The renewed Lebanon war, now just over a week old, has witnessed a gradual intensification of attacks by Israel and Hezbollah between March 8 and 11, with both sides making clear their current disinterest in de-escalation or a ceasefire. Hezbollah has expressed its commitment to continue fighting, including by pledging loyalty to Iran’s new supreme leader, and Israel has intensified its operations as part of what it expects to be a long war.
Simultaneously, the government of Lebanon has yet to match its pronouncements regarding disarming Hezbollah with equally tough enforcement, and the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) has openly defied Beirut’s orders to do so.
Map instructions: Click the top-left icon or an icon on the map to open the Map Key and adjust the map’s zoom as desired. Click the top-right icon to open a larger version of the map.
Lebanese government inaction continues as the military defies Beirut’s order to disarm Hezbollah
Lebanese officials have continued expressing their strong displeasure with Hezbollah’s decision to reignite the conflict with Israel and defiance of Beirut’s orders to stand down and disarm. On March 8, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam declared Lebanon’s readiness to resume negotiations with Israel while reiterating that Hezbollah’s military activities “were no longer tolerable.” Salam, however, did say that the state would not seek confrontation with the group.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun was even blunter the next day, issuing two statements criticizing Hezbollah for violating its commitment to neutrality and “seeking Lebanon’s collapse through war and chaos” while calling on the LAF to seize its weapons. He also called for direct Israeli-Lebanese negotiations, under international auspices, with the narrow goal of achieving a durable ceasefire and security arrangements rather than a durable peace and normalization of relations.
Several Lebanese officials have also explicitly accused Hezbollah of launching the March 1 attack on the Royal Air Force Base in Akrotiri, Cyprus.
These Lebanese government statements, however, have been coupled with little practical follow-through. In part, this inaction owes to the decision of the LAF to defy Beirut’s orders under instruction by Commander Rodolphe Haykal.
In a February meeting with US Senator Lindsey Graham, Haykal declined to describe Hezbollah as a terrorist organization absent such a prior declaration by the Lebanese government. However, Beirut’s March 2 ban on Hezbollah’s military activities and orders to the LAF to pursue the group’s disarmament have had little impact on Haykal, who has used “the Israeli aggression on Lebanon and its citizenry” to justify the LAF’s continued inaction. Implicitly addressing the government, Haykal said:
The [LAF’s] Command adopts [its own] decisions in accordance with the current complex circumstances, prioritizing preserving both Lebanon and its unity and the military establishment […] which exerts every effort to maintain domestic stability and unity. The army stands at an equal distance from all Lebanese and deals with them from its position as a focal point of national consensus.
Haykal added that this “sensitive juncture” meant that the solution—implicitly to the question of Hezbollah’s arms—“is not military alone,” instead requiring a “coordination and integration” of the LAF’s efforts with “various political and official levels to strengthen national unity and overcome challenges.” This statement, implicitly stating that the LAF would not confront Hezbollah, effectively reiterated Haykal’s reported position during a March 2 session of the Lebanese cabinet.
In practice, this refusal has led to the reversal of even the minimal action the LAF took last week to advance the Lebanese state’s monopoly over arms. For example, Al Arabiya reported that Lebanon’s Military Tribunal has released detained alleged Hezbollah fighters on $20 bail. Presumably, these released detainees were from among the 27 gunmen that the LAF said it arrested last week as they crossed its checkpoints.
Underscoring growing Lebanese paralysis, Lebanon’s parliament delayed May’s legislative elections by two years while Beirut continued looking for foreign solutions to its predicament. For example, Foreign Minister Youssef Raggi, known for his hawkish pronouncements on Hezbollah, called on the Vatican to pressure Israel to halt operations in south Lebanon’s Christian villages.
Meanwhile, the impact of the war in Lebanon has continued to grow. Almost 700,000 Lebanese have been internally displaced over the past week, with over 100,000 in organized shelters. As of the time of this writing, 634 Lebanese citizens have been killed and 1,586 wounded since the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah resumed.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry is not publicly separating civilians from fighters in the overall casualty count, and Hezbollah is, characteristically, not officially announcing its dead. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF), in its latest claims on the matter, has estimated that it has killed 190–200 militants from Hezbollah and other groups in Lebanon.
