♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ announcer: funding for presentation of this program is provided by... woman: two retiring executives turn their focus to greyhounds, giving these former race dogs a real chance to win. a raymond james financial advisor gets to know you, your purpose, and the way you give back. life well planned. announcer: funding was also provided by,

the freeman foundation. and by judy and peter blum kovler foundation, pursuing solutions for america's neglected needs. announcer: and now, "bbc news" christian: hello, i'm christian fraser. this is "the context." >> i have a message for the people of lebanon. israels war is not with you, it is with hezbollah. for too long hezbollah has been using you. >> this evening, israel the east. the idf is saying it has destroyed in one day what has taken hezbollah 20 years to build. >> is the dilemma that israel faces, even as it ups the ante

again to hezbollah, it is inciting hezbollah to attack further into israel. so far, no sign of those attacks diminishing. if anything, they are increasing. >> he is not likely to do anything unless cost is inflicted on him that the country can no longer fathom. christian: the united states is sending more troops to the middle east as israel continues to pound targets across lebanon including the capital beirut. president biden says his team is working to de-escalate the crisis, not a strategy that to this point has been very effective. how concerned then should we be of a wider regional conflagration? also tonight, labor's plans to bolster u.k. investment. we will explain whether the chancellor can find a extra government spending. and coming to america.

president zelenskyy begins a weeklong tour, ending with his plan to defeat russia. let's see if we can fix the gremlins with our sound along the way. for 11 months, israel and hezbollah have been locked in an escalating war of attrition that many have borne could lead to all-out conflict. maybe this was the day. the israelis have beenounding targets. the idf says it has had around 1100 hezbollah positions in southern lebanon and south beirut. more than 350 people were killed and more than 1000 injured in the bombardment. dozens of rockets were also fire the other way into northern israel. hezbollah says they will continue to resist. the pentagon says it is sending a small number of additional troops to the middle east amid the growing crisis.

we will expect a statement from the israeli army spokesperson. before that, our senior international correspondent. >> southern lebanon awoke to th is. it looks like all-out war. the israeli army said it hit 800 sites linked to hezbollah. it issued in-style warnings, telling residents to go, but they had little time to act. >> we ask residents of lebanese villages to pay attention to the message and morning published by the idf and heed them. this is an advanced morning for your own safety and the safety of your family. >> but where to find safety in the middle of all of this?

on the road from the south, a mass exodus. >> ahmed said everyone fled his village because of airstrikes and destruction. there is no one left, he says. we took our belongings and went. so many new homeless now in this expanding war. in beirut, too, fear on the streets and they rush to get home. >> are you feeling afraid? sure, mohammed tells me. i am afraid for myself, my wife, and my five children. i don't know what to do. how long will we be living through this? we cannot keep going. parents were summoned to schools to pick up their children early.

there were threats by phone, he says, that they would hit beirut. some in the capital have been getting recorded messages telling them to leave. that includes lebanon's information ministry. for months, there have been fears of a wider war. now the waiting is over, it is here. israel's escalation is a huge risk and not just for lebanon but the whole middle east. christian: let me show you the live pictures from jerusalem. we are watching the podium where the spokesperson -- actually tel aviv -- where he will speak in the next few minutes. this will be in english, so we will get an update as to their strategy which we will talk about in the company of our chief international correspondent lyse doucet. joining us also is a middle east

correspondent for "the economist." on the balance of things where we are tonight, what do you think -- where would you put things tonight? >> it is hard to describe a balance. it has been a deadly day, unprecedented numbers. israel said it hit more than 800 targets. that is the highest of any day since october 8 when this tit for tat began along the lebanon-israel border. hezbollah fired a record number of missiles into northern israel, 165. i am sure the numbers will continue to go up. unprecedented numbers of casualties, too, on the lebanese side. prime minister netanyahu said they want to change the balance of forces in the north. statements today saying we are destroying what hezbollah has built up over the past two decades. we are waiting for the statement.

