The War in Lebanon between Hezbollah and Israel: Insights from a High-Energy Airstrike Campaign
Hezbollah and Israel are fighting through the night. Israel issued more warnings to residents in southernLebanon to flee, and bombarded the area with hundreds of additional airstrikes, killing dozens more and wounding many others. Iran’s president warns in an interview with CNN that Lebanon must not become “another Gaza at the hands of Israel.” Israel says the head of Hezbollah’s missile division died in a strike.
The scope of Israel’s operation remains unclear, but officials have said a ground invasion to push the militant group away from the border is a possibility. Israel moved thousands of troops toward the border in preparation.
The United Nations said the fighting has displaced 211,000 people, including 85,000 now staying in public schools and other shelters. Airstrikes have forced 20 primary health care centers to shut down and disrupted access to clean water for nearly 300,000 people.
After an Israel strike a residential building in a crowded Lebanon suburb, the country announced it had killed Hezbollah’s military commander. Thirty-seven people were killed in the strike, including entire families, and dozens were wounded. Hezbollah confirmed A kilowatts death along with 15 other Hezbollah members. Akil had been wanted by the U.S. for involvement in a deadly attack on the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in 1983, according to the State Department. The Israeli military said there was an upcoming attack on northern Israel, similar to the one that began the war in Gaza.
According to Hagari, the main Hezbollah headquarters was hit by the strikes.
Israel’s killing of Hassan Nasrallah, the long-time Hezbollah leader, has transformed an already complex and deadly regional conflict, with a broad array of potential outcomes for Israel, Gaza, Lebanon and beyond.
Israel provided no immediate comment about the type of bomb or how many it used, but the resulting explosion levelled an area greater than a city block. The Israeli army has a large amount of guided bombs that can be used to hit subterranean targets.
Rescue workers went over huge slabs of concrete surrounded by high piles of twisted metal. One crater was caused by a car falling into it. The residents were seen running along a road outside of the district.
The Haret Hreik district, which is predominantly Shiite, was reduced to rubble by a series of blasts at around nightfall. The black and orange smoke was so thick that it could be seen from 30 kilometers north of Lebanon.
The news of the blasts came as Netanyahu was giving a press conference. A military aide whispered into Netanyahu’s ear as he came to an end of the briefing.
The Israeli Regime of Hezbollah and its Regime in the Middle East, and Its Implications for the United States and the Palestinians
As teams search through the rubble, the death toll is likely to rise. Israel launched a series of strikes in other areas after the initial blast.
According to the health ministry in Lebanon, six people have died and more than 90 are injured because of the strikes, but authorities say they are still clearing rubble, so that number is expected to rise.
An Israeli security official said the campaign against Hezbollah is expected to last only as long as the current war in Gaza lasts.
The people in the large crowd chanted, with their fists in the air, “We will never accept humiliation,” as they marched behind the coffins.
Hezbollah officials and their supporters are not giving up. Not long before the explosions Friday evening, thousands gathered in another part of Beirut’s suburbs for the funeral of three Hezbollah members killed in earlier strikes, including the head of the group’s drone unit, Mohammed Surour.
In the southern Lebanon city of Tyre, civil defense workers recovered the bodies of two women who were killed in the rubble of a building after it collapsed during a strike.
In Gaza, Israel aims to dismantle Hamas’ military and political regime, but the goal in Lebanon is to push Hezbollah away from the border — “not a high bar like Gaza” in terms of operational objectives, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to military briefing guidelines.
There was a happy mood among Israelis. One Tel Aviv apartment building played a song in Hebrew that said: “Oh Nasrallah, we will take you down and send you back to God along with all of Hezbollah.” The lifeguard at the beach announced that the rat was assassinated over the loudspeaker, with happiness, joy and cheer. The people of Israel live.”
Nasrallah only very rarely made public appearances during his 32-year tenure atop a group that several nations, including the United States, have labeled a terrorist organization.
Israel’s morale blow is not the end for Hezbollah, says Jordan’s General Relative Chief of the General Staff Herzi Halevi
Israel’s top military commander, Chief of the General Staff Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, issued a video statement Saturday, in which he said the unprecedented strikes Friday that had targeted Hezbollah’s leadership was “not the end” for what he termed Israel’s “toolbox.’
Amer Al Sabaileh, a Jordanian security expert and an observer of Hezbollah, said the group was in a crisis after two weeks of Israeli attacks and that Hezbollah leader Nasr Campbell was willing to take the high risk of his life to meet with other commanders.
“The level of shock among Hezbollah cannot be measured,” Al Sabaileh said. “Simply, they never expected that Israel would initiate and would continue, and does not stop attacking Hezbollah.”
Sanam Vakil is director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the British think tank Chatham House.
