What to Know about the Growing Conflict between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah

The past week has seen a rapid escalation in the nearly yearlong conflict between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. First came two days of exploding pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah — deadly attacks pinned on Israel that also maimed civilians across Lebanon.
Hezbollah’s leader vowed to retaliate, and on Friday the militant group launched a wave of rockets into northern Israel, The Associated Press reported. Later in the day, the commander of Hezbollah’s most elite unit was killed in a strike in Beirut that killed dozens more people.
The cross-border attacks ramped up early Sunday, with Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed group that is Lebanon’s most powerful armed force, launching more than 100 rockets deeper into northern Israel, with some landing near the city of Haifa. Israel launched hundreds of strikes on Lebanon.
Then, on Monday, Israel launched a series of strikes that killed more than 490 Lebanese, the deadliest attack since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war. Israel warned residents in southern and eastern Lebanon to leave their homes ahead of a spreading air campaign against Hezbollah.
Many fear the escalating violence could lead to an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah, which would further destabilize a region already shaken by the fighting in Gaza. Both sides have said they don't want that to happen, even as they have defiantly warned of heavier attacks.
Israel and Hezbollah have launched repeated strikes against each other since the Gaza war began, but both sides have pulled back when the spiral of reprisals appeared on the verge of getting out of control, under heavy pressure from the US and its allies. But in recent weeks, Israeli leaders have warned of a possible bigger military operation to stop attacks from Lebanon to allow hundreds of thousands of Israelis displaced by the fighting to return to homes near the border.
Here are some things to know about the situation:
What were the latest strikes? More than 1,600 Lebanese were injured in Monday's deadly strikes and thousands more fled southern Lebanon. Israel said it was targeting Hezbollah weapons sites, and had hit some 1,600 targets. Lebanon's health minister said hospitals, medical centers and ambulances had been struck.
The Israeli military warned residents to immediately leave areas where Hezbollah is storing weapons. The Lebanese media said the evacuation warning was repeated in text messages.
Hezbollah said it had fired dozens of rockets toward Israel, including at military bases, and officials said a series of air-raid sirens were ringing out in northern Israel warning of rocket attacks.
On Friday, an Israeli airstrike brought down a high-rise building in Beirut’s southern suburbs, killing Ibrahim Akil, the commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan unit, and other top unit leaders. Israel said Akil led the group’s campaign of rocket, drone and other fire into northern Israel. At least 45 people were killed in that attack and more than 60 wounded.
That strike came after the shock of the electronic device bombings, in which thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah detonated on Tuesday and Wednesday. At least 37 people were killed, including two children, and around 3,000 were wounded. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.
Analysts say that attack had little effect on Hezbollah’s manpower, but could disrupt its communications and force it to take tighter security measures.
What is the situation on the border? The Israel-Lebanon border has seen almost daily exchanges since the Israel-Hamas war began on Oct. 7. Before Monday, the exchanges had killed around 600 people in Lebanon – mostly fighters but also about 100 civilians — and about 50 soldiers and civilians in Israel. It has also forced hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate homes near the border in both Israel and Lebanon.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah promised to retaliate for the electronic device bombings. But Hezbollah also has proved wary of further stoking the crisis. The group faces a difficult balance of stretching the rules of engagement by hitting deeper into Israel in response to its brazen attacks, while at the same time trying to avoid the kind of large-scale attacks on civilian areas that can trigger a full-scale war that it could be blamed for.
Hezbollah says its attacks against Israel are in support of Hamas. Last week, Nasrallah said the barrages won’t end — and Israelis won’t be able to return to homes in the north — until Israel’s campaign in Gaza ends.
What is Israel planning? Israeli officials say they haven’t yet made an official decision to expand military operations against Hezbollah – and haven’t said publicly what those operations might be. Last week, though, the head of Israel’s Northern Command was quoted in local media as advocating for a ground invasion of Lebanon.
Meanwhile, as fighting in Gaza has slowed, Israel has increased its forces along the Lebanese border, including the arrival of a powerful army division believed to include thousands of troops.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant last week declared the start of a “new phase” of the war as Israel turns its focus toward Hezbollah.
“The center of gravity is shifting to the north,” he said.
A UN-brokered truce to the 2006 war called on Hezbollah to pull back 29 kilometers (18 miles) from the border, but it has refused, accusing Israel of also failing to carry out some provisions. Israel is now demanding Hezbollah withdraw eight to 10 kilometers (five to six miles) from the border – the range of Hezbollah’s anti-tank guided missiles.
The monthlong 2006 war, triggered when Hezbollah fighters kidnapped two Israeli soldiers, included heavy Israeli bombardment of southern Lebanon and Beirut and a ground invasion into the south. The strategy, Israeli commanders later said, was to inflict maximum damage in areas where Hezbollah operated to deter them from launching attacks.
But Israel could have a more ambitious goal this time: to seize a buffer zone in south Lebanon to push back Hezbollah fighters from the border. A fight to hold territory threatens a longer, even more destructive and destabilizing war – recalling Israel’s 1982-2000 occupation of southern Lebanon.
What would be the impact of a full-blown war? The fear is that a new war could be even worse than the one in 2006, which was traumatic enough for both sides to serve as a deterrent ever since.
The fighting then killed hundreds of Hezbollah fighters and an estimated 1,100 Lebanese civilians and left large swaths of the south and even parts of Beirut in ruins. More than 120 Israeli soldiers were killed and hundreds wounded. Hezbollah missile fire on Israeli cities killed dozens of civilians.
Israel estimates that Hezbollah now possesses about 150,000 rockets and missiles, some of which are precision-guided, putting the entire country within range. Israel has beefed up air defenses, but it’s unclear whether it can defend against the intense barrages of a new war.
Israel has vowed it could turn all of southern Lebanon into a battle zone, saying Hezbollah has embedded rockets, weapons and forces along the border. And in the heightened rhetoric of the past months, Israeli politicians have spoken of inflicting the same damage in Lebanon that the military has wreaked in Gaza.

