On Friday night, the bombs struck one after another. Thunderous booms and shockwaves erupted throughout the Lebanese capital of Beirut. Large pillars of smoke billowed from the southern suburbs, visible from well outside the city.
Even though the Israeli strikes were on Beirut’s southern suburbs — more commonly called Dahieh — people living miles away said that they thought the bombings were happening just outside of their homes due to the intensity of the airstrikes and the size of the bombs used.
For many, it brought back the painful memories of the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri on Feb. 14, 2005, or even the more recent Aug. 4, 2020 Beirut Port explosion due to the sheer intensity of the explosions and how much it rippled throughout the Lebanese capital.
It soon emerged that Israel targeted what it claimed was Hezbollah’s most important command center located underneath Dahieh’s streets. But Israel did more than just target a command center. The strikes killed Hezbollah’s longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah — an individual that, despite Israeli leaders’ rhetoric, few thought Israel would dare try to kill. On Saturday, Sept. 28, the day after the strike, Hezbollah confirmed its leader’s death.
On Monday, three days after Nasrallah’s assassination, Hezbollah’s deputy leader, Naim Qassem, delivered a televised address, the first by a high-ranking member of the party’s leadership since its leader’s death.
In it, Qassem said that Hezbollah would continue the fight Israel. He also insisted Hezbollah was still fully capable of taking on Israeli forces despite a brutal offensive that has taken out many of its leaders.
As of Sunday, two weeks of Israeli attacks had killed more than 1,000 people, according to Lebanese authorities, and have displaced at least a million more. Since Oct. 7, when the Israeli war on Gaza began, the total death toll was around 1,700.
These strikes came after a week and a half of escalations between Hezbollah and Israel. The escalation started when Israel detonated thousands of explosive-rigged Hezbollah pagers across the country and then led to Israel’s massive air offensive on Lebanon.
It was not just Hezbollah that Israel has targeted though, with Israeli bombs striking the Ain el-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp outside of the southern Lebanese city of Sidon in a failed assassination attempt on Munir al-Maqdah, the head of the Fatah-affiliated al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in Lebanon.
In another attack, it killed three members from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in an airstrike on an apartment in the Cola-Corniche al-Mazraa neighborhood of Beirut, marking the first time that Israel bombed Beirut outside of Dahieh in the current conflict. In the wake of the attack, a sense that nowhere is safe has spread panic among many Lebanese civilians.
After the spike in violence started, many began questioning if the much-feared full-scale war between Hezbollah and Israel was finally coming. However, after the recent bombardment of Dahieh, Mohanad Hage Ali, a senior fellow at Carnegie’s Middle East Center in Beirut, insisted that “a full-scale war is already happening.”
“I think it might just be downhill from here,” he said. “There is no ability to escalate further let alone keep the current low level of operations going.”
According to Israel, it launched its air offensive in Lebanon to target Hezbollah weapons sites and other infrastructure. Israel claimed the goal was to create a more secure northern border with Lebanon and allow residents of northern Israel to return to their homes without the fear of Hezbollah attacks.
“Hezbollah’s capabilities have been significantly depleted. It has become obvious,” explained Karim Bitar, a professor of international relations at Saint Joseph University.
“We already knew that Israel had an overwhelming technological advantage, but this has only become clearer,” Bitar said. “Hezbollah has taken severe hits in this psychological war that is going on and, also, by the direct loss of many of its senior commanders and thousands of its militants in the pager attack.”
Since the start of the war, Israeli assassinations have killed many among Hezbollah’s top leadership. One of the most prominent members whom Israeli forces killed was Fuad Shukr, the party’s military commander, at the end of July.
While delivering several major blows to Hezbollah since the pager bombings, south Lebanon and the Bekaa region have endured widespread destruction. Tens of thousands of people have fled to regions of Lebanon further north in the hopes of finding some sense of refuge away from the bombings.
In response, Hezbollah started escalating its own attacks by launching rockets and drones deeper into Israel — most notably at the Ramat David airbase and Israel’s Rafael weapons manufacturer near Haifa.
These attacks by Hezbollah, though, did little to deter the Israeli military, which only increased its own bombing campaign.
According to Hilal Khashan, a professor of political science at the American University of Beirut, the Israeli offensive had another layer to it: Softening up Hezbollah before they send ground troops into south Lebanon.
“I remember after Iraq invaded Kuwait and when the US went to war with Iraq on Jan. 17, 1991, the air campaign lasted for weeks and weeks before the American army moved into Iraq,” Khashan said.