Hezbollah shows no signs of backing down
Hezbollah, which spent months preparing for this conflict, has remained defiant. This sentiment was expressed most clearly by Mohammad Raad, who heads the group’s Loyalty to the Resistance parliamentary bloc, on March 9. Raad defended Hezbollah’s decision to keep fighting and attacked the Lebanese government’s recent decision to call for the group’s disarmament. He said that Hezbollah’s inaction during 15 months of ongoing Israeli attacks, coupled with Lebanon’s effort to monopolize arms, had only invited more demands and aggression from Israel.
Raad also reiterated Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem’s March 4 claim that the group’s opening salvo on March 2 had not ignited the renewed conflict but was a warning stripping Israel of the element of surprise and preempting a broader, premeditated attack. He also insisted that “resistance remains the only option.” Qassem, meanwhile, sent recently elected Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei a letter declaring Hezbollah’s continued “covenantal commitment” to the Islamic Republic under his leadership.
On the domestic front, Hezbollah’s Lawyers Union described any attempt to arrest the group’s fighters as “high treason.” Additionally, The Jerusalem Post, quoting an anonymous informed source, reported that Hezbollah had instructed its members to confront any LAF attempt to impede the group’s military operations or activities.
Hezbollah’s military actions have matched its defiant rhetoric. The group has intensified rocket attacks against Israel, firing more frequent and larger salvos at the northern part of the country, and claimed repeated direct clashes with Israeli ground troops in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah has also claimed attacks fired deeper into Israel using “sophisticated weapons”—a possible euphemism for precision-guided missiles.
Israel expects an extended conflict in Lebanon
Israel has confirmed that weapons fired by Hezbollah have reached the country’s center. On March 9, Hezbollah missiles fired at Gush Dan lightly wounded sixteen people. As of the time of this writing, no Israelis have been killed by Hezbollah attacks.
The IDF clarified the next day that an “isolated failure” allowed two Hezbollah missiles to impact central Israel without interceptions or warning sirens. Meanwhile, Israel’s assessment that Hezbollah and Iran are not coordinating attacks appears to be changing, with Reuters, quoting an unnamed “senior Israeli defence official,” saying that Hezbollah and Iran carried out their “first coordinated attack” since the start of the war on the evening of March 11.
These developments are only likely to harden the Israeli assessment that the conflict with Hezbollah will likely outlast the war with Iran. Addressing the Lebanon front, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet on March 11, “We are not close to the end.”
Israel has also intensified its campaign in Lebanon while widening its geographical footprint. Hezbollah’s nerve center in Beirut’s southern suburbs remains in Israeli crosshairs. However, the Israeli Air Force has also carried out targeted killings in other, previously immune, areas of Lebanon’s capital.
On March 8, Israeli aircraft targeted a room in the Ramada Plaza Hotel building in Rawsheh, which is in predominantly Sunni west Beirut. The IDF claimed its targets were “key commanders in the Iranian IRGC’s Quds Force’s Lebanon Corps in Beirut” who were operating in Lebanon. It later named them as commanders from both the Lebanon and Palestine Corps:
Iran’s UN Ambassador has confirmed the deaths of the first four figures.
On March 11, Israel conducted another targeted killing in West Beirut, this time in the predominantly working-class Sunni neighborhood of Aysha Bakkar. Conflicting reports indicate that the target was Hamas member Ahmad Abdallah or an office belonging to the Islamic Group, the Lebanese branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood are known to cooperate and even have an overlap in operatives, which may explain the contradictory reports. The Islamic Group reportedly denied its offices had been targeted.
In addition to its expansion of airstrikes, the IDF has also reportedly widened the footprint of its ground forces in southern Lebanon. However, the conflict has yet to become a full ground incursion.
American disinterest in Lebanese pronouncements continues
The United States reportedly remains unmoved by Lebanese officials’ requests for it to intervene with Israel on Lebanon’s behalf. Reports indicate that US Ambassador Tom Barrack, who had previously handled the Lebanon file, bluntly rebuffed Lebanese government entreaties to mediate with Israel. There would be nothing relevant to discuss, Barrack said, unless Lebanon “stop[s] with the bullshit” on disarming Hezbollah. US President Donald Trump sounded a softer note on March 11.
“We love Lebanon. We love the people of Lebanon, and we’re working very hard. We’ve gotta get rid of … Hezbollah has been a disaster for many years,” Trump said.
David Daoud is Senior Fellow at at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies where he focuses on Israel, Hezbollah, and Lebanon affairs.
Tags: Hezbollah, Israel, Israel-Hezbollah, LAF, Lebanese government, Lebanon
