An Israeli drone attacked a car at the Zarout mosque south of the Lebanese capital city of Beirut, seriously wounding one person, who security sources suggested was a Hezbollah member. Hezbollah has not confirmed that, and officials have not directly identified the man.
The mosque is located between the towns of Jiyeh and Barja, roughly 30 kilometers south of Beirut. Lebanese soldiers secured the site after the attack, and images show the car badly burned in the strike, though incredibly no one was killed.
Israel has not commented on this strike so far, which comes a day after a flurry of strikes further east in the Bekaa Valley, which killed at least five people. Four of the slain were reportedly Hezbollah members.
Israel has been launching an ever increasing number of airstrikes across Lebanon in recent days, and the US has been threatening a new Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon if they don’t complete the disarming of Hezbollah as demanding by US officials. In practice Israel is already occupying parts of Lebanon and actively attacking them at any rate though.
And while Israel has publicly praised the planned disarmament, and is pushing the idea of forcibly depopulating all of southern Lebanon in favor of a partially Israeli-occupied “Trump zone.” It doesn’t appear this has stopped or even slowed the Israeli attacks, however, and lobbying groups are suggesting Israel should escalate further to punish Lebanon for not doing it even faster.
Lebanese Foreign Minister Youssef Raggi said on Tuesday that it is the government’s intention to have Hezbollah fully disarmed south of the Litani River within three months. It is not clear they have a timetable for full disarmament in the rest of the country, though the Lebanese cabinet has voted in principle in favor of doing so.
In practice, disarmament is likely to be extremely difficult, as Hezbollah has made clear they oppose being disarmed while Israel is attacking Lebanon. The Lebanese Army is relatively small and their ability to forcibly monopolize all arms within Lebanon, despite fitting the US and Israel ideals, is going to be a major challenge for them to pull off.
The November ceasefire was meant to see Hezbollah removed from the area south of the Litani River, and the group largely has withdrawn from that area. The problem is that ceasefire was also meant to see Israeli troops withdraw, which they haven’t, and was meant to end Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon, which still happen on a near daily basis.