it is clear it will not be the end of this. this is the beginning. of course, with this ratcheting up more stairs of the escalatory letter, the question is what can bring them down the ladder, will they keep going up? christian: i want to understand what the strategy is here. let's start with hezbollah. what was hassan nasrallah's strategy after october 7, did it work, where do they find themselves tonight after dragging lebanon into another war? >> the strategy was to launch what he calls a support front in solidarity with hamas in gaza. the idea was to tie down a percentage of israel's troops along the border and put military pressure on israel that might eventually compel it into ending the war in gaza, reaching a cease-fire with hamas. it has not been successful in doing that.

to some 60,000 people have fled their homes and have not been able to go back for at least a year. the military pressure hezbollah has put on israel has not compelled it to end the war in gaza. that is still going a year later. i don't think that's a scenario that hassan nasrallah anticipated when he started this. now he finds himself in a position where his choices are to end a show of solidarity with palestinians in gaza, stop firing at israel, which would be a huge humiliation for him, iran, other proxies in the region, or continue fighting as he has done and risk this ever greater escalation in the fight with israel. christian: what about israel? separate to the strategy in gaza, their idea was to push according to resolution 1701, which was tied up after the 2006 war that we covered.

was that likely to ever be achieved without a stalemate? >> looking back to the aims of the 1996 war, i was based in the region then, and the 2006 war that we both saw. the aims are the same this time. they want to degrade hezbollah's ability to fire rockets into israel, push them north of the river, further away from the israel-lebanon border. in this case, they want to allow some 60,000 israelis were taken out of their homes under zbollah fire last october, allow them to return to their homes. these were suddenly added to the other war aims for gaza. it was not clear why they were added then. now it's clear from the beginning of the gaza war, the second front is now the hottest one, even though the fighting is still continuing in gaza today.

no sign of that elusive cease-fire which would end the suffering of gazans and bring israeli hostages hom christian: there is plenty of precedent if you want to go back in history, creating this buffer zone after the war in 1982. israeli presence was there for 16 years until they withdrew. is there any suggestion this will be any different? >> no, and that is why hezbollah came to exist in the first place, that 18-your occupation by israel of south lebanon. hezbollah came up as a group fighting the israeli occupation. that won it a fair amount of support from the sheet -- shiite constituency and lebanese. there is no reason to think that an israeli occupation of south lebanon would end any

differently. it comes at a time when hezbollah has let a lot of support inside lebanon. there are many who are angry about their decision to get involved in this war on behalf of hamas, to bring more to lebanon. then anger is growing in recent days after the pager and walkie-talkie attacks, this heavy series of airstrikes over the past couple ds. there are a lot of people in lebanon who are furious with the group because it has embarked on a more that it doesn't seem to have any way to win, get out of. the one way that it can help to regain popularity in lebanon, reason for being, is an israeli ground invasion of lebanon that would allow hezbollah once again to say it is a resistance movement fighting against an israeli occupation of lebanese land. to do itgain, having not lessene -- learned the lessons of the last 18 months would be the height of folly. >> clearly set out what the

strategy is for hezbollah was from the beginning of this second front in the gaza war. of course, there is also the other element of it. from the beginning, hezbollah and iran have tried to act in a way which raises the temperature but never raised it so high that this would tumble into an all out war in which they would both pay very dearly. they seem to he been the strategy of hassan nasrallah from his very first speech he made in the midst of the rising tensions. what has happened, hezbollah has suffered month in, month out. the assassination of one of their commanders. ali karaki reported to have been killed has been injured, which is what hezbollah says. those spectacular pager, walkie-talkie attacks either killed or mutilated a large number of its middle ranking

officers. they are suffering a lot. of course, the israeli rocket fire. this still is not an all out war. it can get a lot worse on both sides. but it has been a steady escalation in which hezbollah is losing a lot. christian: on that point, greg, not talking about the role of iran in this. for so many years, hezbollah has been the deterrent for iran, using them as a proxy. now they are hanging on, which is sort of table in some respects, iran having to come into a war it doesn't want to be involved in. >> it does turn the tables and it's a second time in a year that iran finds himself in uncomfortable positions. first, you had october 7, and by all accounts, according to officials, iran was not briefed on hamas' plan for the massacre on october 7.

