The Israeli strikes on Dahiyeh, a densely populated southern suburb of Beirut, on Thursday were the latest in a series of military operations targeting Lebanon this week.
Residents of Hezbollah’s stronghold began fleeing their homes on Thursday after Israel issued a stern warning: “Save your lives and evacuate your residences immediately.”
The next bombardment, which has caused widespread destruction, came after days of Israeli interventions that included airstrikes, sending troops to Lebanese border villages and orders for residents to leave a large area of southern Lebanon in anticipation of operations there.
Lebanese authorities said Friday that Israeli strikes have killed at least 217 people and wounded 798 since Monday. Around 100,000 people have been expelled from their homes, a senior UN official said.
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As attacks in Dahiyeh continued, Hezbollah on Friday claimed responsibility for its own wave of attacks against Israeli forces in border positions, the occupied Golan Heights and a naval base in the port of Haifa.
As Israel begins the week fresh from a new war in Iran, Monday’s decision to open a second front in Lebanon came in response to an attack by Hezbollah, launched by the group to avenge the assassination of Iran’s former supreme leader. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
As Israel retaliated, Lebanon was drawn into a regional war that shows no signs of slowing, caught between Hezbollah and Iran on one side and the United States and Israel on the other.
Hezbollah ‘provided a pretext’ for Israeli attack
The military escalation has reignited internal divisions in the country. The government, which has been trying to disarm Hezbollah for several months, held an emergency cabinet meeting on Monday during which it decided to ban its military activities.
Lebanon bans Hezbollah military activities as Middle East war spreads
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Since the November 2024 ceasefire agreement with Israel, Hezbollah’s approach has been a careful lack of response to almost daily Israeli attacks in the south of the country.
The group’s attack on Israel on Monday was “irresponsible,” Lebanese Justice Minister Adel Nassar said. he told FRANCE 24. “It is inconceivable that a political party would take the initiative to fire rockets against another country, no matter how hostile it may be.”
While condemning Israel’s “disproportionate” response to the attacks, he said it was “clear that Hezbollah deliberately and consciously provided the pretext for Israel’s aggression.”
But Hezbollah remained defiant. Leader Naim Qassem on Wednesday took advantage of his first appearance since the start of the conflict in Iran to promise continued attacks against Israel.
“Hezbollah and its Islamic resistance are responding to Israeli-American aggression, and that is a legitimate right,” he said in a speech broadcast on his party’s television channel. “Our choice is to face it to the maximum sacrifice and we will not give up.”
‘Deadly ideology’
Attacking Israel was a “surprising political and military strategy” by Hezbollah, said Karim El Mufti, a researcher in political science and international law at Sciences Po, “as it amounts to self-destruction more than anything else.”
Hezbollah may have “chosen to press ahead with its suicidal and self-destructive logic,” he added.
Doing so would be in line with the group’s Shiite ideology, whose central tenet is the suffering and martyrdom of Imam Husayn, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad and third imam of Shiism, who was murdered in 680 in Karbala and is considered the “prince of martyrs.”
But the Lebanese population in general has little appetite for such ideals. “From a strictly military point of view, the consequences for the group and for Lebanon in general have completely discredited Hezbollah in the eyes of the Lebanese population,” Mufti said.
The Lebanese government’s decision to criminalize Hezbollah’s military activities could not have been approved without the support of Shiite ministers belonging to the Amal Movement, led by Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, formerly one of Hezbollah’s former political allies.
Berri’s decision to side with the government rather than the militant group was a political shock and a symbol of Hezbollah’s new political isolation.
“Hezbollah knows better than anyone, having tested Israel so many times, that Israelis will inevitably react fiercely,” said a representative of a political party that opposes Hezbollah, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“I have never seen a so-called resistance movement that is supposed to liberate the country from the occupier, do everything possible to give the occupier a pretext to send even more troops and create a buffer zone”
“If they want to commit suicide, let them go to their master in Tehran, far from Lebanon, because we can no longer tolerate their deadly ideology,” he added.
Patience ‘exhausted’
Anger against Hezbollah is growing beyond the political sphere, with some members of the Shiite community accusing the group of exposing their regions to further destruction.
Nassar said the general public was aware of the danger that “Hezbollah’s adventurism” posed “for the entire population, but more specifically for the population of the south, the Bekaa Valley and the southern suburbs of Beirut,” which are the three main strongholds of the Shiite party.
Hezbollah said on Wednesday that its fighters were involved in “direct” clashes with Israeli soldiers who had entered the Shiite-majority town of Khiam, 6 kilometers from the border. The group said its operations against the Israeli army in the area were continuing on Friday.
“The situation is critical, even tragic, as Hezbollah appears to have decided to go to war without taking into account the crises plaguing the country, including the misery and destruction already inflicted on the south during the previous conflict,” said Mahmoud Fakih, a journalist for the leading daily An-Nahar.
“In the midst of the Ramadan fast, entire families are once again forced to hit the road in search of a place to sleep. In central Beirut, displaced people from southern Lebanon have been sleeping in their cars for three days, with nowhere else to go.”
“The majority of Lebanese are against this war and the country’s participation in this conflict, given the suffering suffered just a year and a half ago. They consider Hezbollah’s initiative as military and political suicide,” he added.
“Patience in the face of Hezbollah’s actions has run out”
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While there is a lot of public anger toward Israel, “there is more anger toward Hezbollah than I have ever seen since it was formed in 1982,” said Hussein Ibish, a senior fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute, speaking from Beirut.
Many members of the Shiite community and the general population believe that the group “is recklessly dragging the country into a war that cannot be allowed and has absolutely no relevance for Lebanon. Patience for this routine and the excuse of fighting Israel has run out. It has not run out, it has run out,” Ibish added.
This article was adapted by Joanna York. Click here to read the original in French.
