IDF Strikes Hezbollah Intelligence Headquarters, and Hamas Sites As Well

The IDF has not wasted a minute since the killing of Yahya Sinwar, but has only intensified its attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. Now it has hit the Hezbollah intelligence headquarters in Beirut, a most important target, as well as an underground workshop for the production of weapons. Meanwhile, the IDF launched an airstrike on Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza and continues to assault Hamas forces in Jabaliya, in northern Gaza. More on the IDF’s ratcheting up of its attacks on both Hezbollah and Hamas fronts can be found here: “Israel Intensifies Offensive in Gaza, Lebanon After Hamas leader’s Death,” Algemeiner, October 20, 2024:

Israel said it had struck Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters in the Lebanese capital Beirut on Sunday, while officials in Gaza said they were still trying to recover bodies from the rubble after an Israeli strike.

Many were dead or missing following the airstrike on Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza late on Saturday, the health ministry in the Palestinian territory said. Israel said it was investigating reports of the incident.

It marked an intensification of Israel’s offensives against Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza and Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, days after the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar had raised hopes of an opening for ceasefire negotiations to end more than a year of escalating conflict in the Middle East.

The killing of Yahya Sinwar has not led to any improvement in negotiations on a ceasefire and hostage release, as some Bidenites apparently hoped would happen. Hamas has declared it will fight on, and Prime Minister Netanyahu has declared that “we will continue to fight.” Nonetheless, it is a blow to Hamas’ morale, and a morale booster to the Israelis.

With US elections approaching, officials, diplomats and other sources in the region say Israel is seeking through military operations to try to shield its borders and ensure its rivals cannot regroup….

Rightly worried about a possible Harris presidency that promises to be unfavorable to Israel, the Israelis are hoping that before that happens they can lock in military successes, both by so pummeling Hezbollah that it stops firing rockets and drones into northern Israel, allowing 60,000 displaced Israelis to return to their homes in the north, and in further dismantling Hamas as some of its operatives attempt to regroup in northern Gaza.

In Lebanon, Israel stepped up its bombardment of southern Beirut from Saturday afternoon. On Sunday, it said its air force attacked Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters in Beirut as well as an underground workshop for the production of weapons.

Fighter jets killed three Hezbollah commanders, including Alhaj Abbas Salameh, a senior figure in the group’s southern command, the Israeli military said in a statement.

Reuters witnesses saw smoke rising from Beirut’s southern suburbs, once a densely populated zone that also housed Hezbollah offices and underground installations.

The Lebanese military said on Sunday three of its soldiers were killed in an Israeli strike on an army vehicle in southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah made no immediate comment on the strikes, but said it had fired missiles at Israeli forces in Lebanon and at a base in northern Israel.

What could Hezbollah say? That it is powerless to prevent IDF strikes on Beirut? That it has just suffered a catastrophic loss with the IDF’s attack on its intelligence headquarters? That the Israelis keep shooting down its daily barrage of missiles and drones, with only one drone managing to get through to hit the mess hall at Nevatim Airbase near Beersheva, killing four soldiers and wounding 60?

Missiles and drones launched by Hezbollah on northern Israel have caused 60,000 Israelis to leave the area. Suppressing Hezbollah attacks, and pushing the terror group back north of the Litani River, so that those Israelis can return to their homes, is the most important IDF war aim in Lebanon. Israel will not stop fighting Hezbollah as long as it continues to make northern Israel uninhabitable.

The IDF has killed a dozen of Hezbollah’s top leaders and military commanders, including Hassan Nasrallah and his second-in-command Fuad Shukr. Only two of the dozen members of Hezbollah’s Jihad Council are still alive. Its intelligence headquarters in Beirut has been destroyed. Its command-and-control centers have been devastated. So have its underground weapons production facilities. Of the 150,000 rockets and missiles that it possessed before October 8, the IDF is believed to have destroyed two-thirds of them.

And now, as of October 21, the IDF has been bombing the headquarters and 30 branches all over Lebanon of Al-Qard Al-Hanan bank, that supplies funds to Hezbollah to pay the salaries of its operatives, and to buy arms. David Asher, an expert on illicit financing who has worked at the U.S. Defense and State Departments, and is now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, notes that the bombs will destroy the money physically held in the bank’s branches: “AQAH is a cash-based organization. The cash will be trash.” The IDF will literally be “burning through” the bank’s assets. Hezbollah will also lose the only financial institution in Lebanon wiling to provide it with banking services. What other bank would be willing to step in to replace AQAH, knowing what the IDF can do to it?