After assassinations, Israel braces for retaliation and wider conflict

JERUSALEM - In the space of 24 hours this week, each of Israel’s chief adversaries vowed to deal the Jewish state a searing, potentially unprecedented blow to retaliate for a spate of assassinations.

Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah, whose top military deputy was killed in an Israeli strike, proclaimed Thursday that the powerful militia’s decades-long conflict with Israel had reached a new, more perilous stage.

A day earlier, a senior official from Hamas - whose chief political operative was killed in a brazen attack in Tehran - declared that the militant group’s only option now is “blood and resistance.”

And Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Israel had set itself up for “harsh punishment” after the death of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in a state guesthouse in Tehran. Israel, which is fighting Hamas in the Gaza Strip, has not commented on the attack but has been blamed for it by its adversaries.

Israel’s military remained on high alert Friday as rumors shot through the country that Iran and its allies might strike back after Haniyeh’s burial Friday in Qatar; or that Tehran would mount an assault exceeding even the massive multipronged barrage it launched on Israel in April.

But Israelis, hardened by 10 months of war in the Gaza Strip and decades of conflict, voiced defiance. They vowed to carry on with normal life or what has become normal in the months since Oct. 7, when Hamas militants streamed out of the enclave, killed roughly 1,200 people in nearby communities, took 250 more hostage and plunged the country into a state of perpetual alert - and the broader region into a renewed period of instability and bloodshed.

Since then, the war has cast a shadow over Israeli life. Most of the country’s 465,000 reservists were called up in the early days of the war. Tens of thousands have fled communities near Gaza, and areas of northern Israel under regular fire from Hezbollah in Lebanon. Mobile phones clang regularly with air raid alerts.

The death toll in Israel’s military campaign against Hamas has been dramatically higher: Palestinian authorities say some 40,000 people have been killed in Gaza. The war has taken a toll on Israel’s global standing, isolating the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and creating deep strains with its closest ally: the United States.

But Yudi Bar On, who runs a high-tech company in northern Israel, has told his employees to go about their jobs and lives.

“This is something what we must do, because this is our strength,” he said. “I can’t say that people are not concerned, but we are tough.”

After Oct. 7, Bar On and his neighbors banded together to form self-defense squads. The units are trained, armed and now supported by the Israeli police.

“We learned from what happened, and we want to be prepared,” he said. “It’s a different situation from what it was a year ago.”

While squad members would be unable to protect their communities were Iran to launch another barrage of missiles and drones like the one it unleashed in April in reprisal for a strike on an Iranian military leader in Syria, they could help their communities if a broader war erupts.

After months of cross-border attacks between Israel and Hezbollah, a potent ally of Iran which is believed to have more than 100,000 rockets and missiles, some of the country’s Western allies fear it could be inching toward a war that could be far more punishing than the one it is now fighting in Gaza.

In Tel Aviv, the bustling coastal city that is Israel’s biggest urban center, authorities say they have issued no extra precautions since the threats this weeks and made no changes to scheduled cultural or public events. Nor has Israel’s government curtailed public transportation.

Irit Talmi, a top communications offer with Tel Aviv Global, part of the Tel Aviv municipality, said the city has a situation room that can be staffed if Israel’s security alert level increases.

Noga Genish, 31, said she’s scared of what might happen in the days ahead. Still, she and her husband took their small daughter to the beach in Tel Aviv on Friday - because, she said, they have learned they can’t stay cooped up inside.

“We need to breathe,” said Genish, who is nine months pregnant with her next child. While she tries not to worry, she said, the war feels proximate. She has a brother is in the Israeli military. She has stocked up with provisions.

“I don’t think anyone who doesn’t live in Israel can understand what we are going through,” she said.

How Israelis feel about this moment is also informed by geography. In Haifa, on Israel’s northern coast, residents recall the rockets that reached their city in Israel’s 2006 war with Hezbollah. The same projectiles would be unable to reach Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and other sites farther to the south. (Hezbollah has since expanded its arsenal and says it can now strike deeper into Israel.)

“This is a matter of distance because we are closer,” said Yair Zilberman, head of Haifa’s security division. “It’s less comfortable, let’s say.”

In a worrying sign of vulnerability, Hezbollah in June released a video of a drone surveilling a Haifa military base. But Zilberman said the city is ready. Authorities are reminding people to comply with instructions from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in the case of an air raid. The municipality has equipped areas designated as public bomb shelters - often lower floors of parking garages - with generators and WiFi.

On Thursday, Netanyahu warned that anyone who harmed Israel would pay “a very high price.”

Israel got a boost this week from Washington. After a call Thursday between Netanyahu and President Biden, the White House announced that the United States would dispatch additional forces to help protect Israel. The U.S. military played a key role in helping defend Israel from attack in April, when Iran launched hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel. The majority of which were intercepted by Israeli and allies’ missile defense systems.

Britain’s defense secretary and top military officer visited Israel for talks with defense leaders Friday. Britain also came to Israel’s defense in April.

Some analysts say Iran and its allies could attempt more punishing reprisals, but all parties want to avoid total war.

“Deterrence is damaged but not broken,” said Bilal Saab, a former Pentagon official who heads the U.S.-Middle East practice at TRENDS Research and Advisory.

Some Israelis were jubilant over the recent killings of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders. A billboard in Givatayim, east of Tel Aviv, showed the faces of Haniyeh and Mohammed Deif, the Hamas military leader whose death Israel confirmed this week, with the word “eliminated” above their heads.

Other Israelis say a conflict with Hezbollah is inevitable, even necessary. Shimon Lasri has been living in Jerusalem since he evacuated from his home in Kiryat Shmona, in Israel’s far north, in the war’s early weeks.

About 30 people from his city live in his building and gather every Friday night to light Shabbat candles, say the traditional blessing over wine and share a meal. Lasri, 51, thinks Hezbollah must be defeated so he can return home.

“We have to have a war,” he said. “If we don’t, what happened on Oct. 7 in the south will happen there.”

Amalia Katsiri, 17, out with friends in Tel Aviv on Thursday, shrugged off any mounting peril. She and her friends have been dealing with security concerns since they were in kindergarten.

But she acknowledged that living in a perpetual state of conflict has taken its toll. When she hears the sound of a siren, she jumps. And she can’t get the hostages out of her head.

“I think we’re more sad than afraid,” she said. But she added: “We have to have hope to live here.”

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Levine and Rom reported from Tel Aviv.