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Government and military leaders are visiting troops at bases around Israel this week, vowing military readiness, as search-and-rescue units are deployed to Haifa, Eilat and other Israeli cities.
As fears of escalation rise around the region, Israelis are readying for attacks on multiple fronts, with the expectation that Iran and its proxies will retaliate after the assassinations last week of a Hezbollah commander, Fuad Shukr, and Hamas’s political chief, Ismail Haniyeh.
Israel has acknowledged killing Mr. Shukr in the southern suburbs of Beirut, but not Mr. Haniyeh, who was killed in Tehran, though it has been widely held responsible for that assassination. The leaders of Iran and Hezbollah, a powerful Iran-backed Lebanese militia, have vowed to respond.
On Wednesday, Herzi Halevi, the military’s chief of staff, expressed readiness, telling soldiers after an assessment of the Tel-Nof Air Force Base, near Rehovoth: “I see peak readiness, both in offense and in defense.”
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“We will know how to carry out a very rapid offensive anywhere in Lebanon, anywhere in Gaza, anywhere in the Middle East, above ground and below ground,” he added.
The same day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited troops at a base near Tel Aviv, welcoming new recruits, according to a video posted on social media. Addressing Israeli citizens broadly, he urged them to remain calm, cool and vigilant. He has said that Israel would “exact a heavy price for any act of aggression.”
Haifa, Tel Aviv and other major cities were seeing an influx of search-and-rescue battalions, sent by the Israeli Home Front Command this week in preparation for any strikes on civilian centers. Residents have been told to stock up on food and water and limit their activities. In northern Israel, near Lebanon, outdoor gatherings are restricted to 30 people, and beaches are closed.
World leaders have been urgently exchanging phone calls in an attempt to stave off an escalation. On Wednesday, France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, spoke to his newly elected Iranian counterpart, Masoud Pezeshkian, to urge restraint, a message the French leader was sending to everyone in the region, according to a statement from Mr. Macron’s office.
President Biden spoke with his Egyptian counterpart, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani, on Tuesday and with King Abdullah II of Jordan on Monday to convey a similar message.
The possibility of an escalation has rattled nerves around the region. In Lebanon, the government is stocking up on emergency supplies and preparing for worst-case scenarios. Iranians are watching and waiting.
Iran’s government has not issued directives about what citizens should do in the event of Israeli counterstrikes, leaving some Iranians anxious and confused. Iran issued a notice on Wednesday to civilian aviation agencies worldwide warning of military drills for several hours on Wednesday night and into Thursday over parts of the country. The announcement stoked fears of a possibly imminent strike, but the night passed with relative quiet.
Farnaz Fassihi contributed reporting.
Key Developments
The European Union has condemned Bezalel Smotrich, the far-right Israeli finance minister, for reportedly saying that it “might be justified” to starve two million civilians in Gaza until hostages held there are returned. Mr. Smotrich has a strong influence over policy as the leader of a party that helps keep Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government in power. “Deliberate starvation of civilians is a war crime: Minister Smotrich advocating for it is beyond ignominious,” the E.U.’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell Fontelles, said in a post on social media on Thursday in reaction to his comments.
Israel plans to effectively close Norway’s diplomatic mission to the Palestinians in retaliation for Norwegian policies. In late May, Norway, along with Spain and Ireland, officially recognized a Palestinian state, prompting Israeli anger. The Israeli foreign ministry said on Thursday that it would revoke the diplomatic status of the Norwegian mission’s employees in one week. Many European countries, including Norway, maintain both an embassy to Israel in Tel Aviv and a separate envoy based in Jerusalem or Ramallah whose job is to liaise with Palestinian officials.
A Palestinian warehouse worker for World Central Kitchen was killed in central Gaza, the aid organization said on social media on Wednesday, calling him a “humanitarian at his very core.” The organization said it believed that the worker, Nadi Sallout, was off duty at the time, though it said the details of his death were still unclear. In April, seven aid workers with World Central Kitchen were killed in the Gaza Strip when their convoy came under fire. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel acknowledged at the time that it was a “tragic case of our forces unintentionally hitting innocent people.”
The Israeli military ordered Palestinians on Wednesday to leave several neighborhoods in northern Gaza and move south into Gaza City, warning shortly after midnight on Wednesday morning that it was preparing to take “immediate” and “forceful” action against Hamas and other militants who it said fired rockets toward Israel. The new evacuation orders were issued for areas near Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia, which have been decimated by repeated Israeli bombardment. Later on Wednesday, the Israeli military urged displaced Palestinians to move even further south into central Gaza, including into Deir al Balah.