it found suddenly it's proxies were being pulled into a conflict that it didn't have any say in starting, and the ability to veto. now hezbollah is in a position where the organization was set up to be iran's shield, deterrent against israeli or american attack on iran's nuclear facilities in particular. now that the term and needs help to deter israel. the iranians have made it pretty clear, not just over the past couple of days, but the past few months, one thing they are not willing to do is go to battle on behalf of their proxies. they have not directly intervened on behalf of hamas, not so far on behalf of hezbollah. the only time they have directly struck at israel was when their own personnel was being attacked in april with the strikes on their consulate in damascus. aside from that, the iranians don't want toet directly involved. the whole point of setting up

these proxies is to keep conflict away from their borders. the last thing the iranians want to do is be directly fighting on behalf of those proxies. christian: which leaves us with the united states who stand in support of israel hitting a prescribed terror group which continues to fire at israeli homes. they sent more troops the region today. joe biden saying that we are trying to de-escalate. as i said, that has not been very effective to this point. does america have no leverage over this? >> another sign of american weakness in this fight. their closest ally in the region, an ally they have been sending large amounts of financial and military aid to keep the war going, they came up with the expression on their was an escalation to achieve a de-escalation. in other words, hit as hard as you can in the hopes that will trigger an easing of tensions. so far that does not seem to have worked. it often doesn't work in this

region, especially when you see a ratcheting up, both sides trying to outdo their enemy. in the process, raising the temperature. president biden is supposed to be talking again to prime minister netanyahu. he has been asking again and again to clinch that cease-fire in gaza. now his own official is going back and forth between beirut and tel aviv for months. hochstein was in tel aviv the night that prime minister netanyahu added lebanon to the wargames. christian: thank you very much. we will take a short break. around the world and across the u.k., you are watching bbc news.

we were going to go to a break. just looking, he is in tel aviv, he has just started. >> the architect of this plan and other senior air force commanders in beirut. at the time of the strike, this hezbollah commanders were meeting to plan and october 7 style attack in northern israel to make sure that hezbollah cannot carry out such an attack and in order to enable all 60,000 israelis to safely return back to their homes in northern israel. we must act against the threat. this threat is just a few hundred meters away from the communities and families in northern israel. today, based on precise intelligence, we conducted extensive strikes against hezbollah targets in lebanon

that posed an imminent threat. the idf strike 1003 targets until now including long-range cruise missiles, heavyweight rockets with000 kilo warheads. this is the same type of rocket that was used in the attacks that killed 12 innocent children. we also struck a short and medium range rocket, uavs, all pable of causing major damage to civilian towns and cities as part of our efforts to mitigate harms to civilians. we provided advanced warning to civilians in specific villages in lebanon where hezbollah embedded its military assets and weapons and warned them to move out of harm's way. however, even as we called on civilians to move away from

danger, we saw that hezbollah operatives were doing the opposite and acted to prevent civilian moving safety this is because hezbollah uses civilian population and civilian homes as a human shield for its terrorist activities. today, we exposed the strategy, showing how hezbollah uses civilian homes as a cover for their deadly weapons and these images, you can see how hezbollah hides long-range rocket's with a range of hundreds of kilometers inside the attic of a house in the heart of a village in south lebanon. you can see here that the rocket is stored on a hydraulic system and is prepared for a launch out of an opening in the roof, directed. under this attic, a family lives and serves as a human shield for hezbollah. the idf strikes today we saw

many secondary explosions such as this. behind every secondary explosion, there is a building containing deadly munitions, rockets, missiles, triggering such a reaction like you see here. it is likely that some of the casualties are from the secondary explosions. here you can see a house used by hezbollah to store its weapons. in the footage here following our strike, on the weapon secondary explosions, clearly seen. a rocket fired and hit a nearby house. let me be clear. hezbollah is responsible for this situation. this is hezbollah's plan to turn south on lebanon into a battlefield for its attacks on israel. we cannot accept terrorist groups storing weapons inside people's homes.

