Ben Gurion briefly halts takeoffs as drones downed over sea; rocket lands near Tel Aviv

The Israel Aviation Authority briefly halted and then resumed takeoffs at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport on Monday evening, amid an apparent escalation in Israel’s offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon and ahead of an expected retaliation for Iran’s ballistic missile attack earlier this month.

The IAA announced a short while after takeoffs were halted that the airport was operating normally, without giving a reason for the pause, and the Israel Defense Forces said that the security incident had been cleared.

In the same statement, the IDF said that helicopters and fighter jets intercepted and shot down five drones over the Mediterranean Sea, before they entered Israeli airspace.

A short while later, the IDF said that a loud explosion heard in Tel Aviv and the Sharon region was caused by a rocket fired from Lebanon that landed in an open area. Hebrew media reported that it landed in the sea.

Sirens did not sound in accordance with the policy that warnings are only issued if the rocket is deemed to pose a threat, the military said.

Later on Monday evening, IDF Spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari confirmed that Israel carried out an airstrike in Syria earlier in the day, targeting the head of Hezbollah’s financial arm responsible for funneling cash from Iran to its proxy, in one of a series of IDF strikes carried out in recent days against the terror group’s financial network.

The IDF spokesperson did not name the Hezbollah official but said he had only been in the position a few weeks since his predecessor was killed.

Syrian state media said a car exploded in the Mazzeh district of Damascus, which is home to embassies, UN offices and security headquarters, killing two people.

The official SANA news agency reported “a car explosion in one of the neighborhoods” of Mazzeh, where an AFP correspondent said a hotel was damaged and vehicles torched following the blast near Syria’s Information Ministry.

Since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Israel — which rarely comments on individual strikes in Syria — is believed to have carried out hundreds of strikes, mainly targeting army positions and Iran-backed fighters including from Hezbollah.

Since Hamas’s October 7 massacre last year, Israel has escalated its strikes on Iranian-backed terror targets in Syria and has also struck Syrian army air defenses and some Syrian forces.

In the press briefing, Hagari revealed further details on Hezbollah’s money laundering system and said that Israel would carry out further strikes in the coming days.

The statement came after the IDF carried out airstrikes late Sunday and early Monday, including in Dahiyeh, on branches of a Hezbollah-run financial institution that Israel says is used to fund attacks but where many ordinary people keep their savings.

Lebanese authorities and emergency services were surveying the damage on Monday after the overnight Israeli strikes hit nearly a dozen branches of Al-Qard Al-Hassan. The strikes targeted branches in the southern neighborhoods of Beirut, across southern Lebanon and in the eastern Beqaa Valley, where Hezbollah has a strong presence. One strike flattened a nine-story building in Beirut with a branch inside it. Smoke was still rising from several locations on Monday.

The IDF issued evacuation warnings ahead of the strikes. There were no reports of casualties.

Earlier, Israel reportedly threatened to raze Hezbollah’s stronghold in Beirut’s southern Dahiyeh district to the ground if the Iran-backed terror group attempts to target its leaders again.

The Israeli message, which the Saudi Al-Hadath news channel reported was conveyed to Hezbollah through a third party, came after the terror group launched a drone at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s private residence in the coastal city of Caesarea on Saturday.

Hezbollah continued to fire rockets at Israel on Monday, with the IDF assessing that over 100 rockets had been launched at northern communities throughout the day.

One person, a foreign national in his 40s, sustained light injuries when he was hit in the head by shrapnel in the Ayelet HaShahar area amid a barrage on the Upper Galilee in the early afternoon. He was evacuated to Ziv Medical Center in Safed for treatment.

The IDF said that it destroyed some 15 short-range Hezbollah rocket launchers in southern Lebanon that were aimed at northern Israel on Monday afternoon, including some used in recent attacks on the Western Galilee, along with buildings used by the terror group in several areas of southern Lebanon.

בשעה האחרונה מטוסי קרב של חיל האוויר תקפו בדרום לבנון משגרי טילים קצרי טווח, שכוונו לעבר יישובי הצפון. מטוסי קרב של חיל האוויר תקפו בהכוונת פיקוד הצפון, 15 משגרים שכונו לעבר שטח מדינת ישראל ובהם משגרים שירו לעבר הגליל המערבי>> pic.twitter.com/ddM4PoFLYQ

— צבא ההגנה לישראל (@idfonline) October 21, 2024

Meanwhile, US special envoy Amos Hochstein was in the Lebanese capital on Monday amid efforts to find a diplomatic solution to the escalating conflict, telling Lebanese officials that the conflict has “escalated out of control.”

