Israel intensified its fight on two fronts Sunday, stepping up operations against Hamas in Gaza and carrying out more airstrikes on Hezbollah in Lebanon, as the region braced for Israel to hit back at Iran for its barrage of ballistic missiles last week.
The expected strike’s potential to ignite an all-out war between Israel and Iran cast a pall over the eve of the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack, which led to the upending of the Middle East and exposed the limits of American influence in the region.
The Israeli military appeared to label the vast majority of northern Gaza as an evacuation zone in what it said was preparation for “a new phase” in the war, after launching a major raid targeting Hamas in the area.
In Lebanon, Israeli airstrikes targeted Hezbollah strongholds in southern Beirut, shortly after warning residents there to flee. Israel also said over the weekend that it had killed two Hamas officials in Lebanon.
In Israel, two surface-to-surface missiles fired from Lebanon set off sirens in towns up to 50 miles south of the Lebanese border. The missiles were intercepted by Israel’s air defenses, its military said. In the southern Israeli city of Be’er Sheva, a member of the Israeli border police was killed and five other people were taken to the hospital with gunshot wounds in an attack in the city’s central bus station, according to the police and Magen David Adom, Israel’s emergency service.
As fighting has escalated and Israel issued restrictions on public gatherings, organizers have scaled back events to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 assault.
About 40,000 people registered to attend a memorial gathering in a Tel Aviv park scheduled for Monday. But the families of Oct. 7 victims and hostages who organized the event said it would instead be streamed live, with only invited members of the bereaved families and hostage families physically present.
Israel has yet to hold a national day of mourning for the 1,200 people who were killed in the attacks, most of them civilians, according to the Israeli authorities. In Gaza, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed in the subsequent war, many of them civilians.
Many Israelis are approaching the anniversary with a mix of dread, fear and anger at the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He has refused to take personal responsibility for the military and policy failures that contributed to the disaster of Oct. 7.
A year after the Oct. 7 attacks, Israel is now simultaneously engaged in ground and air offensives against Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in northern Gaza. It is also poised to retaliate against Iran, which launched nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel last week, following Israel’s killing of the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Most of the Iranian missiles were intercepted by Israel and the United States and the attack apparently did not cause serious damage.
As Israel weighs potential targets in Iran, President Biden said last week that the United States would not support an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear sites. But over the past year, the United States has struggled to persuade Mr. Netanyahu to exercise restraint, including in Israel’s monthslong bombing campaign in Gaza.
In Gaza, Israel’s apparent labeling of most of the northern part of the enclave as an evacuation zone will increase pressure on war-weary residents to relocate to the south. The Israeli military said its warplanes had attacked the city of Jabaliya in northern Gaza, and that it had surrounded an area where it had identified Hamas fighters and “efforts by Hamas to rebuild its operational capabilities.”
The military also said that it had struck a mosque and a school-turned-shelter in the central Gaza city of Deir al Balah overnight. It described the two locations as Hamas “command and control centers” nestled among civilians, without providing evidence of its claims. The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza said 26 Palestinians had been killed and dozens more were wounded.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are believed to be in northern Gaza, and Israel has prevented displaced people in other parts of the territory from returning there.
Avichay Adraee, the Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesman, said Israel’s announcement was intended only to lay the groundwork for any future evacuation of the north. Since the start of the conflict, Israeli forces have gone in and out northern Gaza to target Hamas as the organization has tried to regroup.
But the new evacuation-zone maps left many in the area confused.
Kamel Ajour, 52, a bakery owner in Gaza City, noted that previous evacuation orders had specifically said people needed to leave the area immediately.
“The map is dubious,” he said. “It’s confusing for people.”
Others in Gaza felt the same. “It’s not clear what it is asking people to do now,” said Yahya al-Masri, 28, who has family in Gaza City.
In Lebanon, Israel also warned residents to flee Hezbollah strongholds in an area south of Beirut, where its warplanes struck, sending an orange fireball and thick black smoke into the sky. Residents of 25 villages in southern Lebanon were also warned to evacuate and head north.
The Lebanese health ministry said on Sunday that 23 people were killed and 93 others were wounded by Israeli strikes in Lebanon the day before.
After visiting an Israeli military base near the border with Lebanon, Mr. Netanyahu said in a video statement that he told the troops there: “A year ago we suffered a terrible blow. In the 12 months since we have been changing the reality across the board.”
He described the troops as the “victory generation.”
Israel’s military established new positions beside a U.N. peacekeeping mission during its invasion of Lebanon’s southern region last week, according to a U.N. spokesman and satellite imagery obtained by The New York Times.
Andrea Tenenti, a spokesman for the mission — commonly known by its acronym, UNIFIL — said the Israeli military had been firing at Hezbollah positions from those locations. Mr. Tenenti also said the Israeli military had asked UNIFIL to relocate its personnel as it invaded southern Lebanon. But the U.N. mission, which is concerned about the impact of Israel’s positions on the safety of peacekeepers, declined to do so.
Satellite images taken on Saturday by Planet Labs, a commercial satellite company, and verified by The Times, show around 20 Israeli military vehicles at three new positions established this week around the U.N. mission.
About 1.2 million people have been displaced in Lebanon over the past year, the majority of them over the past two weeks, the U.N.’s high commissioner for refugees, Filippo Grandi, said at a news conference in Beirut on Sunday. He described the scale of displacement as “enormous for a country like Lebanon,” with a population estimated at 5.5 million people.
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