Will Rising Israeli Losses in War on Hezbollah Lead it to Agree to a Ceasefire?https://english.aawsat.com/features/5075534-will-rising-israeli-losses-war-hezbollah-lead-it-agree-ceasefire
Will Rising Israeli Losses in War on Hezbollah Lead it to Agree to a Ceasefire?
Smoke rises from the site of an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, Beirut, Lebanon, Lebanon, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024. (AP)
A prevailing impression is growing in Lebanon that the only way for Israel to end its war on Hezbollah is when its losses on the ground become too great for it to ignore.
Israel is incurring deaths in the South on a nearly daily basis as the war approaches the one-month mark.
Observers are in agreement that the battle is difficult for both Israel and Hezbollah, raising questions about whether Israel was prepared for the number of losses.
Founder and CEO of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis (INEGMA) Riad Kahwaji wondered: “Are the Israeli losses expected or acceptable and withing reason? Only time will tell.”
“If the battle goes on for more weeks, then it is evidence that it was expected; if it stops within days, it means that the losses exceeded their expectations and they will have to reconsider their options,” he told Asharq Al-Awsat.
He noted that Israel is losing four to five soldiers on a daily basis.
The fighting will likely go on as diplomatic efforts to reach a ceasefire continue.
Israel doesn’t always reveal the number of its casualties, but estimates have said they reached 40 in recent days. Hezbollah, on the other hand, stopped declaring the death of its fighters last month.
The Iran-backed party’s casualties had reached 508 in the latest tally. Estimates today believe the figure to have reached a thousand.
Israeli media on Sunday reported that 22 soldiers and officers were killed in fighting in Gaza and southern Lebanon last week. The Israeli army announced the death of one soldier on Sunday and four on Saturday in the South. Israeli media said 88 soldiers were wounded in the past 48 hours of fighting.
Kahwaji said the ground battles are a normal part of the war and Hezbollah is very prepared for them. It has dug tunnels and built fortifications and knows the terrain very well, so the Israeli army is inevitably going to incur losses and Israeli military officials have acknowledged the difficulty of the battle.
Kahwaji highlighted Hezbollah’s decision to stop declaring its losses since the pager attack last month.
“Since then, we no longer hear anything about the party’s losses. The Israeli army, however, cannot hide its casualties,” he remarked.
Despite Truce, Lebanese from Devastated Naqoura Cannot Go Home https://english.aawsat.com/features/5104652-despite-truce-lebanese-devastated-naqoura-cannot-go-home%C2%A0
Cars drive past damaged buildings, as residents return to Naqoura, near the border with Israel, southern Lebanon, January 23, 2025. (Reuters)
TT
TT
Despite Truce, Lebanese from Devastated Naqoura Cannot Go Home
Cars drive past damaged buildings, as residents return to Naqoura, near the border with Israel, southern Lebanon, January 23, 2025. (Reuters)
All signs of life have disappeared from the bombed-out houses and empty streets of the Lebanese border town of Naqoura, but despite a fragile Hezbollah-Israel ceasefire that has held since November, no one can return.
The Israeli military is still deployed in parts of Lebanon's south, days ahead of a January 26 deadline to fully implement the terms of the truce.
The deal gave the parties 60 days to withdraw -- Israel back across the border, and Hezbollah farther north -- as the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers redeployed to the south.
The Lebanese military has asked residents of Naqoura not to go back home for their own safety after Israel's army issued similar orders, but in spite of the danger, Mayor Abbas Awada returned to inspect the destruction.
"Naqoura has become a disaster zone of a town... the bare necessities of life are absent here," he said in front of the damaged town hall, adding he was worried a lack of funds after years of economic crisis would hamper reconstruction.
"We need at least three years to rebuild," he continued, as a small bulldozer worked to remove rubble near the municipal offices.
Lebanese soldiers deployed in coastal Naqoura after Israeli troops pulled out of the country's southwest on January 6, though they remain in the southeast.
The Israelis' withdrawal from Naqoura left behind a sea of wreckage.
Opposite the town hall, an old tree has been uprooted. Empty, damaged houses line streets filled with rubble.
Most of the widespread destruction occurred after the truce took hold, Awada said.
"The Israeli army entered the town after the ceasefire" and "destroyed the houses", he said.
"Before the ceasefire, 35 percent of the town was destroyed, but after the truce, 90 percent of it" was demolished, he added, mostly with controlled explosions and bulldozers.
A resident previously displaced because of the hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, stands in his damaged home as he returns to Naqoura, near the border with Israel, southern Lebanon, January 23, 2025. (Reuters)
- Smell of death -
Under the November 27 ceasefire deal, which ended more than a year of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese army has 60 days to deploy alongside UNIFIL peacekeepers in south Lebanon as Israel withdraws.
At the same time, Hezbollah is required to pull its forces north of the Litani River, around 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the border, and dismantle any remaining military infrastructure it has in the south.
Both sides have accused each other of violations since the truce began.
Around the nearby UNIFIL headquarters, houses are still intact, but almost everywhere else in Naqoura lies destruction.
Facades are shorn from bombed-out houses, while others are reduced to crumpled heaps, abandoned by residents who had fled for their lives, leaving behind furniture, clothes and books.
AFP saw a completely destroyed school, banana plantations that had withered away and unharvested oranges on trees, their blossoming flowers barely covering the smell of rotting bodies.
On Tuesday, the civil defense agency said it had recovered two bodies from the rubble in Naqoura.
Lebanese soldiers who patrolled the town found an unexploded rocket between two buildings, AFP saw.
In October 2023, Hezbollah began firing across the border into Israel in support of its ally Hamas, a day after the Palestinian group launched its attack on southern Israel that triggered the Gaza war.
An Israeli army spokesperson told AFP that its forces were committed to the ceasefire agreement in Lebanon.
They said the army was working "to remove threats to the State of Israel and its citizens, in full accordance with international law".
UN vehicles drive past debris of damaged buildings in Naqoura, near the border with Israel, southern Lebanon, January 23, 2025. (Reuters)
- 'We want the wars to end' -
On the coastal road to Naqoura UNIFIL and the Lebanese army have set up checkpoints.
Hezbollah's yellow flags fluttered in the wind, but no fighters could be seen.
Twenty kilometers to the north, in Tyre, Fatima Yazbeck waits impatiently in a reception center for the displaced for her chance to return home.
She fled Naqoura 15 months ago, and since then, "I haven't been back", she said, recounting her sadness at learning her house had been destroyed.
Ali Mehdi, a volunteer at the reception center, said his home was destroyed as well.
"My house was only damaged at first," he said. "But after the truce, the Israelis entered Naqoura and destroyed the houses, the orchards and the roads."
In the next room, Mustafa Al-Sayed has been waiting with his large family for more than a year to return to his southern village of Beit Lif.
He had been forced to leave once before, during the previous war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.
"Do we have to take our families and flee every 20 years?" he asked. "We want a definitive solution, we want the wars to end."
