Israel strikes Hezbollah-run financial institution

Rescue workers use a bulldozer to remove rubble of destroyed buildings at the site of an Israeli airstrike.

By Sarah el Deeb and Samy Magdy

Oct. 21, 2024 Updated 3 PM PT

BEIRUT — Israel said late Monday it planned to carry out more strikes in Lebanon against a Hezbollah-run financial institution that it targeted the night before and which it says uses customers’ deposits to finance attacks against Israel.

At least 15 branches of Al-Qard al-Hassan were hit late Sunday in the southern neighborhoods of Beirut, across southern Lebanon and in the eastern Bekaa Valley, where the militant group Hezbollah has a strong presence. One strike flattened a nine-story building in Beirut that housed one branch.

The Israeli military issued evacuation warnings ahead of the strikes, and there were no reports of casualties.

Israeli military spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said late Monday that Israel planned more strikes in the coming hours. Residents of the coastal region of Ouzai, near Beirut’s airport, reported airstrikes after evacuation warnings from the Israeli military.

Israeli ground forces invaded Lebanon this month. The military said it aims to push Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon so that Israelis can return to their homes nearby after more than a year of cross-border rocket and drone attacks. Israeli airstrikes have pounded large areas of Lebanon for weeks, forcing over a million people to flee their homes.

Hezbollah has been launching rockets into Israel nearly every day since Hamas’ deadly raid into Israel last year that sparked the war in Gaza.

The United States is hoping to revive diplomatic efforts to resolve both conflicts after the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar last week, but so far all sides appear to be digging in.

Hezbollah-run lender filled gaps left by Lebanon’s troubled banks

The Arabic-language spokesman for the Israeli military, Avichay Adraee, said that Hezbollah stores hundreds of millions of dollars in the branches of Al-Qard al-Hassan, without providing evidence, and that the money is used to purchase arms and pay fighters. The strikes were aimed at preventing the group from rearming, he said.

The institution, which has more than 30 branches across Lebanon, tried to reassure customers, saying it had evacuated all branches and relocated gold and other deposits to safe areas.

Many customers are civilians unaffiliated with Hezbollah. Al-Qard al-Hassan, which is sanctioned by the United States and Saudi Arabia, has long served as an alternative to Lebanon’s banks, which have imposed restrictions since a severe financial crisis that began in 2019.

Bulldozers cleared mounds of rubble at the site of one strike. Clothes, furniture and the remains of a beauty salon were seen in the debris. Al-Qard al-Hassan documents were scattered across the area, but there was no sign of cash or other valuables.

Hagari, the Israeli military spokesperson, said Iran funds Hezbollah by sending cash and gold to the Iranian Embassy in Beirut, though he did not provide any evidence.

Hagari also said, without providing evidence, that Israeli intelligence had discovered a bunker belonging to former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah now being used as a finance vault under a hospital in south Beirut, and that it held millions of dollars in gold and cash.

A member of Lebanon’s parliament who is the hospital’s director, Fadi Alameh, denied the claim, and said the hospital has underground operating rooms. He said the facility was being evacuated in anticipation of strikes.

Hagari said Israeli strikes in Beirut in early October and in Syria on Monday had also killed people responsible for transferring money between Iran and Hezbollah. Syrian state media said an Israeli airstrike hit a car in the capital, Damascus, killing two people and wounding three.

Israeli airstrikes killed 17 people in Lebanon on Monday, including four first responders, according to the country’s health ministry.

U.S. envoy says UN resolution that ended past war is ‘no longer enough’

U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein, who has spent much of the past year trying to broker a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah, was back in Lebanon on Monday for talks with senior officials.

He said United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, was “no longer enough” to ensure peace and a new mechanism was needed to enforce it.

The resolution called for Hezbollah to withdraw from the border with Israel and for U.N. peacekeepers and the Lebanese army to control southern Lebanon, without any Hezbollah or Israeli presence.

Israel says the resolution was never implemented and that Hezbollah built up extensive military infrastructure right up to the border. Lebanon has long accused Israel of violating its airspace and failing to abide by other provisions of the resolution.

“1701 was successful at ending the war in 2006, but we must be honest that nobody did anything to implement it,” Hochstein said after meeting with Lebanese parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a political ally of Hezbollah who is involved in cease-fire talks.

U.S. tries to revive Gaza cease-fire talks after Sinwar’s death

The United States has expressed hope that Hamas leader Sinwar’s death could give new impetus for a cease-fire in Gaza, which would give a major boost to parallel efforts to halt the fighting in Lebanon.

The head of Israel’s Shin Bet security agency, Ronen Bar, visited Egypt for the second time in less than a week and met with Egyptian officials on Sunday, according to an Egyptian official who was not authorized to brief media and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The official said Egypt, a key mediator between Israel and Hamas, remains opposed to any Israeli presence along the Gaza-Egypt border, a key sticking point in talks that sputtered to a halt in August.

Hamas has said its demands remain unchanged after the killing of Sinwar. The militant group has said it will release dozens of Israeli hostages only in return for an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, a lasting cease-fire and the release of a large number of Palestinian prisoners.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to destroy Hamas and recover all the captives and says Israel must maintain an open-ended security presence in Gaza to keep Hamas from rearming.

On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led militants blew holes in Israel’s security fence and stormed in, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting another 250. Around 100 captives are still being held in Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.

Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who do not distinguish combatants from civilians in their tally but say most of the dead were women and children. The war has destroyed large areas of Gaza and displaced about 90% of its population of 2.3 million people.

Deeb and Magdy write for the Associated Press. Magdy reported from Cairo. AP writers Julia Frankel in Jerusalem, Bassem Mroue in Beirut, and Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, contributed to this report.