Israeli ground troops are reporting “targeted ground operations” by their troops in southern Lebanon, but with the Defense Ministry ordering all the bridges across the Litani River destroyed yesterday, there is mounting fear that the invasion is going to get a lot broader.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said he views the destruction of the bridges and other civilian infrastructure in the south as a prelude to an invasion. Israel of course was already occupying parts of southern Lebanon since 2024, and had invaded deeper earlier this month.
Aoun saw the attacks as “an attempt to sever the geographical connection between the southern Litani region and the rest of Lebanese territory.” Israel’s operations are doing nothing to dispel that speculation, and indeed it seems in line with the visions of some of the far-right Israeli government members.
Map of southern Lebanon | Image from Wikimedia
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said he wants the war to end with “a different reality entirely” and that should include Israel annexing the whole region south of the Litani River outright. That would, naturally, be a severe violation of international law.
The area south of the Litani River has several hundred thousand people living within it, though they’ve been ordered evacuated by the Israeli military. It includes substantial cities, including the coastal city of Tyre.
Annexing the entire region into Israel outright conflicts with Israel’s previous scheme for the region, which was to forcibly depopulate much of the area south of the Litani River and rebrand it a “Trump economic zone.”
The Qasmiya Bridge, over the Litani River, was destroyed Sunday | Image from X
Either plan involves the forcibly relocation of a massive number of civilians from southern Lebanon, and Israel may indeed view that as a fait accompli at this point since they’ve evacuated the region and destroyed all the bridges that would have been used by those civilians to return to their homes when the danger has passed.
The danger isn’t expected to pass any time soon at any rate, with Israel’s Army Chief declaring the war to have “only just begun.” This leaves in excess of a million Lebanese civilians displaced from their homes in an open-ended manner, spanning the whole of the country’s south as well as suburbs of the capital city of Beirut, which Israel has similarly declared off-limits.
