Live Updates: Israel Signals an Escalation of Military Activity in Gaza

In recent weeks, Israel has also intensified attacks against Hamas’s allies, like Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran, which supports both Hezbollah and Hamas, launched a barrage of missiles at Israel last week in retaliation for assassinations — and Israel has vowed to respond.

Israeli airstrikes hit just south of Beirut overnight, sending an orange fireball and thick black smoke into the sky. The attack came less than an hour after the Israeli military issued new evacuation warnings for parts of the area known as the Dahiya, where Hezbollah holds sway and where heavy bombardment in recent days has already forced many residents to flee.

Israel has been systematically targeting the leaders of Hezbollah and Iran’s other regional proxies. On Saturday, it said it had killed two Hamas commanders in Lebanon as it kept up its fight against the militant group in Gaza.

After midnight in Gaza on Sunday, Israeli warplanes attacked Jabaliya, in the northern part of the enclave. The Israeli military said it had surrounded an area where it had identified Hamas fighters and “efforts by Hamas to rebuild its operational capabilities.”

Hours earlier, the Israeli military said it had struck a mosque and a school-turned-shelter in the central Gaza city of Deir al Balah. It described the two locations as Hamas “command and control centers” nestled among civilians, from where the armed group planned attacks on Israel. Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, reported a number of casualties.

Here is what else to know:

• Weapons for Israel: President Emmanuel Macron of France said on Saturday that shipments of weapons to Israel that could be used in Gaza should be halted. “Lebanon cannot become another Gaza,” he added.

• Iranian commander: Members of the Iranian news media are asking: Where is Brig. Gen. Esmail Ghaani, the country’s top general and the commander in chief of its elite Quds Forces? The concerns about General Ghaani followed reports in some Israeli and Arab news media on Saturday that he was either killed or injured in one of Israel’s recent attacks on Beirut.

Euan Ward contributed reporting from Beirut.

“There was a certain degree of trauma from the results of the war,” said Carmit Valensi, an Israeli expert on Hezbollah who served in the military’s intelligence directorate.

Nearly 20 years later, Israel has mounted another assault against Hezbollah in Lebanon. This time, a string of successes — attacks that have killed Hezbollah’s leaders, crippled its communication networks and targeted its weapons caches — were a direct result of Israel’s investments in preparing for a future battle with Hezbollah after that foundering performance in 2006, Israeli security experts said.

But as Israeli forces push deeper into Lebanon by land, they will be vulnerable to greater risks, including sophisticated weapons used by Hezbollah. And if the Israeli government fails to develop a clear exit strategy, as it has struggled to do in Gaza, the military could end up fighting a protracted war that stretches its resources to the limit.

Delivering blow after blow to Hezbollah has helped restore Israel’s reputation as a powerful force in the Middle East, but it also has underscored how the country was more ready for war with Hezbollah on its northern border than it was for an incursion by Hamas, which spearheaded the Oct. 7 attacks in the south.

“Hezbollah is 10 times more powerful than Hamas,” said Yaakov Amidror, a retired major general who served as Israel’s national security adviser from 2011 to 2013. “But the I.D.F. was 20 times more prepared for Hezbollah than it was for Hamas,” he said, referring to the Israeli military.

Hezbollah was also more ready for a war with Israel than last time, having built an arsenal estimated to contain more than 100,000 rockets and missiles and trained tens of thousands of fighters. And its leaders carefully studied Israel, calculating that Hezbollah could trade back-and-forth attacks with Israel in support of Hamas without setting off an all-out war.

The current Israeli onslaught against Hezbollah showed that was a major miscalculation. Israel escalated its attacks in mid-September, commencing weeks of bombings against Hezbollah and targeting its militants by blowing up their walkie-talkies and pagers. The exploding devices killed or severely wounded both militants and civilians.

Days later, Israel killed several top Hezbollah commanders, including Ibrahim Aqeel, a leader of the Radwan force — elite fighters who Israeli officials had concluded were planning to invade northern Israel.

On Sept. 27, Israel struck an underground compound, killing Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader of Hezbollah who turned the group into a powerful political and military force. And on Thursday, Israeli officials said they tried to kill his possible successor, Hashem Safieddine, but as of Sunday, it was not clear if they had succeeded.

At the same time, a wide-scale bombing campaign by the Israeli military struck Hezbollah’s weapons infrastructure and killed its fighters, undermining the group’s ability to respond forcefully. Hundreds of people have been killed in the Israeli airstrikes, including women and children, according to Lebanon’s Public Health Ministry. Its figures do not differentiate between combatants and civilians.

