Israeli forces have escalated their attacks in Lebanon against Hezbollah, a U.S.-designated terrorist group, over the last couple of weeks, leading to an increase in the likelihood of an all-out war.
The Israeli military carried out a large number of airstrikes against Hezbollah targets Monday, killing more than 270 people and injuring more than 1,000 others, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. It represents the deadliest day of Israeli attacks there since at least 2006, when Israel last fought an all-out war with the Iran-backed militant group based in Lebanon.
The Israeli military also announced what it called a “targeted strike” in Beirut, which reportedly targeted Hezbollah’s southern front commander Ali Karaki, according to Axios.
Due to concerns that Hezbollah could carry out a cross-border raid targeting civilians near the northern border, as Hamas did on Oct. 7, 2023, in the southern part of the country, Israel evacuated more than 50,000 people from the northern communities who remain displaced. Lebanon has also evacuated tens of thousands from the areas in its south.
Israeli leaders have said the goal of their operations against Hezbollah is to return those families to their homes in the northern part of the country as their operations have intensified in recent weeks.
“This morning, the IDF launched extensive, proactive airstrikes, based on precise intelligence, aimed at degrading the capabilities and infrastructure of the Hezbollah terrorist organization in Lebanon,” Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said Monday. “This is infrastructure that Hezbollah has built over many years. So far, since this morning, more than 300 terrorist targets across Lebanon have been struck.”
Hagari also urged Lebanese civilians with knowledge that Hezbollah had hidden weapons in or near their homes in the Beqaa Valley to evacuate their homes, though he did not provide specific details. Israel has accused Hezbollah of hiding its arsenal in civilian homes near the border.
Other Israeli military leaders said they have carried out strikes on approximately 800 targets, including buildings where Hezbollah reportedly hid rockets, missiles, launchers, and drones, among other targets.
Hezbollah began launching rockets and missiles into northern Israel in the aftermath of Hamas’s attack that killed roughly 1,200 people, while Hamas kidnapped roughly 250 others. Israel and Hezbollah have engaged in cross-border attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel and visa versa. The conflict has largely been contained to those types of attacks, but both the rhetoric and operations have escalated recently.
Israel’s concern about a Hezbollah raid into northern Israel is reminiscent of the 2006 war between them that began when Hezbollah carried out a border attack that left three Israeli soldiers dead, while two others were kidnapped. Israel then launched a ground invasion into southern Lebanon, and the war lasted about a month. Hundreds of people were killed, while hundreds of thousands of people in Israel and Lebanon were displaced.
A United Nations Security Council resolution ended the war and called for Hezbollah to stay north of the Litani River, which is about 18 miles north of the Israel-Lebanon border. Hezbollah has not abided by the agreement and has a presence along that border.
Part of Israel’s mission of creating a safe enough environment to allow Israelis to return to their homes is to remove Hezbollah from the area south of the river.
“I think that by entering this war, [Hezbollah leader Hasan] Nasrallah made a little bit of a miscalculation,” Brian Carter of the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute told the Washington Examiner. “Nasrallah, I think, assumed that he could conduct these drone, rocket, mortar, etc. attacks across the border into Israel and that, given that Israel would be distracted in Gaza and all of that, Nasrallah may have felt that he could get away with this and Israel wouldn’t respond as aggressively as I think they’ve started to.”
Carter said Nasrallah’s miscalculation was not understanding “the change in Israeli psyche after Oct. 7 and just how unsustainable leaving tens of thousands of Israelis internally displaced for Northern Israel would be for the government.”
Israel likely doesn’t have the “stomach” or the “resources” to destroy Hezbollah “right now,” Carter said, adding that, instead, “Israel is going to have to try to create some sort of buffer zone between militarily … between northern Israel and basically areas controlled by the Lebanese government and Hezbollah.”
Over the last two weeks, Israel is presumed to be responsible for a significant attack against Hezbollah’s electronic communications that left many Hezbollah militants dead, and incurred some civilian casualties. Hezbollah militants’ beepers and walkie-talkies blew up simultaneously across the country on consecutive days, leaving the organization likely concerned about Israel’s ability to intercept its communications.
Days later, Israel carried out an airstrike in Beirut, targeting and killing Ibrahim Aqil, a senior Hezbollah leader, whom U.S. officials said was involved in two major bombings in 1983 that left more than 300 people dead, many of whom were Americans. Other Hezbollah leaders and civilians were killed in the strike. Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate for the attack.
The U.S. government believes that there is a diplomatic solution to ending the conflict as opposed to an escalation, though its efforts to prevent one have seemingly been largely futile at this point. Amos Hochstein, a senior advisor to President Joe Biden, has led the United States’s efforts to prevent a wider war between Israel and Hezbollah.
The Biden administration also believes that getting a ceasefire deal accomplished between Israel and Hamas could help reduce the tension between Israel and Hezbollah, though an agreement has eluded both sides for several months.
National security communications adviser John Kirby said over the weekend that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who is believed to be hiding in tunnels underneath Gaza, is the obstacle to a deal.
“He is the obstacle, no questions about it,” he explained on Fox News Sunday, adding, “It’s tough to get him to say yes to things that he’s already said he wants. It’s very, very difficult. But as the president said the other day, everything is unrealistic until all of a sudden it’s not anymore.”
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Roughly 100 hostages taken on Oct. 7 remain in Gaza, a handful of whom are Americans. Despite Sinwar’s refusal, the U.S. will press forward with trying to make a deal happen, though if he stands by his demands, the only solution to getting a deal done may be for Israel to capitulate to them.
“I think the U.S. theory here is that you get a Gaza ceasefire and Hezbollah stops rocketing Northern Israel, and then things are all good,” Carter said. “The problem with that is in order to get a ceasefire in Gaza, the Israelis would basically have to agree to the terms that are dictated by Hamas because Hamas is completely unwilling to agree to the Israeli terms.”