LEILA FADEL, HOST:
News of an Israeli ground offensive into Lebanon, in what Israel calls limited incursions targeting Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon. The Israeli military issued evacuation orders for nearly two dozen Lebanese villages. This comes nearly a year after Israel and Hezbollah began exchanging fire that forced both Lebanese and Israelis to leave their homes along the border. And it also came days after Israel killed a number of top Hezbollah officials, including the head of Hezbollah, in airstrikes in Beirut last Friday. In just days, some 1 million people are now displaced in Lebanon, and airstrikes across the country have killed upward of a thousand people, including dozens of women and children. Joining us now from Beirut is NPR's Jane Arraf and, from Haifa in northern Israel, NPR's Kat Lonsdorf. Thank you both for being here.
JANE ARRAF, BYLINE: Thank you.
KAT LONSDORF, BYLINE: Thank you.
FADEL: So, Jane, I want to start with you. What just happened?
ARRAF: Well, the short answer, Leila - Israel has invaded Lebanon, not for the first time, but the first time since 2006. Late last night, there was heavy Israeli shelling across the border, and that was followed by Israeli troops moving in. The Lebanese army withdrew from checkpoints and pulled back. An army official called it repositioning. There's now extensive damage in border villages, the main road to some of them now impassable. We have to remember that the Lebanese army is much weaker than Hezbollah, which has been fighting across the border in support of Palestinians in Gaza since that war began a year ago. The Lebanese government says at least 95 people were killed and 170 wounded in Israeli attacks just yesterday alone.
FADEL: Right, and that was in both south Lebanon and in Beirut. Now, Kat...
ARRAF: Exactly.
FADEL: ...What is the Israeli military saying about this operation?
LONSDORF: Well, the Israeli military is calling these, quote, "limited and localized raids." But we've heard them use this language before in parts of Gaza, and Israel is still fighting a war there nearly a year later, so there are some real questions about what that really means. They also put out a statement saying that the troops that went into Lebanon first were the same brigades that had been operating in Gaza, noting that these troops gained skills and operational experience that they are going to be using in the north. You know, Gaza has been a brutal war, with more than 41,000 Palestinians killed in the fighting there. Israel officials say that the point of this incursion is to push Hezbollah back from the border, and that's so that the tens of thousands of Israelis that have been displaced from the north can return home, which is something Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been promising.
FADEL: Now, you've been up in the north for the past week, and you spent yesterday talking to Israelis still living close to the Israel-Lebanese border. What are they saying?
LONSDORF: Yeah. So yesterday, before this incursion started, we spent all day driving around to cities and towns near the border. It's an area that has been increasingly militarized in the past few months. Since the last time I was up here, there have been a lot of checkpoints added, evacuated. Kibbutzim have been turned into makeshift military bases, and there's just lots and lots of military equipment being moved up. Driving around, you'll see tanks, Jeeps, soldiers all mobilizing, and there's still a lot of sirens and rockets, too. You know, yesterday, we had to find cover at least three times.
We went to the town Rosh Pina. It's in an area that's been targeted by Hezbollah rockets a lot in the past week several times a day. And I talked with Ehud Yotam. He was sitting in a small cafe. He actually fought in the Israeli military in Lebanon back in the '90s, when Israeli troops occupied southern Lebanon, like you said, for 18 years. And I asked him how he was feeling, knowing that a similar situation might be about to happen.
EHUD YOTAM: It's going to be tough. It's not going to be easy, but still, it's necessary. It must be, if we want to defense the border of Israel. So now we have to do the operation first, and then we're going to have the time to diplomatics ways (ph).
LONSDORF: And I talked to a lot of people yesterday who had a very, very similar sentiment - that this was a necessary next step for Israel to do and that diplomacy was not an option right now, that it could happen later.
FADEL: So, Jane, what about what you're hearing from Lebanese civilians? I mean, we've seen these Israeli airstrikes across the country and in central Beirut.
ARRAF: It's really hard to describe how surreal it is. I mean, here in Beirut - in many senses, a sophisticated city - they go through the day with drones overhead, Israeli drones, the sound of sirens. You can hear the airstrikes from different parts of Beirut. This is already a damaged country, and what's happening now has left people lost in many senses. Israel had been focusing its attacks in Beirut in the southern suburbs, where Hezbollah has bases. But this week, in its first attack in years, it struck central Beirut...
FADEL: Yeah.
ARRAF: ...An apartment building, targeting commanders of a major Palestinian faction. We had been there just two days before, and people displaced by the attacks in the suburbs were sleeping on the streets. When we went back yesterday, a lot of people were trying to leave the city entirely. It was close to a depot for minibuses. A bus driver called out the destinations.
HASSAN: (Speaking Arabic).
ARRAF: The driver, Hassan - everyone's afraid of giving full names - had himself been displaced from the south of Lebanon, where part of his neighborhood has been destroyed. I asked him about the future, about a country without Hassan Nasrallah.
HASSAN: (Speaking Arabic).
ARRAF: He said, "no, we're not without him. He left hundreds behind like him. We all know this." So imagine this small country - 6 million people, a million displaced, many with no possessions and nowhere to go. Those who can leave the country are trying hard. But if you look at the airport departure list at Beirut Airport, it's just cancellation after cancellation, and that has become much, much tougher.
FADEL: And what about how Hezbollah is responding?
ARRAF: Israel's killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was an immense blow. So last night, Hezbollah continued to shell Israeli positions across the border. And Nasrallah's deputy, Naim Qassem, addressed followers, as well. Across Beirut, people were listening on their phones and car radios.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
NAIM QASSEM: (Speaking Arabic).
ARRAF: Qassem said they would continue the battle in support of Palestinians and to defend Lebanon. And he ended with a Quranic verse that counseled patience while rebuilding strength for the fight. And meanwhile, Israel has expanded from its main target of Hezbollah - Lebanese, but Iran-backed - to militant Palestinian leaders, including a strike yesterday on a Palestinian refugee camp.
FADEL: Now, Kat, all of this, of course, is happening and maybe overshadowing what continues, which is the war in Gaza.
LONSDORF: Yeah.
FADEL: And it seems the scale of the conflict is only expanding.
LONSDORF: Yeah. I mean, Israel is now fighting on several fronts. The war in Gaza is still very much happening, and now this expanded front up north in Lebanon. And there are also nearly daily Israeli military raids happening in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and Israelis generally seem supportive of a lot of this. There's one question that everyone is asking here, though. It's that, like I said earlier, the Israeli leadership justified this operation up north with a pledge to return the displaced people there home. But now, as this conflict expands, there's no guarantee this will end.
FADEL: That's NPR's Kat Lonsdorf in Haifa, northern Israel, and Jane Arraf in Beirut, Lebanon. Thank you to you both, and be safe.
ARRAF: Thank you, Leila.
LONSDORF: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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