using them to hire and other civilian communities. the international community must condemn hezbollah's great violation of international law and actions that endanger civilians on both sides of the border. the idea makes a past efforts not to hit civilians and make every effort to mitigate harm to activity. during operational regarding the high number of casualties, everyone is a tragedy in lebanon. among those killed were a large number of hezbollah terrorists who were next to the weapons that we targeted. israel is facing threats on all fronts. continuing to act against them in defense for the people of israel. we have many other missions to carry out.

we have to bring back home all our hostages that are held in cruel conditions by hamas. we have to bring them back home. we have to continue dismantling hamas' capabilities in gaza. and we have to bring security to every israeli citizen in the north and in the south. questions, please. >> two questions from ap. the first, israel have been battling hamas for nearly a year and still has not realize all of its goals in gaza. are we looking at the possibility of months and fighting in lebanon as well? second question, is the army prepared for a ground invasion now? if the order comes, how quickly could ground forces move in? >> israel had been battling hamas, this is true, for a year. hamas did the seventh of

october, a horrible massacre. we have to fight and dismantle hamas. during the defeat of hamas, there is no other way to make sure there is security of our borders and bring back home all of our hostages. at the same time, the world should remember, on the eighth of october, hezbollah started a war. israel did not attack lebanon, did not attack hezbollah. they started firing on israeli citizens in the northern border and has been doing this for over 11 months with 9000 rockets, 60,000 israelis have left their homes. we have to act to stop the threat of hezbollah. hezbollah was planning to do a larger scale of massacre than the seventh of october in northern israel. we have to make sure that in any one of our borders we are saved

and there is no threaof a seventh of october in any one of our borders. never again. is the army prepared? yes, the army is in full readiness. we will do whatever is necessary to bring back home all of our citizens to the northern border safely. >> question from cnn, the cabin has declared a special situation nationwide. rockets have been fired near tel aviv. you have killed hundreds in lebanon. is israel prepared for a third lebanon war? >> the special situation that was declared by the government allows us to do different kinds of things in the home front. we still have not changed the policy. we are looking in observing the situation continuously all along the day, and we will do that also tomorrow. we have to make sure we provide

safety for our citizens. we will do that also in attack and defense, as well. we have to say, the resilience of israelis is what gives us a lot of power in the idf to keep on doing attacks, defense, doing all of this war for many months. the resilience of the israelis is strong and we are ready to face whatever it needs for the future. regarding the condition of the third lebanon war, we are not looking for wars. we are looking to take down the threat. there will not be a seventh of october threat in the northern border. it has to be a safe border where hezbollah is pushed back from the border, and there are no threats like missiles, rockets, uav's threatening our communities, our citizens. this is our mission.

we will do whatever is necessary to achieve this mission. we hope to do it as shortly as we can. christian: daniel hagari in a press conference in tel aviv. announcer: funding for presentation of this program is provided by... financial services firm, raymond james. announcer: funding was also provided by, the freeman foundation. and by judy and peter blum kovler foundation, pursuing solutions for america's neglected needs. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ announcer: "usa today" calls it, "arguably the best bargain in streaming." that's because the free pbs app lets you watch the best of pbs anytime, anywhere.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ announcer: funding for presentation of this program is provided by... woman: two retiring executives turn their focus to greyhounds, giving these former race dogs a real chance to win. a raymond james financial advisor gets to know you, your purpose, and the way you give back. life well planned. announcer: funding was also provided by