NEW YORK — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday vowed to carry out “full force” strikes against Hezbollah until it ceases firing rockets across the border, dimming hopes for a cease-fire proposal put forth by U.S. and European officials.

Israel carried out a new strike in Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, which it said killed a senior Hezbollah commander, and the militant group launched dozens of rockets into Israel. Tens of thousands of Israeli and Lebanese people living near their countries’ border have been displaced by the fighting.

Netanyahu spoke as he landed in New York to attend the annual U.N. General Assembly meeting, where U.S. and European officials were putting heavy pressure on both sides of the conflict to accept a proposed 21-day halt in the fighting to give time for diplomacy and avert all-out war.

Nearly 700 people have been killed in Lebanon this week as Israel dramatically escalated strikes, saying it is targeting Hezbollah’s military capacities. Israeli leaders say they are determined to stop the group’s cross-border attacks, which began after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack ignited the war in Gaza.

Israel’s “policy is clear,” Netanyahu said. “We are continuing to strike Hezbollah with full force. And we will not stop until we reach all our goals, chief among them the return of the residents of the north securely to their homes.”

Just before his comments, the Israeli military said it killed a Hezbollah drone commander, Mohammed Hussein Surour, in an airstrike in the suburbs of Beirut. Hezbollah did not immediately comment on the claim. The Health Ministry said two people were killed and 15 wounded in the strike.

Over the past week, Israel has carried out several strikes in Beirut targeting senior Hezbollah commanders. One strike in eastern Lebanon on Thursday killed 20 people, most of them Syrian migrants, according to Lebanese health officials.

Israel hit 75 sites early Thursday across southern and eastern Lebanon and launched a new wave of strikes in the evening, the military said. Throughout the day, Hezbollah fired about 175 projectiles into Israel, the Israeli military said. Most were intercepted or fell in open areas, sparking some wildfires, although one rocket hit a street in a town near the northern city of Safed.

Israel has talked of a possible ground invasion into Lebanon to drive Hezbollah — an Iranian-backed Shiite group that is the strongest armed force in Lebanon — away from the border. It has moved thousands of troops to the north in preparation. An estimated 100,000 Lebanese have fled their homes in the past week, streaming into Beirut and points further north.

The escalation has raised fears of a repeat — or worse — of the 2006 war between the two sides that wreaked destruction on large parts of southern Lebanon and other parts of the country and saw heavy Hezbollah rocket fire on Israeli cities.

“Another full-scale war could be devastating for both Israel and Lebanon,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said after talks in London with his British and Australian counterparts.

Hezbollah has not yet responded to the proposal for a pause in fighting. Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati welcomed it, but his government has no sway over the group.

Netanyahu’s office downplayed the initiative, saying in a statement that it was only a proposal and Israel would continue to defend against Hezbollah attacks from Lebanon.

Hezbollah has insisted that it would halt its strikes only if there is a cease-fire in Gaza, where Israel has battled Hamas for nearly a year. That appears out of reach despite months of negotiations led by the United States, Egypt and Qatar.

One day after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza, Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel, bringing Israeli counterfire and a cycle of reprisals that has gone on nearly daily.

Israeli leaders now say they are determined to drive Hezbollah from the border area to allow its citizens to return home. It says its escalated strikes across Lebanon the past week are targeting Hezbollah rocket launchers and other military infrastructure. Since Monday, strikes have killed more than 690 people in Lebanon.

Hezbollah in turn has fired hundreds of rockets into Israel, saying they are targeting Israeli military positions. Several people in Israel have been wounded. On Wednesday, the group fired on Tel Aviv for the first time with a longer-range missile that was intercepted.

Meanwhile, the head of the Palestinian Authority denounced Israel and its offensive in the Gaza Strip in front of world leaders Thursday, appealing to other nations to stop what he called a “genocidal war” against a place and people he said had been totally destroyed.

Mahmoud Abbas used the rostrum of the U.N. General Assembly as he typically does — to criticize Israel. But this was the first time he did so since the attacks by Hamas on Israel that triggered the Israeli military operation that has devastated the Gaza Strip.

He accused Israel of destroying Gaza and making it unlivable. And he said his government should govern post-war Gaza as part of an independent Palestinian state, a vision that Israel’s hard-line government rejects.

Abbas has had little influence in Gaza since Hamas overthrew his forces and seized power in the territory in 2007.