The last Israeli invasion of Lebanon “ended” in November 2024 with a ceasefire, and since that ceasefire went into effect, Israel has launched over a thousand attacks on Lebanese territory. Those strikes are continuing to grow in intensity in recent months, and this weekend alone, major attacks killed a dozen people in Lebanon and wounded scores of others.
Though Israel escalates more or less as a matter of course on any pretext, increasing talk of a new war with Iran has framed the recent escalation as about trying to drag Lebanon into that war as well, and Lebanese officials are reportedly unable to get any international assurances that they won’t simply be sucked into the next Iran war.
Though Hezbollah hasn’t launched any attacks on Israeli territory since the ceasefire went into effect, Israel has long framed them as an Iranian proxy and while that was once a branding Iran used to try to increase their deterrence capabilities in the region, it’s now just an excuse for Israel, content with their next war on Iran at any rate, to escalate the war they’re already waging on Lebanon.
Aftermath of an Israeli attack in Beirut, Lebanon October 22, 2024. REUTERS/Yara Nardi
Hezbollah, for its part, has suggested growing disquiet about the Israeli attacks, framing this weekend’s attack as a “massacre” and suggesting both that the government should stop participating in the ceasefire committee, and that Hezbollah itself increasingly has no options left but resistance to Israeli aggression.
The US is meant to be overseeing the ceasefire, and while Lebanon’s government keeps attending conferences on the ceasefire, there is little sign the US is going to do anything about the constant Israeli attacks on Lebanese territory in violation of that ceasefire, while continuing to berate Lebanon for not acting even more aggressively against Hezbollah, which again hasn’t launched any attacks since the ceasefire went into effect.
On the apparent eve of a new war, and with Israel never really ending the old war, Lebanese officials are trying to placate them with promises to further disarm Hezbollah, though Hezbollah is increasingly reluctant to cooperate with those efforts, noting that it’s neither decreasing the rate of Israeli attacks on Lebanon nor leading to Israel withdrawing its ground troops from Lebanon.
