Amid growing concerns about the state of the ceasefire, Israel is continuing to not only attack Lebanon, but to escalate, with strikes on Tuesday hitting multiple towns in the Iqlim al-Tuffah region of southern Lebanon. As usual, Hezbollah was the pretext.
Strikes targeted the towns of Jbaa, Azza and Roumine, with a number of civilian homes in Jbaa damaged in the salvos. The IDF claimed the strike was targeting a “training center” belonging to the Radwan Force, the elite group within Hezbollah.
In keeping with what tends to happen with IDF strikes on allegedly high-profile targets, the IDF made the claims but offered no evidence with which to substantiate them. Though the Radwan Force was historically described as a small, particular elite part of Hezbollah, the sheer number of times Israel has claimed to kill Radwan commanders or hit Radwan facilities in the past year would suggest a far larger organization than has ever been established to exist.
The escalation comes in the wake of the UN Security Council visit to Lebanon, during which the regions being constantly targeted were toured. Lebanese President Joseph Aoun reiterated his nation’s commitment to the ceasefire, and rejected accusations that Lebanon isn’t fulfilling its commitments, urging the ceasefire committee to conduct audits to that effect.
Israel has persistently claimed Lebanon is in violation of the ceasefire because it hasn’t fully disarmed Hezbollah and because, at least as Israel claims, Hezbollah is rearming south of the Litani River. Over the weekend, the UN peacekeeper commander said the group had seen no evidence that Hezbollah was actually rearming south of the Litani, and in the past, they’ve noted that the extent to which the Lebanese Army is hindered from operating in that area is the result of constant Israeli attacks, which of course violate the ceasefire themselves.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that the country would continue to act in Lebanon “without compromise” and predicted that the country would “soon need to return and operate there to preserve the gains achieved against Hezbollah.”
Smotrich is hardly the first Israeli to suggest a new war with Lebanon may be in the offing, but it must be asked whether this can even be considered a new war that Israel is threatening. Since the ceasefire went into effect in late November of 2024, Israel has carried out thousands of attacks on Lebanese territory, killing hundreds of people. In that sense, this wasn’t really a ceasefire at all, and the 2024 war never really ended.
