Israel and Hezbollah step back from the brink of wider war — for now

For nearly a month, people in Lebanon and Israel braced for a wider war. A deadly rocket strike from Lebanon last month on the town of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights was followed by an Israeli retaliatory strike that killed Hezbollah’s top commander in southern Beirut.

For nearly a month, people in Lebanon and Israel braced for a wider war. A deadly rocket strike from Lebanon last month on the town of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights was followed by an Israeli retaliatory strike that killed Hezbollah’s top commander, Fu’ad Shukr, in southern Beirut. The powerful Iran-backed group vowed to respond. The threat triggered a slew of flight cancelations on both sides of the border, a chorus of governments imploring their citizens to leave Lebanon and Israel, and a breathless diplomatic effort to avert an escalation that Western governments feared would spark a regional conflict. On Sunday morning, Hezbollah said it had delivered its anticipated response by launching hundreds of drones and Katyusha rockets, Soviet-era short-range projectiles. The swarm of airborne weapons, it said, sought to overwhelm Israel’s vaunted air defense systems and pave a path for its targets: 11 Israeli military sites in northern Israel and the occupied Golan Heights. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said all of Hezbollah’s drones were intercepted. Israeli officials said the military pre-emptively struck Hezbollah targets in the early hours of Sunday to prevent a much wider attack, adding that it hit many rocket launchers in Lebanon. Hezbollah dismissed this. “What happened was aggression, not preemptive action,” Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said in a speech on Sunday night, referring to the Israeli strikes that began around half an hour before Hezbollah’s attack.