for holding onto it at all times. Everyone should have their own small bag of clothes, books, hygiene products and a reusable water bottle. And make sure everyone has a coat, she says, because “winter is coming.”Once a prolific poster of cooking hacks and recipes, Ms. Al-Akhsam now uploads scenes of the war’s devastation alongside practical advice for staying safe and sane amid chaos. “Have a predetermined safe location in mind,” she said. “A house or an area to move to, without losing time deciding.”Israeli airstrikes, raids and evacuation warnings have sent hundreds of thousands of Lebanese fleeing their homes, with no certainty of when they would be able to return or what might remain when they do. For the uprooted and those who soon might be, Ms. Al-Akhsam’s displacement tutorials have become a source of solace and solidarity.Lebanese viewers have reached out with thanks on public forums, and private requests for more specific advice. In one recent video, she obliged with a packing list of essential medicines. “I have faced starvation, famine, and extreme pollution,” Ms. Al-Akhsam explained in an interview. “My struggle throughout this war has inspired me to share with the people of Lebanon what to expect.”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 Steps Up Attacks in Lebanon as Fighting Spreads

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      With the region on edge about a possible Israeli retaliatory strike on Iran, U.S. Central Command hit targets in Yemen, and Israel ordered evacuations in Gaza.As Israel escalated its fight against Hezbollah in Lebanon on Saturday, much of the Middle East was on edge, with many expecting an Israeli retaliatory strike on Iran as payback for its missile barrage on Israel earlier this week.Fighting expanded across the region, with the United States Central Command striking Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen and Israeli forces warning residents in two areas in the central Gaza Strip to evacuate, presumably in preparation for stepped up military action there.In Lebanon, a huge strike earlier in the week reportedly targeted Hashem Safieddine, the presumed successor to Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader who was recently assassinated by Israel. It was not clear whether Mr. Safieddine had been killed.Israeli strikes appeared to hit the Dahiya, an area south of Beirut, where Hezbollah holds sway and where the Israeli military late on Friday again issued evacuation warnings for civilians. At least four hospitals across southern Lebanon are now out of service as a result of Israel’s bombardment, according to Lebanon’s state-run news agency. The Saint Therese Medical Center near the Dahiya has also suspended services, saying that Israeli strikes inflicted “huge damage.”Hezbollah on Saturday fired more rockets into northern Israel, though most seem to have been intercepted by Israel’s air-defense system.Concern has been building over whether the broadening war would further draw in Iran, which supports both Hamas and Hezbollah. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on Friday that Iran could carry out additional attacks on Israel “if necessary.”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