It has been one month since Israel announced the expansion of its aggression on Lebanon as part of what it called “Operation Arrows of the North”. The operation’s stated goals according to Israel, are to destroy the capabilities of the Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah, to secure Israel’s northern border, and to ensure a safe return of Israeli settlers to the north.
However, all indicators have shown, so far, that Israel aims at achieving other goals from the escalation, one of which is to drag the West Asia region into an all-out war. The systematic targeting of civilians across Lebanon, may also be an indicator that Israel is interested in ethnically cleanse people of the region, while its aggression was not limited to just southern Lebanon, but rather extended to the Lebanese capital Beirut and other parts of the country. Israeli warplanes have even targeted areas close to Rafic Hariri International Airport and Al-Masnaa border crossing between Lebanon and Syria, along with hospitals and aid distribution centers.
Israel has once again proven that it enjoys impunity, which allows it to kill innocent people in a wholesale manner, displace them, widely destroy civil infrastructure, and target humanitarian workers and medics in full view of the world.
This brazen impunity has made many question if there is any line that Israel can’t cross. Lebanese-American journalist Rania Khalek wrote on X, on Wednesday, October 23 after the bombing of Tyre, “So the world is going to sit by and let the settler psycho state of Israel tantrum bomb our beautiful ancient coastal city of Tyre/Sur so they can make south Lebanon unlivable? And then what? Where does this lead?”
“These psychos want to turn everything around them into an apocalyptic moonscape. The worst thing that ever happened to the Middle East is the imposition of this terrorist Israeli regime. It needs to be dismantled immediately,” she added.
Humanitarian toll from the ongoing aggression on Lebanon
Israel has been targeting densely populated areas across Lebanon, since it began its cross-borders war with Hezbollah in October 2023, but the number of people killed by Israel across Lebanon has dramatically increased during the last month. In its last update, the Lebanese Health Ministry announced on Wednesday, October 23, that the death toll from the ongoing Israeli aggression on Lebanon has risen to at least 2,574 people killed and 12,001 others injured.
Israel has also systematically targeted medics since it launched the onslaught. According to the spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ravina Shamdasani, over 100 medical and emergency workers have been killed across Lebanon since October 2023.
United Nations staff members and peacekeepers were also among the casualties of the Israeli war machine. On September 24, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) mourned two of its staff in Lebanon after they were killed in Israeli airstrikes a day earlier. A couple of weeks later, the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) announced that four of its peacekeepers were injured when Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) bombarded its headquarters in southern Lebanon on two different occasions. A number of soldiers in the Lebanese army were also killed by Israel in the aggression.
Meanwhile, almost 1.2 million people across Lebanon have been forced to flee their homes. Only around 190,000 of them have been sheltered in over 1,000 facilities, while hundreds of thousands more have been sheltered by families or friends. Since the escalation of aggression, there have also been reports that homeowners and landlords who have opened their residences to displaced people have received phone calls reportedly from Israelis, threatening to bomb their homes if they continue to shelter people.
The impact of the Israeli aggression on the resistance capabilities
Since Israel began its escalation against Lebanon, it has sought to assassinate top Hezbollah leaders in a bid to undermine the resistance group and destroy its morale. On September 27, Israel announced the assassination of Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in a massive carpet bombing operation on Beirut’s southern suburb (Dahiyeh), dropping 80 bunker buster bombs. The next day, Hezbollah confirmed that its chief, was assassinated.
In early October, Israel announced that it targeted an underground bunker in Dahiyeh with intense airstrikes to assassinate Hezbollah’s Head of Executive Council and Nasrallah’s presumed successor Hashem Safieddine. The fate of Safieddine was unknown for three weeks as Israel was banning Lebanese rescue teams from reaching the bombed area.
In the early hours of Wednesday, October 23, Israel confirmed that Safieddine was assassinated in its airstrike that was launched on October 4. Later during the day Hezbollah issued a statement mourning its senior official, and promising “to continue the path of resistance and jihad until achieving its goals of freedom and victory.”
Israel’s approach towards Hezbollah has been to treat it as if it was an armed militia, ignoring that it has evolved through more than four decades in terms of its centralized hierarchical structure and advancement in weaponry. Hezbollah proved its resilience previously, with a major turning point being after its second Secretary-General and co-founder Abbas al-Musawi was assassinated in 1992 in an Israeli missile strike.
Furthermore, Hezbollah is a political party which has played a significant role in national and regional politics and has garnered widespread national support for forcing Israel’s troops to withdraw from territories that it had occupied in southern Lebanon in 2000.
The military achievements that Hezbollah already accomplished after the assassination of Nasrallah and Safieddine has further asserted that the resistance group has not been shaken by the absence of its top leaders. While Israel has been mainly targeting residential areas during its offensive on Lebanon, Hezbollah has remained focused on targeting Israeli military and intelligence sites. Hezbollah has been able to launch missiles of a longer range that have reached sites in Haifa, Tel Aviv, and other distant locations. Moreover, its drones penetrated Israel’s air defense systems without being detected multiple times.
In addition, IOF has endured grave losses in terms of personnel and equipment during its ground incursion into southern Lebanon, as it has been confronted by Hezbollah fighters’ tenacious combat capabilities. Hezbollah fighters have killed more than 70 Israeli personnel and wounded 600 others including officers and soldiers. They also destroyed 28 Merkava tanks, 4 military bulldozers and several armored vehicles, in addition to shooting down three Hermes 450, and one Hermes 900 drones.
The last month marked two qualitative attacks as part of the “Khaybar operations”, which Hezbollah began on October 1. Four Israeli soldiers were killed and dozens of others wounded when a Hezbollah launched an explosive-laden drone which detonated inside a dining hall in the training center of the Golani Brigade in Binyamina, south of Haifa, on October 13.
On October 19, Hezbollah targeted the house of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the central seaside town of Caesarea with a drone attack. Although Netanyahu’s office stated that the Israeli Prime Minister and his wife were not present at home at the time of the attack, the head of Hezbollah’s media office Mohammad Afif said “the coming days and nights and the battlefields are between us,” pointing out that similar attempts may be carried out in the future.
International efforts for de-escalation
On September 25, the United States, France and key allies issued a joint statement calling on Israel and Hezbollah to accept a three-week ceasefire proposal. On the next day, Netanyahu thwarted the proposal by ordering the Israeli military to keep fighting against Hezbollah in Lebanon “with full force”. International efforts for de-escalation have become dull ever since.
On October 15, Netanyahu said in a phone call with French President Emmanuel Macron, that he opposes a “unilateral cease-fire, which would not change the security situation in Lebanon and would return the country to its previous state,” according to a statement released by his office. “Israel would not agree to any arrangement that does not stop Hezbollah from rearming and regrouping,” the statement added quoting Netanyahu.
On Monday, October 21, US special envoy Amos Hochstein arrived in Beirut for talks with officials on a possible ceasefire deal between Israel and Hezbollah. The US diplomat, who has been completely absent from the scene during the entire month of Israeli massacres in Lebanon, highlighted that the implementation of UN Resolution 1701 is no longer enough to end the war. The resolution was adopted unanimously by the UN Security Council in 2006 with the purpose of ending hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, while calling for a permanent ceasefire based on the creation of a buffer zone.
Statements of US officials are apparently contradictory regarding the diplomatic resolution for the Israeli escalation in Lebanon. On Thursday, October 24, the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during a press conference in the Qatari capital Doha: “We’re working intensely to reach a diplomatic resolution, one that sees the full implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701 and as a result allows civilians on both sides of the border to return to their homes and to be able to live there in peace and security.”