At least four hospitals across southern Lebanon were out of service after Israel’s bombardment, according to Lebanon’s state-run news agency. The St. Therese Medical Center south of Beirut, the capital, also had temporarily suspended services, saying that Israeli strikes in the vicinity inflicted “huge damage.”

General Amidror said a key element of Israel’s intelligence superiority over Hezbollah was its increased deployment of drones that hover in the skies over Lebanon.

An inquiry he conducted into the performance of the military’s intelligence directorate before and during the 2006 war revealed that Israeli drones in Lebanon were being diverted to Gaza, leaving the area with a minuscule number of the unmanned aircraft, he said. The inquiry was at the behest of the Israeli military’s chief of staff, he said.

“I saw that there were very few drones flying over the north,” he said. “I asked myself: Hold on, what’s happening here?”

In the intervening 18 years, the number of drones over Lebanon has grown exponentially, he said.

Israel has said it scaled up its attacks against Hezbollah in recent weeks to facilitate the return of roughly 60,000 displaced residents of northern Israel to their homes.

Eyal Hulata, who served as Israel’s national security adviser from 2021 to 2023, said Israeli forces focused on gathering intelligence on Hezbollah leaders and their movements as well as its communications systems and secret facilities.

While Hezbollah has long been aware that Israel was conducting reconnaissance on its members, the Israeli military’s repeated strikes on the group’s leaders suggest it did not realize how deeply its ranks had been penetrated.

“We are now seeing how this information gave us an advantage,” said Mr. Hulata, who now is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a research institute based in Washington.

Israel’s intelligence operation against Hezbollah was often able to collect information from secretive meetings without Hezbollah’s knowledge, according to three Israeli security officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to communicate with the news media.

Still, celebrations in Israel of its recent successes may be premature. The Israeli forces’ ground invasion into Lebanon, only a few days old, has already exacted a price. On Wednesday, Hezbollah fighters killed nine Israeli soldiers during some of the first fights between the sides since the invasion began. Two more soldiers were killed on Friday in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, the military said.

“The ground invasion will be much more difficult,” General Amidror said. “We’re talking about an organization that is more dangerous, prepared and armed than Hamas. It’s in another league.”

Hezbollah was estimated to have 20,000 active fighters and 25,000 reservists in 2021, according to the C.I.A. Factbook. Many of its fighters also have operational experience, having fought alongside the Syrian government during that country’s civil war. Mr. Nasrallah once claimed Hezbollah had 100,000 armed members.

And while Hezbollah has lost about half of its arsenal in airstrikes, according to senior Israeli and American officials, it has access to guided anti-tank missiles, posing yet another challenge for Israeli soldiers.

Even more concerning, most of the Israeli security experts said, was that it was not clear if Israel had a clear exit strategy from Lebanon, raising fears that the Israeli military might become entangled in a war of attrition.

Those experts also said the Israeli government needed to translate the military’s tactical achievements into a political success by striving for a diplomatic agreement that returns security to the north of Israel. Without such a deal, they said it was unclear when the roughly 60,000 displaced residents will be able to return to their homes.

“At the moment, the political echelon isn’t doing enough work on how we can conclude this issue,” said Mr. Hulata, the former national security adviser. “I fear that our successes could be undone without a clear strategy to achieve a political settlement.”

Ronen Bergman contributed reporting from Tel Aviv, and Natan Odenheimer from Safed, Israel.

“Public opinion is awaiting news that our general is alive and well,” said Tabnak, an Iranian news site. Another news site, Shahreh Khabar, published a long biography of the general’s decades of service as a veteran of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

The Quds Force is the branch of the Guards that is tasked with external operations, including overseeing militant groups that Iran supports in the region, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, militia groups in Iraq and Syria as well as Hamas in Gaza. The network is regionally known as the “axis of resistance.”

The concerns about General Ghaani followed reports in some Israeli and Arab media on Saturday that he was either killed or injured in one of Israel’s recent attacks on Beirut. The Guards has yet to issue a statement confirming General Ghaani’s whereabouts.

General Ghaani, 67, was last seen publicly at the Tehran offices of Hezbollah, two days after Israel killed the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in Lebanon, according to photos posted by Iranian media. The general was notably absent on Friday when Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, led a prayer service commemorating Mr. Nasrallah.

Three Iranian officials said General Ghaani had traveled to Beirut last week to meet with senior Hezbollah officials and to help the group recover from the wave of Israeli attacks in Lebanon. The officials were not authorized to speak publicly and asked that their names not be published.

Iran launched nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday in retaliation for the killing of Mr. Nasrallah and for the assassination in Tehran of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh. Israel has vowed to retaliate.

Iranian military officials said on Saturday that all the country’s armed forces had been placed on the highest alert, anticipating Israeli strikes. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, in Damascus on Saturday, warned in a post on X that Iran’s response to any Israeli attack would be “stronger, and they can put our determination to that test.”

