Israel is applying

Lebanon has emerged as a grim additional front in the war the United States and Israel launched against Iran a week and a half ago, with the nation facing continued Israeli attacks and most signs suggesting the country will fall into further misery as the US-backed Israeli operation appears unlikely to end soon.

The deepening conflict began when the Lebanon-based military and political group Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, attacked Israel last week in declared retaliation for the US-Israeli attack on its patron. Israel has responded with a broader response Campaign which was prepared for months, with the stated goal of controlling more Lebanese territory and discussions of a ground invasion.

Humanitarian and human rights groups say approximately 700,000 people in Lebanon have already fled their homes, while Israeli strikes have killed civilians, including more than 10 children a day since March 2, according to UNICEF – and apparently broken international law. Israeli officials have ordered civilians to flee densely populated regions, suggesting they will be treated as war zones without regard for those who remain. The bombings in the capital, Beirut, and against targets connected to the country’s Christian community, which is not linked to Hezbollah, have left many Lebanese fearing mass devastation similar to the destruction inflicted on Gaza by the US-backed Israeli campaign.

Israel and Hezbollah are far from a ceasefire, and the actors who could de-escalate the situation appear unwilling to do so. Rather, the situation has the potential to spiral into violence, forcing the country to return to a position that has repeatedly paralyzed its development and fueled future clashes. And as escalations continue, Lebanon may offer the clearest example of how President Donald Trump’s decision to unleash a new war in the Middle East guarantees future instability and avoidable carnage in the region, without any discernible strategic benefit.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not seeking a reduction in tension, a former Israeli security official told News themezone, but instead Tel Aviv is assessing that it can eliminate Hezbollah.

After Trump indicated on Monday that he might end the war with Iran, Israeli officials told the Financial Times that they see his campaign in Lebanon as extending beyond operations in Iran. Trump has not outlined plans to limit Netanyahu’s ambitions for the region, whether in Lebanon or Iran, and the Trump administration has doubts about mediating talks between the Lebanese government and Israel. Axios reported. The government of Lebanon is searching international mediation, saying it will redouble its own efforts to rein in Hezbollah, but the Lebanese military is reluctant to risk an open battle with the group, and neither Trump nor Netanyahu seem likely to heed Lebanon’s request that Israel halt attacks so diplomacy can begin.

The Lebanese government’s demand is “understandable,” a U.S. official told News themezone, but stated that “it is not clear where there may be an exit or de-escalation path.”

Referring to a Washington Post report which quoted a senior Israeli official fearing a “quagmire” in Lebanon if the war continues and extends into a prolonged invasion or occupation, the US official continued: “Israeli defense and intelligence people… know these things are terrible ideas. They are simply incapable of stopping them and are at the behest of their political leaders.”

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Those in Washington urging peace are also unlikely to alter Trump’s thinking.

“A broader conflict encompassing all of Lebanon benefits no one, and I call on all parties to de-escalate immediately,” said Rep. Gregory Meeks (NY), the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. saying on Friday.

Lebanon is still dealing with the aftermath of the latest round of conflict. Just 15 months ago, the country endured a devastating Israeli invasion that damaged its health system and produced no clear resolution. Despite a ceasefire in November 2024, Israel continued attacks inside Lebanon and refused to withdraw from Lebanese territory, while Hezbollah did not disarm according to Israeli demands, although the Lebanese government made some progress limit its capacity in border areas with Israel.

“Every time Lebanon gets back on its feet, it takes a new blow,” Tania Baban, director of MedGlobal, an international humanitarian group focused on healthcare, based in Beirut, told News themezone. “We’ve only just begun to recover.”

Lebanese officials have conveyed to Washington that “everything has now returned to breaking point,” the U.S. official said.

For its part, Hezbollah appears to have anticipated another major conflict with Israel and appears to remain deeply committed to Iran and challenging Tel Aviv, presenting itself as a pillar of the Shiite sect of Islam, to which a segment of Lebanon’s population and the majority of Iranians belong.

Citing the group’s rhetoric and its continued operations against the Israelis, Amal Saad, a professor at Cardiff University, told News themezone: “They are clearly willing to fight to the end, because this is not merely existential for them… but a real threat to the physical survival of the Iranian state, to the Hezbollah resistance and to the Iranian and Lebanese Shia people.”

The group considers the Lebanese government to be weak in relation to Israel and therefore, rather than supporting any mediation between those two, Hezbollah aims to demonstrate strength and thus generate leverage in anticipation of playing a role in US-Iran talks on a regional deal, Saad argued. Like Iran, which has surprised observers with the scale and aggressiveness of its response to the US-Israeli campaign, “they want an outcome that restores deterrence,” he added.

The war is causing a humanitarian crisis and anxiety that Israel will decimate Shiite areas in order to undermine Hezbollah, just as it leveled most of Gaza, arguing that doing so was necessary to fight the Palestinian militant group Hamas. That could cause huge civilian casualties and tension among Lebanon’s communities, which, with Israeli involvement, fought each other in the 1970s and 1980s along sectarian and ethnic lines.

Israel’s orders to evacuate people from Shiite regions have directed them toward areas dominated by Christians and followers of the other major Islamic sect, the Sunnis, Saad said. She called that “a strategy designed to generate friction, resentment and, ultimately, rejection, make the displaced unwelcome wherever they land, and reignite the conditions for a civil war.”

“This is Gaza logic applied to Lebanon and it goes beyond anything Israel has done in 2024,” Saad said. “The architecture here is ethnic cleansing through demographic engineering: destroying the south, depopulating [the Shia-heavy Beirut suburbs of] Dahiyeh and turn displacement into a weapon.”

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Israel has also demonstrated an apparent willingness to violate rules in war and commit atrocities, as has been repeatedly demonstrated accused to do in Gaza without facing consequences from the United States, while prompting the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest order for Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. (Both have denied violating international law.)

Israeli forces have deployed white phosphorus, a chemical whose use is internationally banned in combat in populated areas, in southern Lebanon, including on emergency workers, according to a report. Human Rights Watch report on Mondays.

Baban told News themezone that some of those who fled southern Lebanon had already returned “because they could not find shelter or were not welcome” in Beirut.

“People are tired, angry and directing their anger at innocent civilians… people tend to stereotype,” he said.

Observers say the risk of the sectarian divide worsening seriously appears greater now than in 2024.

Still, Hezbollah is trying to address discontent among its base, Saad said, noting that the organization is openly arguing that its supporters will pay a price in the coming days and weeks but that it is worth the cost to avoid surrender, while celebrating its continued ability to attack Israel and emphasizing persistent Israeli attacks that violated the previous ceasefire in Lebanon.

The hundreds of thousands now displaced are receiving varying levels of support. More than 100,000 people remain in schools, which have minimal sanitation or kitchen facilities or winter supplies, Baban said. She told News themezone that many shelters in key cities had already reached capacity even before Israel issued its broader directive, to abandon the city’s southern suburbs with a large Shiite population.

Magda Rossmann, national director of the nonprofit International Rescue Committee, said in a statement Monday that she had seen families in the city sleeping in cars and on the streets, and described how seven families live next to each other in a 20-square-meter locker room at a stadium in Beirut.

Chaos in the neighborhood and internationally has also limited the response to growing needs among Lebanese and others, including hundreds of thousands of Syrian and Palestinian refugees and migrant workers.

Compared to the 2024 war, Baban noted that there is much less aid, funding for expensive medicines or medical volunteers coming into the country, and international humanitarian donations have plummeted, reducing the capacity of, among others, United Nations agencies.

“The whole region is on fire,” he said.