BEIRUT/JERUSALEM – Israel kept up strikes on southern Lebanon on Tuesday, pressing its campaign against Hezbollah a day after US President Donald Trump asked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to attack Beirut to avert further escalation in the three-month-old war.
Following Trump’s intervention, Lebanon’s government said Israel would refrain from carrying out threatened strikes on the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut, while the group would halt attacks against Israel.
But the announcement has failed to reassure many Lebanese or halt the broader war in south Lebanon, which Netanyahu has vowed would continue. The din of an Israeli drone over Beirut kept residents on edge on Tuesday.
The Lebanese government has said it would seek to expand the ceasefire in talks with Israeli officials in Washington that began on Tuesday, the latest in a series of face-to-face meetings Beirut has attended despite Hezbollah objections.
Iran has demanded a Lebanon ceasefire as part of any wider deal with the US to end the three-month-old war that began with US and Israeli attacks on Iran at the end of February.
In the south, Israeli airstrikes and artillery fire hit a string of towns, and the Israeli military ordered residents of the city of Nabatiyeh to leave ahead of strikes.
Hezbollah announced two operations against Israeli forces in southern Lebanon in the early hours of Tuesday, but no cross-border rocket attacks. The Israeli military overnight said it had intercepted two projectiles crossing from Lebanon into Israeli territory.
If Israel’s northern communities were attacked, the Israeli military would evacuate and strike Beirut’s southern suburbs, warned Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz in remarks provided by his office.
“The test of this policy for protecting our communities will be simple and will become clear in the coming days: either the attacks on Israeli communities stop, or if attacks continue and we strike Dahiyah in Beirut, this equation will be realised,” he said.
Beirut resident Faten Al Chehime said the Israeli warnings led her to flee her home in the southern suburbs on Monday, just two weeks after she had returned.
“Every time we return to our homes, there is a warning for us to be displaced again,” said Chehime, speaking at a camp sheltering displaced people in Beirut.
More than 1.2 million people in Lebanon have been uprooted by the war, which began when Hezbollah fired on Israel in support of Tehran on March 2.
Israel had pounded Beirut’s southern suburbs, known as Dahiyeh, in an early phase of the war, but carried out only two strikes there since Trump declared a Lebanon ceasefire in April.
Tensions had spiked on Monday after Netanyahu ordered strikes on Dahiyeh, with Iranian state media reporting that Tehran had stopped indirect talks with Washington due to Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Iran’s military warning residents of northern Israel they should leave to avoid harm if Israel attacked Beirut.
“If Israeli aggression on Lebanon continues, we won’t just stop the negotiation track, but we will be in a direct confrontation with the enemy,” Iran’s top negotiator, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, said he told Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, according to a post by Qalibaf on X.
A flurry of calls appeared to defuse the escalation: Trump said he had asked Netanyahu not to carry out a major raid on Beirut and that Hezbollah, through intermediaries, had pledged not to attack Israel.
No US president has ever spoken with Hezbollah, with or without intermediaries. Washington has designated Hezbollah a terrorist organisation.
A senior Lebanese official told Reuters that the objective of Washington talks would be to agree on actionable and sustainable ways to reinforce the ceasefire, possibly through phased approaches.
The official said that could mean establishing “pilot zones” – specific geographic areas where hostilities would stop, Israeli troops would withdraw, and Lebanese soldiers would deploy, gradually building up to a full ceasefire across all of Lebanon.
The official said that, while Hezbollah had not announced its endorsement of the partial ceasefire, it had halted fire on northern Israel.
Israel wants Hezbollah disarmed – an objective shared by the Lebanese administration led by President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, who have sought its peaceful disarmament.
Asked about Monday evening’s announcements, Youssef al-Zein, the head of Hezbollah’s press office, said the group would not take a public stance without a formal declaration that would compel Israel to implement a comprehensive cessation of hostilities across all Lebanese territory.
He pointed to Israel’s continued airstrikes on Lebanon after a 2024 truce that ended the last war between Hezbollah and Israel and after the April 16 truce announced by Trump.
“Hezbollah will monitor developments both on the battlefield and in diplomatic channels in the coming days,” Zein said.
The Lebanese health ministry says more than 3,400 people have been killed in Lebanon by Israeli strikes since March 2.
Israel says 26 of its soldiers and four civilians have been killed in Hezbollah attacks since March.
Source: Reuters