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The White House called on the new political leader of Hamas on Wednesday to accept the cease-fire agreement with Israel that remained on the table and expressed continued optimism that a deal could be had quickly if both sides simply agreed.
John F. Kirby, a national security spokesman for the White House, said that Yahya Sinwar — the leader of Hamas in Gaza who took over as head of the group’s political wing following the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Iran last week — was a killer.
“The man is a terrorist,” Mr. Kirby told reporters. “He has an awful lot of blood on his hands. This guy was the architect of the 7th of October attacks in Israel. And some of that blood on his hands is American blood.”
But Mr. Kirby added that Mr. Sinwar had “always been the chief decision maker when it comes to negotiations” for a cease-fire. So in that sense, “nothing really changes,” he added.
“And as the chief decision maker, he needs to decide now to take this deal, to get a cease-fire in place, to get some of those hostages home and to get us all an opportunity to get more humanitarian assistance in,” Mr. Kirby said. “He needs to accept the deal.”
Mr. Kirby repeated the White House position that the cease-fire talks were “as close as we’ve ever been” to a deal with only select gaps remaining that were “narrow enough that they can be closed.”
He also put the onus on Israel to accept the deal.
“There is a good proposal before both sides, and they need to both accept that proposal so we can get this in place,” Mr. Kirby said.
He said that the United States was still “working really, really hard, with intense diplomacy” to avoid an escalation following the assassinations of Mr. Haniyeh in Tehran and a Hezbollah commander in Lebanon. “We certainly don’t want to see any sort of all-out regional war,” he said. “And there’s not a whole lot of indications that other parties here want to see the same thing.”
— Peter Baker Reporting from Washington
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Palestinians in Gaza were apprehensive about Hamas’s decision on Tuesday to name Yahya Sinwar, one of the architects of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, to lead its political wing, fearing that a cease-fire deal — and an end to their suffering — would be even further away.
Ordinary Gazans have borne the brunt of 10 months of Israeli bombardment and ground fighting that have killed more than 39,000 Palestinians, according to health officials, and left hundreds of thousands of others struggling to find food, water and shelter. For that, many Gazans blame Mr. Sinwar, the influential leader of Hamas in Gaza.
His appointment to replace Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed last week in an assassination in Iran widely believed to have been carried out by Israel, cements his influence over the armed group and shows that Hamas remains unwavering in its hard-line position.
“I thought that after they killed Haniyeh, they had already achieved their goal and that we were closer to the end of the war,” said Nisreen Sabouh, a 37-year-old displaced mother of four.
“But now, with Sinwar taking over, I don’t believe this will bring the negotiations to a better place,” she said, adding that Mr. Sinwar, who remains the head of Hamas in Gaza, “is tough and everyone knows that.”
The situation in Gaza has continued to worsen as Israeli troops have in recent weeks been returning to parts of Gaza where they said Hamas had regrouped. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, too, has expressed little appetite for compromise, insisting last month on further concessions from Hamas in negotiations.
The Israeli army ordered the evacuation of parts of the northern town of Beit Hanoun on Wednesday, the latest in a series of recent directives that have forced tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians to relocate yet again amid ongoing airstrikes and shelling.
Against that backdrop, the change in the leadership of the group that had governed them — often oppressively — was one of the many things some people said they no longer had the luxury to worry about.
“I don’t care who Hamas chooses to lead the movement inside or outside,” said Safaa Oda, a 39-year-old cartoonist from the southern city of Rafah who was displaced to a tent in Khan Younis.
“What we need is a cease-fire,” she said, adding that she believes that Sinwar’s appointment will make the situation in Gaza “worse than ever before.”
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Mr. Sinwar, who is believed to be hiding out in tunnels deep beneath Gaza, has been widely seen as trying to keep Hamas’s focus more on military power than on running a civilian government. Hamas leaders have said they want to ignite a permanent state of war with Israel on all fronts as a way to revive the Palestinian cause.
Husam al-Khateeb, a 45-year-old technician at a local radio station from Deir al Balah, in central Gaza, described Mr. Sinwar as “the most obstinate man I have ever seen.”
Mr. Sinwar was “willing to do anything for the sake of the movement’s survival,” he said. A solution to the conflict and an end to the war would not come from Mr. Sinwar or from inside Gaza, he said, but from Iran and its proxies and the United States.
Ibtihal Shurrab, 29, from Khan Younis, noted the widespread thinking that Mr. Haniyeh was more of a figurehead, while Mr. Sinwar “has the first and last word in everything.”
“It is a scary situation that we live in,” she said. “I hope Sinwar can be the one to end the war, the way he was the one who started it.”
Abu Bakr Bashir contributed reporting from London.
— Bilal Shbair and Hiba Yazbek reporting from Gaza and Jerusalem
