Israel continues to carry out attacks across southern Lebanon, with artillery shelling reported in Mansouri and Zawtar al-Shariya and civilian homes being destroyed in multiple occupied municipalities.
Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri issued a statement warning the government against ceding any rights to pursue legal action over Israel’s commission of genocide on Lebanese soil, calling for them instead to seek of unified national legal response to the invasion “free of sectarian calculations.”
Berri is a Shi’ite, but as required under Lebanese law, the premier is a Sunni and the president a Christian. Berri suggests that branch of the government, as having different priorities on the invasion and occupation, given the south is heavily Shi’ite, and Israel has framed the war as chiefly targeting Lebanon’s Shi’ites.
Zawtar Al-Gharbieh, Zawtar Al-Gharbieh, Lebanon: A Lebanese family salvage some belongings from their devastated home in the southern Lebanese village of Zawatar al-Gharbieh. Civilians started returning slowly the devastated hamlet after the army deployed inside the village following an Israeli withdrawal from several points inside it. (Credit Image: © Marwan Naamani/ZUMA Press Wire)
“What Israel wants is not Hezbollah, its weapons, Amal, or the Shiite community. Lebanon itself, its unity and civil peace, are the target,” Berri added. Though Israel has heavily publicized its destruction of entire Shi’ite villages in the far south, the mass expulsion of Lebanese civilians has impacted everybody, not just Shi’ites.
And indeed, those expulsions are still impacted hundreds of thousands of civilians, according to the UN. The UNHCR issued a new statement noting that while over 800,000 people returned home over the summer (largely over Israeli objections), more than 350,000 remained prevented from returning home, and that repeated Israeli attacks continue to cause further “localized displacement” even among the returnees.
Israel, for its part, continues advancing deeper into Lebanon, with Ali al-Taher Ridge the most recent focus of the offensive. They’ve also expressed growing dissatisfaction with the Lebanese military, who they envision as meant to support their ongoing invasion with a mission to disarm Hezbollah, the militia that is materially the only group resisting the invasion.
Though the Lebanese government has broadly agreed to disarm Hezbollah in hopes of placating Israel, Hezbollah has not agreed to be disarmed. In practice, it’s not clear the Lebanese military could affect that disarmament in the best of the times, and they’ve often cited the danger of operating in the areas Hezbollah is active in at any rate, because the ongoing Israeli invasion and occupation makes Lebanese troops every bit the target it makes the rest of Lebanon’s population.
