TEL AVIV, Israel — The Lebanese militia Hezbollah on Wednesday fired a missile deep into Israel, targeting Tel Aviv for the first time, as the Israeli military called up two brigades of reserve soldiers and sent them north toward the border with Lebanon.

The mobilization came as the military’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, suggested that Israel was preparing for the possibility of a ground invasion in Lebanon as part of its stepped-up campaign to stop Hezbollah from firing missiles and drones at Israel.

“You hear the jets overhead — we have been striking all day,” Halevi told soldiers who were conducting military exercises along the Israeli-Lebanese border. “This is both to prepare the ground for your possible entry and to continue degrading Hezbollah.”

Praising the soldiers as more experienced and skilled than Hezbollah’s fighters, he said: “You go in, destroy the enemy there and decisively destroy their infrastructure.”

It was not clear whether Halevi was trying to unnerve Hezbollah or hinting at an actual battle plan being weighed by Israeli leaders.

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Israel Air Defenses Engaged

Israel’s air defenses shot down the missile Hezbollah had aimed at Tel Aviv before it could cause any injuries.

With no end in sight to Israel’s clashes with Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon, world leaders gathered in New York for the United Nations General Assembly have been calling for the fighting to stop.

The United States and France are working on a proposal for a temporary 21-day cease-fire, a pause that they hope will allow for further negotiations, France’s foreign minister said Wednesday.

The proposal, which the two countries hope would avert a wider war and also bolster stalled negotiations between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, comes amid intense discussions between the U.S. administration and other diplomats on the sidelines of the General Assembly.

The French foreign minister and U.S. officials said neither Israel nor Hezbollah had yet signed onto a proposal to end the fighting. The U.S. administration has also been trying for months to broker a cease-fire in Gaza.

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Many leaders at the U.N. this week have roundly denounced Israel’s military campaigns, pointing to the tens of thousands killed in Gaza and hundreds killed in Lebanon.

In an address to the Security Council, Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, called for an immediate end to the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, saying diplomacy was the only path.

“The region is on the brink,” Starmer said. “We need an immediate cease-fire between Israel and the Lebanese Hezbollah, and the implementation of a political plan which allows Israeli and Lebanese civilians to return to their homes and live in peace and security.”

Biden Notes Optimism

President Joe Biden, speaking on ABC’s “The View” Wednesday, sounded a note of optimism about the Middle East but conceded that “an all-out war is possible.”

“We’re still in play to have a settlement that can fundamentally change the whole region,” Biden said, adding that the “Arab world very much wants to have a settlement.”

The intensification of Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah began last week with a clandestine operation that blew up hundreds of the group’s pagers and walkie-talkies. Since then, Israel has targeted top Hezbollah commanders and weapons caches.

An Israeli military spokesperson, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said Wednesday that fighter jets had struck 2,000 Hezbollah targets in Lebanon in the past three days and that they were striking Hezbollah’s “intelligence apparatus” in more than 70 areas.

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The strikes Wednesday killed at least 51 people and wounded 223, the Lebanese health minister, Firass Abiad, said. The ministry’s tallies do not distinguish between civilian and fighters.

In recent days, Israeli leaders have given conflicting signals about the prospects of a ground invasion in Lebanon. Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, told reporters in New York on Tuesday, “We are not eager to start any ground invasion anywhere.” But he added, “We are determined to protect the civilians of Israel.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a videotaped statement Wednesday that he would not detail everything the Israel military was doing, “but I can tell you one thing: We are determined to return our residents in the north safely to their homes.”

“I promise you one thing,” he added, “we will not rest until they come home.”

Israel Sent Forces Into Lebanon Before

Israel sent forces into Lebanon in 2006 during a 34-day war with Hezbollah, leading to deadly combat on the group’s home turf. Years before that, Israeli forces occupied southern Lebanon for roughly two decades as part of a “security zone” intended to prevent cross-border attacks by militants. Hezbollah was formed with Iranian help in the 1980s to fight the Israeli occupation.

Israel ultimately withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, ending what the prime minister at the time, Ehud Barak, called an “18-year tragedy.”

In recent weeks, Israel has once again been shifting more military resources to its northern frontier with Lebanon, even as it remains at war with Hamas in Gaza, nearly a year after that group led the deadly cross-border assault on southern Israel.

About 60,000 Israelis have fled their homes since Hezbollah began firing rockets and drones at Israel on Oct. 8 in support of Hamas’ attack a day earlier. Over the past week, as Israeli jets have carried out heavy airstrikes in Lebanon, about 500,000 Lebanese people have been displaced, according to Lebanon’s foreign ministry.

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With panic and fear spreading throughout Lebanon, cars have clogged main roads leading to Beirut, while some from the capital have sought refuge in the mountains and farther north. The U.N. refugee agency said Wednesday that thousands of others had fled to Syria in recent days, in a reversal of the decade-long flow of refugees in the opposite direction.

“This bloodshed is extracting a terrible toll, driving tens of thousands from their homes,” Filippo Grandi, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, said in a statement. “It is yet another ordeal for families who previously fled war in Syria, only now to be bombed in the country where they sought shelter.”

Early Wednesday morning, air-raid sirens in Israel sent residents of Tel Aviv and the coastal resort of Netanya fleeing into shelters before Israel’s air defenses shot down a Hezbollah missile fired from Lebanon, Israeli officials said. Magen David Adom, Israel’s main emergency medical organization, said it had not received reports of injuries.

An Israeli military spokesperson, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, said it was the first time that Hezbollah had tried to strike Tel Aviv, Israel’s economic center, which is 70 miles from the Lebanese border. “They’re trying to shoot more and farther in,” he said.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Liam Stack, Aaron Boxerman, Farnaz Fassihi and Michael Levenson/Avishag Shaar-Yashuv
c. 2024 The New York Times Company