Israel has stepped up psychological pressure on southern Lebanon in recent weeks, dropping warning leaflets over border villages, publishing maps of targeted areas and carrying out intensified airstrikes that in some cases hit residential buildings.
Residents and analysts say the strategy is aimed at isolating Hezbollah from its local support base by shifting the cost of its military activity onto civilians.
On Saturday, Israeli drones scattered leaflets over the village of Mais al-Jabal urging residents not to rent homes to Hezbollah or cooperate with the group.
The warnings coincided with a surge in air raids on Hezbollah positions, military sites and areas where civilians live. Within days, Israeli strikes stretched from Nabatieh in the south to Baalbek in the east, culminating in direct evacuation orders for residential buildings.
“The message is clear: keep away from Hezbollah or risk paying the price,” said retired Lebanese brigadier general Khalil Helou. He told Asharq Al-Awsat that Israel was moving from targeting commanders and weapons depots to striking civilian neighborhoods, citing recent leaflets over Mais al-Jabal, Debbeen and Kfar Tebnit.
Helou said the campaign seeks to enforce an informal buffer zone of 3 to 4 km inside Lebanon’s border without deploying troops, by pressuring residents not to return to their homes or rent them to Hezbollah members. Such a strategy, he said, aims to deprive Hezbollah of cover for launching Kornet anti-tank missiles, which have inflicted heavy Israeli losses and remain hard to intercept by Iron Dome defenses.
He noted that while Israel has long tried propaganda to drive a wedge between Hezbollah and its support base, the new factor is the combination of psychological warnings with airstrikes on homes. “The immediate goal is to create a social rift and push people to view Hezbollah as a burden, though its support base remains cohesive out of a perceived need for protection,” Helou said.
The airstrikes themselves have grown more destructive, with Israeli jets dropping 500-kg bombs on residential buildings. Analysts say this is meant both to terrify Hezbollah’s community by hitting the heart of civilian neighborhoods and to signal that any infrastructure suspected of military use will be targeted.
Helou said the escalation is carefully timed, coinciding with the anniversary of the assassination of Hezbollah’s former leader Hassan Nasrallah and with the UN General Assembly in New York, where Lebanon’s delegation is present. “Israel wants Lebanon raised as a security threat in international forums,” he said.
Still, he and other analysts downplayed the prospect of an imminent ground war. “What we are seeing is not preparation for a full-scale invasion but a continuation of a long war of attrition,” Helou said. He noted that any major ground operation would require at least two weeks of military build-up, while Israel is still bogged down in Gaza.