“Iran will be looking for some way to turn the tables and save some face,” Vakil wrote in a long series of online posts about the killing and its impact on Iran’s so-called “axis of resistance” that includes Hezbollah, Hamas and other militant groups like the Houthis in Yemen. The axis hasn’t proven effective at giving Iran deterrence against Israel.
But Orna Mizrahi, an Israeli security expert from the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, said Israel’s successes in degrading Hezbollah’s leadership structure and military capabilities could be leveraged to reach a lasting agreement that would force Hezbollah forces back from Lebanon’s border with northern Israel.
Hezbollah’s succession plans and the process by which Nasrallah may be replaced are opaque, but should follow a blueprint that saw his own elevation more than 30 years ago, according to Nick Blanford, a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs and long-time expert of Hezbollah based in Beirut.
“The morale blow is going to be massive for Hezbollah, but technically it should be a repetition of what happened in ’92,” says Blanford. Somebody else is being elected by the Shura Council.
Lammy said that they agreed on the need for an immediate ceasefire. Security and stability for the people of Lebanon and Israel need to be restored through a diplomatic solution.
The president called Nasrallah’s death “a measure of justice for his many victims, including thousands of Americans, Israelis, and Lebanese civilians.” He also reiterated full support for “Israel’s right to defend itself against Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and any other Iranian-supported terrorist groups.”
Three days of mourning were announced by Iraqi state television. On the station website, it said: “This heinous crime will heighten the spirit of resistance in people’s hearts and enhance the will of victory in facing the mean Zionist entity.”
Makki said Syrians are concerned with getting them to safety, and helping them in the humanitarian sense. “Nasrallah is a very huge individual in the region and has been part and parcel of the politics of the Middle East.”
Over 100,000 people have left Lebanon in the past week due to repeated Israeli strikes. Danny Makki, a journalist from Damascus, said many people have been pouring over the border to Syria.
Thousands of reserve soldiers have been called up in the last few days to bolster the country’s defense against Hezbollah, who have rained rocket fire on Israel from Lebanon.
The Hezbollah leader was killed in Lebanon in an Israeli airstrike and the group offered its sympathies to all who died with him.
Despite his death, Nasr Laden would remain a pillar of strength in the community, and would be remembered with his spirit, spirit, line and sacred approach.
Asked about Nasrallah’s killing, however, Biden said the longtime Hezbollah leader’s death was “a measure of justice” for victims of his four-decade “reign of terror.”
To highlight the attack’s potential to ignite an even wider Middle East conflict, the semiofficial Iranian news agency, Mehr, reported that an operational head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, Brig. Gen. Abbas Nilforoushan, had also been killed in the strike. Iran has long financed and supported Hezbollah, while also supplying weapons and missile technology to the group.
The attack on Hezbollah’s headquarters happened after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at the UN. An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with protocol, said Netanyahu greenlit the strike before he delivered his address.
Netanyahu spoke for the first time about Friday’s attack, stating that the assassination of Nasrallah was an “essential condition” of achieving his war goals.
The Israeli military ordered limitations on public gatherings in central Israel in a sign that the country was preparing for possible strikes by Hezbollah or other Iran-supported militias.
Nasrallah’s United Nations Address on September 26: Israel’s cease-fire against Israel, Lebanon, and the war with Israel and its allies in the Middle East
Biden said that Nasrallah made the fateful decision to join hands with Hamas and open a northern front against Israel.
The operation to take out Nasrallah happened in a larger context according to a statement by Biden. Hamas attacks against Israel.
Sept. 26: The United States and France proposed a 21-day cease-fire plan for Israel and Lebanon as the UN General Assembly in New York looked on. Israeli officials, including the prime minister, were quick to reject it.
Israel’s killing of Nasrallah, in particular, represents another dramatic new development for a conflict that has metastasized across the Middle East region since last October.
The latest exchanges of fire, combined with Israel’s preparations to invade southern Lebanon has mounted fears that the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah was heading toward an all-out war.
The projectiles that the Israel Defense Force said it had intercepted on Sunday were launched from Lebanon into Israel.
In a statement on the messaging app Telegram, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said its air forces targeted “buildings where weapons and military structures of the organization were stored.”
Benjamin Netanyahu returned to Israel early from the United Nations as it was believed that he was going to invade southern Lebanon.
There are sirens in Haifa and other northern Israeli towns. Israel said Haifa was targeted for the first time since the war began nearly a year ago.
27: Netanyahu said in New York that Israel was winning on multiple fronts by attacking Iran and its proxies in the Middle East. Many of the delegates in the U.N. hall leave in a public snub at the start of his address — in which he calls the U.N. a “swamp of antisemitic bile.”
There were 14 deaths and 450 injuries in a wave of bomb attacks in Lebanon, according to health officials. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant talks about achievements by Israel’s military and intelligence branches but does not mention device attacks of the previous two days.
