BEIRUT (AP) — The latest war between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has escalated quickly.
Israeli strikes hit multiple neighborhoods in central Beirut, bringing down a multistory apartment building on Wednesday on a main thoroughfare and blasting out walls in others. The bombardment came after Hezbollah launched a barrage of dozens of missiles into Israel the previous night.
In southern Lebanon, Israeli troops are massing in preparation for a potential major ground invasion, while combat is already underway in some border areas.
Attempts by Lebanese officials to enter into direct negotiations with Israel to halt the fighting have been unsuccessful. Neither Hezbollah nor Israel appears to have any immediate desire to stop the war.
Israel hopes that this round will finally enable it to defang the threat on its northern border. Hezbollah sees it as an existential struggle. Whatever the outcome, the war will have farther-reaching consequences in Lebanon and throughout the region.
What led up to this war
Israel and Hezbollah have fought multiple wars since the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group was formed in the 1980s as a guerrilla force fighting against Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon at the time.
On March 2, two days after Israel and the U.S. attacked Iran, sparking the widening war in the Middle East, Hezbollah launched missiles toward Israel. It said that the salvo was in retaliation for the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and for “repeated Israeli aggressions” in Lebanon.
The resumption of fighting between the two longtime enemies came 15 months after a U.S.-brokered ceasefire halted their previous war. Since the ceasefire, Israel had continued to launch near-daily airstrikes in Lebanon, which it said aimed to stop Hezbollah from regrouping. Israeli troops also continued to occupy five hilltops on the Lebanese side of the border.
Hezbollah, meanwhile, was under domestic and international pressure to surrender its remaining arsenal. The group stayed largely quiet and didn’t enter the fray during last year’s Israel-Iran war. Many believed that the group was too weakened to fight after suffering heavy losses in the 2024 conflict.
Why Hezbollah entered the war
Hezbollah’s decision to resume the war startled and angered many in Lebanon — including from within the group’s Shiite base — who accused the group of giving Israel an excuse to escalate.
But Mohanad Hage Ali, a senior fellow at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, said from Hezbollah’s perspective, entering the regional war was rational.
Iran was facing an existential threat, and Hezbollah “is backed and funded and trained by the Iranian regime,” he said. The collapse of the Islamic Republic would “basically mean the death of Hezbollah as a project.”
Furthermore, had Hezbollah not entered the fray, Hage Ali said, the militant group expected that Israel would still have likely launched an offensive against it sooner or later.
From Hezbollah’s perspective, he said, “There’s no point in continuing to be a sitting duck until Israel finishes off your main ally and comes for you. It makes more sense that you join your ally in the war and try to achieve a ceasefire as part of a package.”
Impacts of the war
As of Wednesday, 968 people had been killed by Israeli strikes in Lebanon since March 2, including 77 women and 116 children, according to the country’s health ministry, with more than 2,400 wounded.
More than 1 million people have been displaced in Lebanon, where Israel has issued a series of blanket evacuation warnings for the country. Many are sleeping in cars, on the streets or in overcrowded schools turned into shelters.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said Wednesday in a statement that “since March 2nd, Israel has been attacked from Lebanese territory more than 2,000 times with missiles and drones.” Most were intercepted or fell in open areas. The Israeli army has announced that two soldiers were killed fighting in southern Lebanon. It hasn’t said how many were wounded.
No serious civilian casualties have been reported in Israel as a result of fire from Lebanon, but the steady stream of missiles and drones has residents on edge in northern Israel. Many are angry that the government hasn’t offered to pay to evacuate them as it did during the last war, when tens of thousands were displaced.
Ground invasion prospects
U.N. peacekeepers stationed in southern Lebanon have seen an “evident” buildup of Israeli forces along the border, said Kandice Ardiel, spokesperson for the peacekeeping force known as UNIFIL.
“Peacekeepers are seeing concentrations of IDF (Israel Defense Forces) troops in at least half a dozen locations near the Blue Line in Lebanese territory,” she said, referring to the border between the two countries.
UNIFIL forces have heard clashes around the villages of Odaisseh and Khiam and “have seen IDF ground incursions in some cases at least 5 kilometers (3 miles) into Lebanese territory,” Ardiel said.
But they have then withdrawn rather than setting up permanent positions, she said.
An Israeli military official said that several thousand soldiers are inside Lebanon, concentrated primarily along the border area for what he described as a defensive operation meant to protect nearby Israeli communities. He said that the operation is still in the beginning stages of a gradual process that could lead to a large-scale invasion and deeper incursion. He spoke on condition of anonymity under military briefing guidelines.
Lebanon’s army hasn’t been an active participant in the fighting, but on Tuesday, three Lebanese soldiers were killed in Israeli strikes. The Israeli military said that it was investigating.
Lebanon-Syria border
Tensions have also been rising on Lebanon’s eastern border with Syria.
Last week, Syria’s military accused Hezbollah of launching artillery shells across the border toward Syrian army positions, which Hezbollah denied.
Reports later surfaced that the U.S. had proposed that Syria — whose government has hostile relations with Iran — send forces across the border to fight Hezbollah. U.S. envoy to Syria Tom Barrack on Tuesday denied the reports.
A high-ranking Syrian official also denied that such a plan had been proposed and said that discussions had centered only around preventing cross-border smuggling and the use of Syrian land by Hezbollah. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to comment publicly, said that Syria had informed the Lebanese government that it wouldn’t interfere in Lebanon.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told The Associated Press on Saturday that Turkey had “been approached by the Lebanese officials” about trying to diffuse the tensions “and we talked with our Syrian counterparts” to facilitate it. Fidan said that Turkey hasn’t spoken directly with Hezbollah since the war started.
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Josef Federman in Jerusalem, and Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel, contributed to this report.
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