Israel faces threats from militants in Lebanon, Yemen as it prepares for Gaza ground offensive

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As Israel intensifies its final preparations to launch a land invasion of the Gaza Strip, it now faces growing threats from Iranian-backed militants in Lebanon and Yemen, adding new challenges to its war against the Islamist militant group Hamas.

Pentagon officials said a U.S. Navy warship in the Red Sea shot down three missiles and several drones that were heading from Yemen toward Israel on Thursday. The missiles and drones, downed by the guided missile destroyer USS Carney, had been launched by Iranian-backed Houthi forces in Yemen, the Pentagon said.

In a separate assault, Hamas said it fired 30 rockets across the border from Lebanon into northern Israel on Thursday. It was an unusually heavy barrage, coming after days of skirmishes that have killed and injured people on both sides of the border, including soldiers, militants, civilians and journalists.

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The attack has escalated fears that Iranian-backed Hezbollah and Hamas in Lebanon will open a second front against Israel as it prepares to send troops against Hamas in Gaza. The United States has dispatched naval ships into the Mediterranean near Israel and Lebanon in an attempt to deter the militant groups from expanding their attacks on Israel from the north.

In a rare address from the Oval Office, U.S. President Joe Biden said he would ask Congress on Friday for an “unprecedented” package of military aid to Israel as part of a large national security funding request that would also include more weapons for Ukraine.

“In Israel, we must make sure that they have what they need to protect their people, today and always,” Mr. Biden said.

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Despite the latest attacks from Yemen and Lebanon, Washington is doing its best to keep the Israel-Hamas war limited to a single front. “Our focus is on deterring a broader regional conflict and, right now, this conflict is contained between Israel and Hamas,” said Pentagon spokesman Brigadier-General Pat Ryder at a media briefing on Thursday when asked whether Iran was behind the Yemen attack.

The attacks from Yemen and Lebanon could be a significant distraction for Israel as it ramps up its preparations for its Gaza land operation. The land offensive is crucial to its plans to crush Hamas, which has long been committed to the destruction of Israel.

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Hamas controls Gaza and used the territory as a launching pad for its Oct. 7 attacks on southern Israel, which killed about 1,400 people, according to the government’s latest count.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant travelled to the border of Gaza on Thursday to address infantry troops who are gathered there. “You see Gaza now from a distance, you will soon see it from inside,” he told the troops, according to a statement from his office.

Another military commander, Major-General Yaron Finkelman of the Southern Command, told Israeli troops that the fight inside Gaza will be “difficult, long and intense.”

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Israel has been trying to signal to its enemies that it has enough forces to defend all corners of the country, even if it now seems focused on Gaza. In northern Israel, it responded to the latest missile barrage by attacking the launch sites in Lebanon.

Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari placed blame on Hezbollah, which he said had granted permission for the Hamas missile attack. Hezbollah also fired anti-tank missiles at Israel, with Israel reporting three wounded.

United Nations peacekeepers recorded one death in southern Lebanon, after being called in to extract seven people trapped along the border during what the UN force called a “significant exchange of fire.”

Israel has now evacuated more than 10,000 people from areas near Lebanon, clearing communities within five kilometres of the border. As the border clashes heat up, Canada and the United States have advised their citizens to leave Lebanon while commercial flights remain available. Ottawa said Canadians should avoid all travel to the country.

Mr. Biden, who has already sent shipments of missiles and munitions to Israel, did not specify what his additional military request from Congress would entail. But he worked to rally Americans behind it by arguing that defending U.S. allies is a security imperative for his own country.

“History has taught us that when terrorists don’t pay a price for their terror, when dictators don’t pay a price for their aggression, they cause more chaos and death and more destruction,” he said.

In a warning to House Republicans, who have paralyzed Congress with internal caucus infighting, Mr. Biden called for an end to “petty, partisan, angry politics” to get his military aid requests passed. “Time is of the essence,” he said.

Israel’s battle with Hamas is increasingly sparking tensions across the entire region, from the Palestinian territories to neighbouring countries such as Egypt and Jordan.

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Violence continued to spread across the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Thursday, ahead of a “day of global solidarity” that Hamas has called for Friday, with major pro-Gaza protests expected in East Jerusalem and Ramallah, as well as Cairo, Amman and other Arab capitals.

Twelve Palestinians were killed and 25 more were injured on Thursday in clashes with Israeli troops in the West Bank city of Tulkarem, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society reported. The Israeli military said the Palestinians “were considered a threat to IDF forces in the area,” adding that unmanned aerial vehicles had been used in the battle. Ten Israeli soldiers were injured.

Earlier on Thursday, Israeli forces staged a series of raids around the West Bank, arresting more than 80 Palestinians, including 63 suspected members of Hamas.

Among those detained was Sheik Hassan Yousef, the organization’s political leader in the West Bank. Sheik Yousef was arrested just hours after giving an interview to The Globe and Mail in which he said Hamas might be willing to free the women, children and foreigners it was holding hostage in Gaza in exchange for a 24-hour ceasefire to allow humanitarian aid to enter the strip.

Diana Buttu, a Palestinian-Canadian lawyer and former adviser to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, said the entire Palestinian Authority in the West Bank was at risk as the violence spiralled further out of control, with the PA effectively a bystander as Israel and Hamas have traded blows. The PA was created amid the peace processes of the 1990s to provide Palestinians with limited self-government.

Analysts are warning that Israel’s land operation in Gaza could be much more complex than the government realizes, and could even trigger a broader regional conflict, with U.S. forces potentially being targeted by Hamas supporters across the Middle East.

The attempt to smash Hamas and its military capacities “is likely to be a drawn-out bloody affair,” said the International Crisis Group, an independent think tank, in a report this week.

“It will mean confronting Hamas on its home turf, a battle for which the movement has long been preparing,” it said. “Neither the Gaza crisis nor the Israeli-Palestinian conflict writ large has a military solution.”

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Meanwhile, the Israeli siege of Gaza continued on Thursday, with almost all supplies of food, water, fuel and medicine still blocked from entering the territory. Israel continued to fire missiles at Gaza, and the death toll from the missile strikes has now climbed to almost 3,800, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

Israel, under U.S. pressure, has promised to allow the reopening of the border between Egypt and Gaza to let emergency relief supplies into the Palestinian territory, with several conditions attached. The border remained closed on Thursday, but repairs to the entry road were under way and officials were hoping to open the gate on Friday.

“For nearly two weeks, the people of Gaza have gone without any shipments of fuel, food, water, medicine and other essentials,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Thursday during a visit to Egypt to meet senior officials there.

“Disease is spreading,” he said. “Supplies are dwindling. People are dying.”

Egypt’s gate to Gaza, known as the Rafah crossing, and its nearby airport, where relief supplies are flown, have become the “only hope” for the people of Gaza, he said.

But when the gate is finally open, only 20 trucks with emergency supplies are expected to cross into Gaza on the first day, according to U.S. officials, even though more than 100 trucks are currently awaiting entry. Before the war, about 100 trucks per day would bring humanitarian aid into Gaza.

The UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, says its schools and other buildings in Gaza are now accommodating more than 513,000 people who were forced to flee their homes because of the Israeli missile attacks. These shelters are overcrowded and have very limited supplies of food and water, the agency said this week.

The UN estimates that the average person in Gaza is getting only three litres of water per day, for all uses, including cooking and hygiene. This compares with the basic UN minimum standard of 50 to 100 litres per person per day.