Hochstein said that Lebanon and Israel merely committing to UN Resolution 1701 would not be enough, and that Washington was working to devise a formula to end the conflict once and for all.

The resolution, which ended the last round of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006, calls for southern Lebanon to be free of any troops or weapons other than those of the Lebanese state.

The resolution has gone largely unenforced since it was passed in 2006, allowing Hezbollah to build up a formidable arms cache and defensive capabilities, with neither UNIFIL peacekeepers nor the LAF willing to challenge the Iran-backed terror group.

Hochstein said that neither Hezbollah nor Israel had adequately implemented the resolution and that while it would be the basis for the end to current hostilities, the US was seeking to determine what more needed to be done to make sure it was implemented “fairly, accurately and transparently.”

Israel has repeatedly portrayed its offensive in southern Lebanon as essentially stepping in and doing UNIFIL’s job.

After meeting with Lebanon’s parliament speaker Nabih Berri, a Hezbollah ally, Hochstein said the US was aiming to end the conflict “as soon as possible.”

The US State Department said on Monday that Secretary of State Antony Blinken was also departing for the Middle East, as Washington pushes to kickstart ceasefire negotiations to end the Gaza war following the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar earlier this month, while aiming to reach a diplomatic solution to the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.

The top diplomat’s trip will start with Israel, the State Department said, without providing the other exact destinations.

Hezbollah-led forces have attacked Israeli communities and military posts along the border on a near-daily basis since October 8, with the group saying it is doing so to support Gaza amid the war there.

Some 60,000 residents were evacuated from northern towns on the Lebanon border shortly after October 7, amid fears Hezbollah would carry out a similar attack, and increasing rocket fire by the terror group.

On Monday, the IDF reported that it had defeated Hezbollah’s forces in every area that troops have so far operated in southern Lebanon.

According to the military’s latest estimates, more than 1,200 Hezbollah members have been killed amid the ground offensive. In all, since October 2023, over 2,000 members of the terror group have been killed, the IDF said.

Among the dead Hezbollah members are seven brigade-level commanders, 21 battalion-level commanders, and two dozen company commanders, according to the IDF.

Amid the ongoing operations, the military said that it could see Hezbollah struggling to bring in reinforcements to counter the IDF’s five divisions operating against it in southern Lebanon, and that the terror group’s offensive capabilities were seriously affected by the amount of weapons that the army has seized.

In terms of rocket capabilities, the IDF estimated Monday that Hezbollah maintains about 30 percent of what it initially had before the war, which is still thousands of rockets.

However, due to the elimination of Hezbollah’s leadership, including numerous field commanders, the IDF said the terror group was struggling to carry out the massive rocket fire on Israel that it had initially planned.

The IDF said it still aims to wrap up its operations in southern Lebanon within a few weeks. Once the threat of a Hezbollah invasion is removed from the border area, residents of the north will be able to return to their homes.

Also Monday, the IDF apologized for a strike that killed three Lebanese soldiers in southern Lebanon a day earlier, saying it is not battling the country’s military and that soldiers believed they were targeting a vehicle belonging to Hezbollah.

The IDF said it struck a truck that had entered an area where it had previously targeted a Hezbollah truck transporting a launcher and missiles.

IDF troops were not aware that the second truck belonged to the Lebanese army, the military said, adding it was “not operating against the Lebanese Army and apologizes for these unwanted circumstances.”

The Lebanese troops were killed on a road connecting the border village of Ain Ebel to the nearby town of Hanin. The deaths brought the number of Lebanese troop casualties to eight since all-out war erupted between Israel and Hezbollah last month.

The attacks on northern Israel since October 2023 have resulted in the deaths of 29 civilians. In addition, 43 IDF soldiers and reservists have died in cross-border skirmishes and in the ground operation launched in southern Lebanon.

Two soldiers have been killed in a drone attack from Iraq, and there have also been several attacks from Syria, without any injuries.