Demolitions and shelling continue apace against southern Lebanon as Israeli occupation forces continue to show no signs of withdrawing, and officials suggested that the token pullbacks agreed to during the most recent “peace deal” are simply not going to happen.
The “pilot zone” pullbacks were never meant to be more than a symbolic move to begin with, offering Lebanon a PR win even as Israel only actually left a couple of tiny, insignificant parts of southern Lebanon.
Almost immediately it was announced that the IDF was “postponing” the pilot zone plan, which meant to hand those small zones to the Lebanese military, over concerns that Shi’ites might conceivably be involved. The suggestion now is that nothing may happen until the October Israeli elections.
A boy inspects the damage at the site of an overnight Israeli strike in the southern city of Tyre, Lebanon, May 23, 2026. REUTERS/Aziz Taher
Israeli Ambassador to the US Yechiel Leiter, who is now claiming to be leading the negotiations, insisted that the withdrawal wasn’t technically “delayed” but that it was always meant to be contingent on Hezbollah being totally dismantled and removed from those areas before Israel would consider leaving.
“Hezbollah has no business in Lebanon,” Leiter said, adding that “Israel and Lebanon are on the same page.” That page, it seems, is for a continued occupation until Lebanon manages to accomplish something that virtually no one serious believes they can accomplish.
In the meantime, this “same page” relationship continues to involve not only Israel firing artillery shells against southern Lebanese towns and villages, but Israeli ground troops inside Lebanon actively demolishing homes wholesale, and setting buildings on fire in the villages Israel’s Defense Ministry has said before need to “disappear.”
Another major explosion was reported yesterday in the southern town of Bint Jbeil, one of the towns that the IDF made the biggest deal of having conquered earlier in the war, and now seems to relish destroying with large scale demolitions. In smaller villages and in the neighborhoods of Hadatha, the demolition seems to mostly involve setting homes on fire.
