A War Within the War: Israel’s Bombardment of Lebanon

From The New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is The Daily. Breaking news. Israel saying it is now expanding operations in Lebanon. With the world's attention on The US Israeli war with Iran over the last two weeks, a second front has opened in Lebanon. The target of those strikes, a Hezbollah stronghold. The IDF says it's hitting sites linked to the group, which is backed and funded by Iran. Israel has pummeled Southern Lebanon and Southern Beirut with air strikes, displacing almost a million people, and it's expanded its assault into other parts of the capital. I carried the children quickly, and we left towards the airport road. People were like ants. Like judgment day was like judgment day. One man, his wife, and four young children have fled a few miles north to safer ground. Like many families, they'll spend the night on the streets watching the strikes at a distance. Today, Beirut bureau chief Christina Goldbaum explains how the crisis in Lebanon connects to the broader war, what Israel hopes to achieve, and what the Lebanese people fear may come next. It's Monday, March 16. Christina, since the war with Iran began, I think it's been clear that there has been sort of the second front emerging in Lebanon. It started when Hezbollah, the Iranian backed militia group that's based in Lebanon, lobbed missiles at Israel. Israel lobbed missiles back. The two sides have traded fire for days now. And that is not, in and of itself, an unfamiliar scenario. Right? But things have really escalated. And you are based in Beirut. You are the Beirut bureau chief for the New York Times. And so I'd like for you to paint a picture for our audience of what the last few days have looked like on the ground. So what we've seen over the last two weeks is what feels like the beginnings of another major war in the country. Nowadays, when you're walking through Beirut, there is this acrid smell in the air from all of the air strikes in and around the city, and you have the sound of Israeli drones overhead, this loud buzzing that's been a near constant over the last two weeks. In certain parts of the city, life feels very normal, kind of untouched by the war, buildings intact. But in other parts of the city, walking around, you can see this mass displacement that has happened. You see people putting up kind of makeshift tents out of tarps and out of gray blankets that people have set up in parking lots, on the seaside corniche, on sidewalks and in parks, and living there because there isn't room in the schools that the government has turned into shelters. Mhmm. In the Dakhia, in the southern suburbs where Hezbollah holds a lot of sway, a lot of buildings there have been just completely cratered in this bombardment by Israel. And in the last couple of days, it felt like it …