Israel-Hezbollah battle newest: Netanyahu vows strikes in Lebanon ‘not the end’

Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah traded heavy fire early Sunday but backed off from sparking a widely feared all-out war, as both sides signaled their most intense exchange in months was over.

The cross-border attacks came as high-level talks resumed in Egypt aimed at a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza that also would ease regional tensions.

The Hamas and Israeli delegations later left Cairo, and an Israeli official speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss behind-the-scenes diplomacy said the talks were expected to continue.Hezbollah claimed to hit an Israeli military intelligence site near Tel Aviv as part of a barrage of hundreds of rockets and drones, and Israel claimed its dozens of strikes had been preemptive to avert a larger attack. Neither offered evidence.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said the attack, a response to Israel’s killing of a top militant commander in Beirut last month, had been delayed to give the Gaza cease-fire talks a chance, and so fellow Iran-backed groups could discuss with Iran whether to attack Israel all at once. Israeli and U.S. military deployment also played a role.

“We will now reserve the right to respond at a later time” if the results of Sunday’s attack aren’t sufficient, Nasrallah said, adding that allied Houthi rebels in Yemen – and Iran itself – had yet to respond. But he told the Lebanese people: “At this current stage, the country can take a breath and relax.”

Hamas said that it rejects new Israeli conditions put forward in Gaza ceasefire talks, casting further doubt on the chances of a breakthrough in the latest U.S.-backed effort to end the 10-month-old war.

Months of on-off talks have failed to produce an agreement to end Israel’s devastating military campaign in Gaza or free the remaining hostages seized by Hamas in the militant group’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel that triggered the war.

Key sticking points in ongoing talks mediated by the United States, Egypt and Qatar include an Israeli presence in the so-called Philadelphi Corridor, a narrow 14.5 km-long (nine-mile) stretch of land along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt.

Hamas said Israel has backtracked on a commitment to withdraw troops from the Corridor and put forward other new conditions, including the screening of displaced Palestinians as they return to the enclave’s more heavily populated north when the ceasefire begins.

“We will not accept discussions about retractions from what we agreed to on July 2 or new conditions,” Hamas official Osama Hamdan told the group’s Al-Aqsa TV on Sunday.

Israel’s military on Sunday said polio vaccines for more than 1 million people had been delivered to Gaza, after the first confirmed case of the disease in the territory in a quarter-century. It was not immediately clear how, or how quickly, the more than 25,000 vials of vaccine would be distributed in Gaza, where ongoing fighting and unrest have challenged humanitarian efforts during more than 10 months of war. Other polio cases are suspected across the largely devastated territory after the virus was detected in wastewater in six different locations in July. Aid groups plan to vaccinate more than 600,000 children under age 10 and have called for an urgent pause in the war to increase vaccinations. The World Health Organization and the United Nations children’s agency have said that, at a minimum, a seven-day pause is needed.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is “deeply concerned” by the escalation between Israel and Hezbollah and calls for both parties to immediately return to a cessation of hostilities, his spokesperson said on Sunday.

“These actions put both the Lebanese and Israeli populations at risk, as well as threatening regional security and stability,” UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has said that his group would assess the impact of its rocket and drone attack on Israeli military targets earlier in the day before determining whether it would carry out further attacks to avenge a slain commander.

The leader of the Lebanese armed group said in a televised address that it had been able to carry out its attack “as planned,” denying statements by the Israeli military that its pre-emptive strikes had stopped a wider attack by the group.

Nasrallah, speaking about 12 hours after the most intense exchange of fire between Iran-backed Hezbollah and Israel since hostilities broke out in parallel with the war in Gaza, said the group had intentionally refrained from targeting civilians or public infrastructure, including Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv.

He said the group’s main target was a military intelligence base about 110 km (70 miles) inside Israeli territory – the deepest attack yet and just 1.5 km north of Tel Aviv.

Nasrallah said the group would assess the results of the operation, a retaliation for Israel‘s killing of top Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukron the edges of Beirut last month.

“If the result is not enough, then we retain the right to respond another time,” Nasrallah said.

Nasrallah said Hezbollah had not planned a larger attack, specifically denying Israeli military statements that the group had intended to fire thousands of projectiles.

But he acknowledged that the operation had been delayed for several reasons, including what he called a “mobilization” of Israeli and American military assets in the region.

One Israel navy soldier was killed and two wounded during combat in northern Israel on Sunday, the Israeli military said.

It gave no details of the circumstances of the soldier’s death but Israeli media reported it occurred on a naval vessel offshore as an interceptor from Israel‘s Iron Dome aerial defence system engaged a drone fired by Hezbollah.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has claimed that Hezbollah did not use precision missiles in their strikes this morning but that they could use them in the near future.

In a lengthy speech, he added that Hezbollah had targeted an Israeli military intelligence base just outside of Tel Aviv and had ruled out targeting civilian infrastructure.

Jordan has warned that heightened escalation between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah could lead to a “regional war” that would threaten stability.

Foreign ministry spokesperson Sufain Qudah said that Israel‘s relentless “aggression” in Gaza and the failure to reach a ceasefire was exposing the region to the dangers of an expansion of the conflict, Jordanian state media reported.

Israel and the Lebanon-based group Hezbollah exchanged messages via intermediaries on Sunday in order to prevent further escalation following one of the biggest exchanges of fire between the two foes in 10 months, two diplomats told Reuters.

The main message was that both sides considered that Sunday’s intense exchange of bombardment was “done” and that neither side wanted a full-scale war, one diplomat said. The diplomats spoke on condition they were not identified.