Netanyahu warns Houthis after missile hits central Israel; IDF probes leaflets ordering Lebanon evacuation

The Israeli military said on Sunday it was investigating after a unit dropped unauthorised leaflets on a border area in southern Lebanon ordering residents to leave.

At least 10 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza on Saturday, Palestinian media reported. The Israeli military said it targeted a Hamas commander.

Houthi missile reaches central Israel for first time 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would inflict a “heavy price” on the Iran-aligned Houthis who control northern Yemen, after they reached central Israel with a missile on Sunday for the first time.

Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Sarea said the group struck with a new hypersonic ballistic missile that travelled 2,040km in just 11½ minutes.

An Israeli military official said the missile was hit by an interceptor and fragmented in the air.

Air raid sirens had sounded in Tel Aviv and across central Israel moments before the impact, sending residents running for shelter. Loud booms were heard.

Missile pieces landed in fields and near a railway station. There were no direct casualties, but nine people were slightly hurt while seeking cover. Reuters saw smoke billowing in an open field in central Israel.

At a weekly Cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said the Houthis should have known that Israel would exact a “heavy price” for attacks on Israel.

“Whoever needs a reminder of that is invited to visit the Hodeida port,” Netanyahu said, referring to an Israeli retaliatory air strike against Yemen in July for a Houthi drone that hit Tel Aviv.

The Houthis have fired missiles and drones at Israel repeatedly in what they say is solidarity with the Palestinians since the Gaza war began with a Hamas attack on Israel in October.

The drone that hit Tel Aviv for the first time in July killed a man and wounded four people. Israeli air strikes in response on Houthi military targets near the port of Hodeidah killed six and wounded 80.

Previously, Houthi missiles have not penetrated deep into Israeli air space, with the only one reported to have hit Israeli territory falling in an open area near the Red Sea port of Eilat in March.

Israel should expect more strikes in the future “as we approach the first anniversary of the 7 October operation, including responding to its aggression on the city of Hodeidah,” said Houthis spokesperson Sarea.

Israeli military probes leaflets ordering Lebanon evacuation

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Sunday it was investigating after a unit dropped unauthorised leaflets on a border area in southern Lebanon ordering residents to leave.

Lebanon’s state-run national news agency reported that Israel had dropped leaflets ordering residents out of the Wazzani area.

The Israeli military said dropping the leaflets was an unauthorised action by a unit that had not sought appropriate approval, and that there was no evacuation under way.

Tens of thousands of civilians have already fled villages and towns on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon frontier during months of cross-border strikes since Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement stepped up attacks alongside the war in Gaza.

At least 10 Palestinians killed in Gaza strike

At least 10 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza on Saturday, Palestinian media reported, and the Israeli military said it targeted a Hamas commander.

The strike hit a residential housing unit in the Al Tuffah neighbourhood east of Gaza City, according to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.

The Israeli military said it “struck the commander of a Hamas terrorist cell ... who was involved in the planning and execution of terrorist activities”.

It said it was aware of reports that several civilians were killed in the strike.

Two others were killed by Israeli shelling on Gaza City and Jabalia in the north, and three in al-Mawasi in the south, the report said.

Hamas chief Sinwar thanks Hezbollah in letter to Nasrallah

Hamas chief Yehya Sinwar thanked the leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, for his group’s support in the conflict with Israel, Hezbollah said on Friday, in the first reported message since Sinwar became Hamas leader in August.

The Iran-backed Hezbollah has been waging attacks on Israel for nearly a year in a conflict across the Lebanese-Israeli border that has been taking place in parallel to the Gaza war. Hezbollah says its attacks aim to support the Palestinians.

“Your blessed actions have expressed your solidarity on the fronts of the Axis of Resistance, supporting and engaging in the battle,” Sinwar told Nasrallah, according to Hezbollah’s al-Manar broadcaster.

Sinwar has not appeared in public since the 7 October attacks and is widely thought to be running the war from tunnels beneath Gaza. It was the second time this week he is reported to have sent a letter. Hamas said on Tuesday he had sent one congratulating Algerian President Abdulmadjid Tebboune on his re-election.

Hezbollah is the most powerful faction in an alliance of Iran-backed groups known as the Axis of Resistance, which has also entered the fray with attacks from Yemen and Iraq in support of Hamas during the Gaza war.

In the early days of the conflict, former Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal hinted at frustration over the scale of Hezbollah’s intervention, thanking the group but saying “the battle requires more”.

Over the past year, Israel has killed around 500 Hezbollah fighters, including its top military commander, Fuad Shukr. The toll is greater than Hezbollah’s losses in its 2006 war with Israel.

Sinwar also thanked Nasrallah for a letter he sent expressing condolences for the death of Ismail Haniyeh, the former Hamas leader killed in Tehran in July in an assassination widely believed to have been carried out by Israel.

New Israeli poll shows Netanyahu’s party advancing

An opinion poll on Friday showed Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party would form the largest single party in parliament if an election were held now, underlining a gradual recovery since the 7 October attacks.

The poll, published in the left-wing Ma’ariv daily, showed Likud winning 24 seats, against 32 at present, its highest score in the Ma’ariv poll since 7 October. It put the National Unity Party led by centrist former general Benny Gantz on 21.

Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition with a clutch of nationalist-religious and ultra-Orthodox parties would lose any election held now, with 53 seats in the 120-seat parliament, against 58 for the main opposition bloc, according to the poll.

But Likud’s advance shows how far Netanyahu has moved since last year when his standing was hit by public fury at the security failures when Hamas gunmen stormed into Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages.

Earlier in the war against Hamas in Gaza, opinion polls regularly showed Likud gaining no more than 16-18 seats in parliament.

The survey also showed Netanyahu’s standing as prime minister recovering, with respondents favouring him over any alternative potential candidate apart from former prime minister Naftali Bennett, who is now out of politics.

Despite coalition tensions between Netanyahu and several ministers, and regular protests by Israelis demanding a deal to bring home the Gaza hostages, the government has held together for almost two years. An election is not due until 2026. DM

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