A member of the Guards stationed in Beirut who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive information said that the silence from senior Iranian officials about General Ghaani was creating panic among rank-and-file members.

General Ghaani is known for his stern and cold demeanor. He has been assiduous in following through on the projects started by his predecessor Gen. Qassem Suleimani, integrating Iranian-backed armed groups in different countries so that they operate cohesively and are self-sufficient in manufacturing weapons, such as missiles and drones, with the training and help of Iran.

The United States assassinated General Suleimani in 2020 in Iraq.

Iranian media has called on officials to confirm the general’s whereabouts. “If General Ghaani is alive and well, the best way to clarify and assure us that he is well is to publish a short video of him,” said Tabnak.

Alissa J. Rubin contributed reporting from Beirut.

“I think we are not being heard,” he said of calls for a cease-fire, adding “and I consider it a mistake, also for Israel’s security.”

Later on Saturday, at a summit of French-speaking countries, Mr. Macron announced that 88 Francophone countries voted unanimously to call for a cease-fire in Lebanon as part of a commitment to de-escalate tensions in the region. The United States, Egypt, Qatar and other countries have spent months trying to cobble together a cease-fire in Gaza, but they haven’t been able to get Hamas and Israel to agree.

A U.S. and French-led effort to establish a temporary cease-fire in Lebanon stalled as well.

In a statement late Saturday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel dismissed France’s call to stop selling Israel weapons for the war in Gaza.

“Shame on them,” he said, pointing to both France and other Western nations who have called for arms embargoes against Israel. He added, “Let me tell you this, Israel will win with or without their support.”

In response to Mr. Netanyahu’s statement, the French presidency issued a statement late Saturday reiterating France’s support for Israel.

“An immediate cease-fire is necessary in both Gaza and Lebanon to halt the escalation of violence, free the hostages, protect the population and find the political solutions necessary for the security of Israel and everyone else in the Middle East,” the statement read, adding, “France is Israel’s unwavering friend. Mr. Netanyahu’s words are excessive and unrelated to the friendship between France and Israel.”

Israel launched a ground operation earlier this week into Lebanon that targeted Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed group. Hezbollah began firing on northern Israel on Oct. 8 in solidarity with its ally Hamas in Gaza. After a year of tit-for-tat rocket fire exchanges, the fighting has expanded far beyond the Israeli-Lebanese border as Israel targets Hezbollah’s military infrastructure and many of its top commanders. Hezbollah fired an estimated 130 rockets into Israel on Saturday, the Israeli military said.

Israel has come under increasing international pressure to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza and Lebanon. The United States in May suspended the export of U.S.-made 2,000-pound bombs to Israel to prevent the U.S.-made weapons from being used in a long-threatened assault on the city of Rafah. Officials said they were not needed by the Israelis and their use could lead to wide civilian casualties.

Those concerns have continued as Israel has ramped up attacks on Lebanon, where hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced.

At the International Francophone Organization summit in Paris, Mr. Macron said that France will host an international conference later this month to provide humanitarian aid for Lebanon.

The New York Times was able to gain access to an area close to the border on the Israeli side from which it was possible to see into Lebanon and get a glimpse of the extent of Israel’s operation aimed at crippling Hezbollah, the Lebanese armed group that has been firing rockets across the border.

Israeli defense officials have described the incursion, which began earlier this week, as “limited” — saying that the goal was not to hold territory but to neutralize Hezbollah by destroying its frontline positions, and to allow tens of thousands of Israelis displaced by the threat of rocket fire to return to their homes.

But since then, Israel has called up more reservists, issued new evacuation warnings across the south of Lebanon and intensified strikes against Hezbollah and its allies.

Peering into Lebanon from the Israeli side of the border, shattered window frames and broken furniture were visible in damaged homes. Roads showed cracks from blasts, and dark smoke rose from a village.

On Israel’s side of the border this weekend, signs of the ground invasion were unmistakable driving north on Highway 90, which stretches all the way to Metula, a town along the border with Lebanon. Rest stops were filled with soldiers: reservists on their way to report for duty, or others taking a break after spending several days stationed in groves near the border that now contain charred patches from Hezbollah rocket strikes.

Approaching the border with Lebanon, the roads become almost completely deserted. Military police soldiers manning roadblocks stop every car, essentially closing off large sections as military zones.

The huge movement of military vehicles, the sirens warning of incoming fire and the empty streets of Kiryat Shmona, Israel’s northernmost city, create an eerie and tense atmosphere. Near the border, tanks roll forward, and army Humvees and trucks bump along a winding dirt road toward the Lebanese towns on the other side.