Weekly Israel-Hamas war megathread - week of September 23

Hundreds dead as Israel vows to continue ‘striking hard’ (Washington Post)

On Tuesday afternoon, the Israel Defense Forces issued a fresh warning to residents of Lebanese villages living near or inside buildings used by Hezbollah for military purposes to immediately move at least one kilometer (around 1,000 yards) away.

Large numbers of civilians moved to find safety on the eastern side of Beirut, while others arrived in the country’s north, where local officials opened schools and other locations to accommodate the newly displaced. Some 28,000 have been displaced in the recent strikes, to nearly 300 shelters, according to Lebanon’s Disaster Risk Management agency.

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According to state media, many of the families displaced from southern Lebanon and the eastern Bekaa Valley, where Hezbollah also has a major presence, reached Lebanon’s northernmost province Tuesday. Local media reported that large numbers of them are trying to cross Lebanon’s border into Syria, where Bashar al-Assad’s Iranian-backed regime is allied with Hezbollah.

Israel Launches Strikes on Yemeni Houthi Targets

(Reuters) - Israel launched strikes at Houthi targets in Yemen on Sunday after the Houthi militants fired missiles at Israel over the past two days, marking a fresh exchange in another front of the regional conflict.

The Israeli military said in a statement that dozens of aircraft, including fighter jets, attacked power plants and a sea port at the Ras Issa and Hodeidah ports.

The strikes caused power outages in most parts of the port city of Hodeidah, residents said.

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Yemen's Houthi militants have fired missiles and drones at Israel repeatedly in what they say is solidarity with Palestinians, since the Gaza war began with a Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7.

In their latest attack, the Houthis said they had launched a ballistic missile on Saturday towards the Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv, which Israel said it intercepted. Israel also intercepted another Houthi missile on Friday.

What Israel’s Assassination of Hezbollah’s Leader Means for the Middle East (New Yorker)

The Israeli operation made a mockery of U.S. diplomacy. Just two days earlier, the Biden Administration—alongside allies in the Middle East, Europe, and Asia—had announced a plan for a twenty-one-day ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel. In a late-night briefing on Wednesday, a senior U.S. official claimed that they had worked “tirelessly” with Israel and Lebanon on the terms. (The Lebanese government has often acted as an interlocutor with Hezbollah, which holds cabinet posts and parliamentary seats in Lebanon but is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States.) Just hours before the Israeli strike, John Kirby, the strategic coördinator for the National Security Council, confirmed that the U.S. believed it had buy-in from Israel. Netanyahu stiffed U.S. diplomats—again. In May, President Biden rolled out a three-phase ceasefire plan for Gaza that his Administration said was based on Israeli demands and was supported by Netanyahu. It has gone nowhere in four months.

The Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, claimed that the U.S. did not know about the attack on Nasrallah until after it started. (Iran’s Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, told the U.N. Security Council on Friday that Washington was complicit because Israel had used five-thousand-pound bombs, known as “bunker busters,” acquired from the U.S.)

It's looking like we'll have to add a third name to the title of this weekly given this weekend's events.