“I don’t think that the Israelis will venture into a ground offensive,” Khashan added. “Once they feel that they have softened Hezbollah’s resistance sufficiently enough, they will wage their ground offensive. They are focusing on Hezbollah’s strategic assets.”
Early Tuesday morning, Israel announced that it was carrying out “limited” raids inside Lebanon along the border but that it had no intention to reoccupy south Lebanon.
Should a full-scale ground invasion materialize, Bitar explained that while Hezbollah might be weakened from the recent Israeli attacks and the deaths of much of its senior leadership, Israel could lose some of its advantages with Hezbollah. The Lebanese armed group is more capable of fighting in the south against soldiers on the ground rather than jets and drones in the air.
“This would be a completely new ballgame and Hezbollah would be back in its ‘comfort zone’ because Hezbollah is used to waging battles in south Lebanon,” Bitar said. “They know every single village, the topographies, local specificities of every area. So, it will definitely not be a walk in the park for the Israelis.”
Thanks to its current advantages, Hage Ali argued, “Israel, at this stage, feels comfortable with the current rules of engagement” due to the heavy losses it inflicted on Hezbollah and the armed group’s inability to match that force.
After its recent losses, Hage Ali questioned if Hezbollah still had the capabilities to carry out such an attack even if it wanted to.
There is also the question as to whether or not the United States, Israel’s biggest backer and closest ally, would support an Israeli ground campaign in Lebanon.
Hezbollah’s capabilities have been significantly depleted. It has become obvious. – Karim Bitar
According to Bitar, Israel would not have launched its devastating air offensive without “at least an orange light” from its key ally.
“But I’m not so sure they would be comfortable with Israel launching an all-out ground invasion in the midst of a presidential campaign because it could lead to a wider escalation,” he added.
When asked if the US would support an Israeli ground offensive in Lebanon, a State Department spokesperson directed Inkstick to recent comments by Secretary of State Antony Blinken — the diplomat expressed support for Israel’s goals in its offensive, but added that the “best way to do that is through diplomacy, through a ceasefire, and then reaching an agreement that pulls back forces from the border.”
Outside of a temporary ceasefire in Gaza in November 2023, the US has had little luck in brokering an end to the war in the besieged Palestinian enclave. That same luck appears to be carrying over when it comes to efforts to reach a 21-day ceasefire in Lebanon.
As the air offensive was building up, the US announced that it had a proposal for a temporary truce to bring an end to the fighting between Hezbollah and Israel for three weeks, during which the two sides would work towards a more permanent deal.
However, despite initial reports that Israel had signed onto the agreement and that it was only hours away from being announced, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shot down any hopes that there would be an end to the conflict in the foreseeable future.
“Israel’s policy is clear: We are continuing to strike Hezbollah with full force. And we will not stop until we achieve all our goals, chief among them the return of the residents of the north securely to their homes,” the Israeli prime minister said upon arriving in the US for the United Nations General Assembly.
Despite Netanyahu’s hardline stance, diplomats and leaders from around the world have continued to demand an “immediate” ceasefire in Lebanon.
Bitar, Khashan and Hage Ali all expressed skepticism as to whether the US could broker a ceasefire, temporary or not.
“The international community failed in Gaza. There is no reason to suspect it will succeed in Lebanon,” Khashan said.
While not impossible, Bitar said that it is only possible to achieve a ceasefire “if there is intense US pressure on Israel, which we do not see at all at this stage.”
When asked if the U.S. was optimistic about its ability to broker a ceasefire in Lebanon despite months of failure in Gaza, a State Department spokesperson once again directed Inkstick to Blinken’s recent comments.
“The United States has made clear — along with the G7, European Union, partners in the Gulf, [and] so many other regions — that we believe the way forward is through diplomacy, not conflict,” Blinken stated.
After news of Nasrallah’s death broke, US President Joe Biden said in a statement that “the United States fully supports Israel’s right to defend itself against Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and any other Iranian-supported terrorist groups” but that “our aim is to de-escalate the ongoing conflicts in both Gaza and Lebanon through diplomatic means.”
While the US and other world leaders seek to bring about the end of two wars that run the risk of setting the Middle East on a path toward a wider conflict, Israel continues to drop bombs throughout Lebanon with the prospect of a major Hezbollah or Iranian retaliation for the death of Nasrallah looming large over the battlefield.
In the meantime, hundreds of thousands of people displaced on both sides of the border are stuck waiting until the day that they can finally return to whatever remains of their homes.
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