Israel has launched a ground invasion of Lebanon after two weeks of intense airstrikes on Hezbollah targets, while the militant group has stepped up its cross-border rocket attacks and fought back against the incursion. Iran-backed Hezbollah and Israel have been sworn enemies for decades, with each committed to the other’s destruction. Israel’s precision strikes on Beirut have seen it take out senior Hezbollah commanders, and most notably the leader of the group, Hassan Nasrallah.
Tehran yesterday launched a barrage of ballistic missiles into Israel in revenge for the killing, and Hezbollah, whose command and firepower has been decimated by Israeli attacks, has vowed to fight on. Israel says Iran will face consequences for the attack, and has vowed to keep fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon until its objectives are met. So what are they? And why did the conflict begin in the first place?
Why did Israel start airstrikes on Lebanon? Since the outbreak of the war in Gaza last year, Hezbollah has been launching near-daily rocket attacks on northern Israel. The Lebanese militia, which along with Palestinian terror group Hamas is part of Iran’s Axis of Resistance, has said it will continue striking Israel until there is a ceasefire in Gaza. Israel’s Defence Forces have been firing back on southern Lebanon, forcing tens of thousands of people to flee.
Border communities in Israel were also evacuated, with some 60,000 residents moved south after daily rocket attacks worsened from October 8. On September 17, Israeli officials took the decision to destroy as much of Hezbollah’s arsenal as possible in a more intense campaign. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that improving security in the north of Israel, making it possible to safely return evacuated Israelis to their homes, would become an official war aim.
What are Israel’s objectives? Laying out Israel’s aims in the campaign against Hezbollah, an Israeli official said that it wants to degrade the militants’ ability to fire rockets over the border, as it has done for 11 months. They added that it hopes to push Hezbollah fighters back from the border and destroy the group’s infrastructure and weapons. The official said these would have been used to attack ‘Israeli communities in the north, to massacre, murder, and kidnap Israeli civilians’. Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said the raids were designed to prevent Hezbollah from conducting an ‘October 7-style massacre’. ‘Hezbollah turned Lebanese villages next to Israeli villages into military bases ready for an attack on Israel,’ he said.
Hezbollah’s weapons are believed to be scattered throughout Lebanon, with one Israeli official saying the country is ‘peppered’ with them. Israel has long sought to push Hezbollah back across the Litani River, which marks the northern edge of a UN-declared zone intended to serve as a buffer between Israel and Hezbollah after their 2006 war. They say their most recently added war objective – to return thousands of residents to communities near the northern border – requires the security situation in the area to be improved. Hezbollah has vowed to prevent that from happening, with the group saying its goal is to stop Israel from achieving its objectives.
What has the ground invasion looked like? The IDF said on Tuesday that it had launched ‘limited, localised and targeted’ raids against Hezbollah inside Lebanon. It said the operation is aimed at destroying the group’s ‘infrastructure’, which it says poses ‘an immediate threat to Israeli communities in northern Israel’. Part of this infrastructure includes a network tunnels, thought to extend hundreds of miles, which Israel said Hezbollah has dug right up to its northern border. On Tuesday, IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari revealed that Israeli forces had already carried out more than 70 smaller raids with special forces since the beginning of the war.
During the raids, he said the IDF destroyed several Hezbollah positions, tunnels, and thousands of stashed weapons that could have been used by the terror group to invade Israel . While the Israeli air and ground operations have been hailed as successful by Israeli officials, they have also come with losses. The IDF said on Wednesday afternoon that the first soldiers have been killed since its ground incursion began. Eight soldiers were confirmed to have died after a commando unit caught in a Hezbollah ambush near the village of Adaisseh.
Where is the Israeli advance? Apart from the clash near Adaisseh, which was confirmed by the IDF, it is unclear exactly where Israeli raids have taken place, as Israel seeks to keep the locations of its troops under wraps. Hezbollah has reported clashes with Israeli troops in at least two different locations. The group’s media officer Mohammad Afif claimed its fighters inflicted losses on Israeli units in the villages of Adaisseh and Maroun al-Ras. Israel has warned people in southern Lebanon to leave their homes and evacuate to the north of the Awali River, some 36 miles from the border. It is much further than the Litani River, which marks the northern edge of a UN-declared zone intended to serve as a buffer between Israel and Hezbollah.
What is the Blue Line and resolution 1701? The Blue Line is a UN-mapped line separating Lebanon from Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Any unauthorized crossing of the Blue Line by land or by air from any side constitutes a violation of UN Security Council resolution 1701. The resolution is designed to allow peacekeepers to help Lebanon’s state army keep the buffer zone – between the blue line and Litani river – free of weapons or armed personnel other than those belonging to the Lebanese state. UN peacekeepers known as UNFIL were first deployed to patrol Lebanon’s southern border with Israel in 1978 after Israel invaded south Lebanon.
After years of occupation of the area, the IDF withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000, with the UN establishing the blue line to demarcate the two territories. Then in 2006, after Hezbollah fighters attacked IDF soldiers south of the blue line, Israel launched a heavy retaliation in the north, sparking a war which raged for 34 days. Following the war, the UN expanded the peacekeepers’ mandate. Hezbollah, which effectively controls southern Lebanon, has built up its cache of weapons there, despite the presence of the Lebanese army. While there was relative calm for nearly two decades, Resolution 1701’s terms were never fully enforced, and now the effort to achieve peace appears futile. ‘Any crossing into Lebanon is in violation of Lebanese sovereignty and territorial integrity, and a violation of resolution 1701,’ UNIFIL said in a statement after news of the Israeli ground incursion emerged. The UN peacekeeping mission called on Israel and Hezbollah ‘to step back from escalatory acts,’ saying that ‘civilians must be protected, civilian infrastructure must not be targeted and international law must be respected.’
What impact has Israel’s campaign had on Hezbollah so far? Israel’s recent airstrikes in Lebanon destroyed about half of the missiles and rockets that Hezbollah had accumulated over more than three decades, according to senior Israeli and American officials. Its attacks have also decapitated the Hezbollah organisation, taking out Nasrallah and almost all the top brass in the chain of command below him. However the group’s acting leader Naim Qassem said it will swiftly replace Nasrallah and all those killed, and vowed to push ahead with its attacks on Israel. Hezbollah’s arsenal remains formidable, with tens of thousands of projectiles stored in locations across Lebanon, according to US and Israeli officials.
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