Israel's military campaign to eradicate Hamas in retaliation for the October 7 attack has weakened it by killing several of its leaders and thousands of fighters, and by reducing swaths of the territory it rules to rubble.

But the Palestinian armed group has not been crushed outright, and a year on from its unprecedented attack on Israel, an end to its hold over Gaza remains elusive.

Hamas sparked the Gaza war by sending hundreds of fighters across the border into Israel on October 7, 2023, to attack communities in the south.

The attack resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures, which include hostages killed in captivity.

Vowing to crush Hamas and bring the hostages home, Israel launched a military campaign in the Gaza Strip from the land, sea and air.

According to data provided by the health ministry of Hamas-run Gaza, the war has killed more than 41,000 people, the majority civilians. The United Nations has acknowledged these figures to be reliable.

- Dead leader -

In one of the biggest blows to the movement since it was founded in 1987 during the Palestinian intifada uprising, Hamas's leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Iran on July 31.

Both Hamas and its backer Iran accused Israel of killing Haniyeh, though Israel has not commented.

After Haniyeh's death, Hamas named Yahya Sinwar, whom Israel accuses of masterminding the October 7 attack, as its new leader.

On the Gaza battlefield, Israeli forces have aggressively pursued both Sinwar and Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif, whom Israel says it killed in an air strike.

Hamas says Deif is still alive.

"Commander Mohammed Deif is still giving orders," a source in Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, told AFP on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to media on the matter.

- 'Number one target' -

A senior Hamas official who also asked not to be named described Sinwar, who has not been seen in public since the start of the war, as a "supreme commander" who leads "both the military and political wings" of Hamas.

"A team is dedicated to his security because he is the enemy's number one target," the official said.

In August, Israeli officials reported the dead in Gaza included more than 17,000 Palestinian fighters.

A senior Hamas official acknowledged that "several thousand fighters from the movement and other resistance groups died in combat".

Despite its huge losses, the source in the group's armed wing still gloated over the intelligence and security failure that the October 7 attack was for Israel.

"It claims to know everything but on October 7 the enemy saw nothing," he said.

Israel has its own reading of where Hamas now stands.

In September, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that Hamas "as a military formation no longer exists".

Bruce Hoffman, a researcher at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that Israel's offensive has dealt a "grievous but not a crushing blow" to Hamas.

- 'Political suicide' -

Hamas has controlled Gaza and run its institutions single-handedly since 2007, after winning a legislative election a year earlier and defeating its Palestinian rivals Fatah in street battles.

Now, most of Gaza's institutions have either been damaged or destroyed.

Israel accuses Hamas of using schools, health facilities and other civilian infrastructure to conduct operations, a claim Hamas denies.

The war has left no part of Gaza safe from bombardment: schools turned into shelters for the displaced have been hit, as have healthcare facilities.

Hundreds of thousands of children have not gone to school in nearly a year, while universities, power plants, water pumping stations and police stations are no longer operational.

By mid-2024, Gaza's economy had been reduced to a "less than one-sixth of its 2022 level," according to a UN report that said it would take "decades to bring Gaza back" to its pre-October 7 state.

The collapse has fueled widespread discontent among Gaza's 2.4 million people, two-thirds of whom were already poor before the war, according to Mukhaimer Abu Saada, a political researcher at Al-Azhar University in Cairo.

"The criticism is harsh," he told AFP.

His colleague Jamal al-Fadi branded the October 7 attack as "political suicide for Hamas", which has now "found itself isolated".

Hamas political bureau member Bassem Naim dismissed the assessment.

"While some may not agree with Hamas's political views, the resistance and its project continue to enjoy widespread support," said Naim, who like several other self-exiled Hamas leaders lives in Qatar.

What to Know about the Growing Conflict between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah