by Esther Meininghaus & Carina Yıldırım-Schlüsing

Of all neighbouring countries affected by the war in Gaza, cross-border attacks between Lebanon and Israel have had the highest impact on civilians so far and raise fears of a re-escalation similar to the 2006 war. The recent Israeli airstrike on Southern Beirut, aimed at assassinating Hizballah’s senior military commander Fuʿad Shukr, represents a new peak in attacks. It has now been confirmed that Shukr did not survive the attack, which also killed three persons and injured 74, including children. Declaring support for Hamas (harakat al-muqawama al-islamiyya), Hizballah entered the war between Israel and Gaza on 8 October 2023. Hizballah, a decades-old and combat capable armed group with strong influence in the political, economic and societal spheres in Lebanon, has at its disposal a large arsenal of missiles, rockets and drones that allow for precision strikes; against this backdrop and a historically hostile rhetoric, Hizballah is targeting Israel. At the same time, Israel regularly targets Lebanon.

A November 2023 poll shows that the majority of the Israeli public supported opening an active northern warfront. In contrast, in Lebanon, the deepening political and economic crises has caused fear of a greater war. Attacks between the Israeli armed forces and Hizballah as well as Palestinian factions forced 94,000 civilians to flee from southern Lebanon by May 2024 and led to the evacuation of 60,000 persons in northern Israel. By February 2024, 540 (or 920 individual) attacks by Hezbollah and allied factions on Israel had targeted Israeli surveillance systems and military positions, killing 20 persons including civilians and children and injuring 105. This figure has risen to 1161 attacks with 29 fatalities by June 2024. According to ACLED data, 21 of these attacks targeted civilians, mostly by anti-tank missiles. For example, on 14 January, a Hizballah anti-tank missile hit a house in the town of Kfar Yuval in northern Israel, killing an elderly woman and her son. While Israel claims that it carried out the 30 July attack as a retaliation for an alleged Hizballah strike on the Golan Heights on Saturday 27 July – killing 12 children – the Golan is in fact Syrian, if Israel-occupied territory. Hizballah has sought to tie up Israeli defence resources and maintain a constant level of threat but has so far avoided escalating to war.

As part of the Axis of Resistance, Hizballah carries out attacks next to Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades (armed wing of Hamas), al-Quds Brigades (armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad), and al-Fajr Forces (armed wing of the Lebanese Sunni organisation al-jamaʿat al-islamiyya). The initial message of the (counter-)attacks by armed groups affiliating themselves with the Axis of Resistance – including Hizballah, the Houthis, or those using the Islamic Resistance label in Iraq – was to put pressure on Israel and the US for them to allow for humanitarian aid and to halt the war in Gaza. The heterogeneous strategic Iran-supported alliance of state governments and ideologically extremist armed groups opposes Israel and its Western allies and supports Palestine. Usually, these armed groups are referred to as pro-Iranian or Iran-backed groups, often failing to acknowledge the domestic agendas that these actors pursue alongside their shared agenda with and support by the Iranian regime. The latter, which brutally oppresses all opposition in its country, extensively supports oppositional radical armed groups across the region, and recently directly attacked Israeli territory in response to an Israeli airstrike on the Iranian embassy in Damascus. As further retaliation, Israel attacked several locations near nuclear sites in Iran on 20 April 2024. Each of these acts violated international law.

Infographic: Number of attacks, 7 October 2023 – 24 May 2024

Western media reporting may evoke the impression that Hizballah is acting as the sole aggressor. Recent ACLED data, however, shows that what Israel defines as defensive acts against Hizballah’s aggression in fact translates to civilian targeting that is nine times higher than that of Hizballah on Israel. The overall number of Israeli attacks was 5-6 times higher than Hizballah attacks on Israel by February and still more than 3 times higher by June: Israel carried out more than 3100 attacks (or 3600 individual strikes) on southern Lebanon by February 2024, which killed 292 persons, including civilians and children, and injured over 140. This number increased to over 5200 attacks by June, of which 184 attacks targeted civilians mostly through airstrikes and drone attacks. Since ACLED data counts all launched attacks, this discrepancy cannot be explained with Israeli missile defence systems shooting down missiles. Intercepted attacks would only not be counted if they were simultaneously neither reported by Israeli nor Lebanese media or press statements, which is possible but not in the interest of either side. Thus, the noticeably higher rate of current Israeli attacks appears intended. Israeli air and drone strikes on southern Lebanon have targeted Hizballah, allied factions and Lebanese military positions, but included attacks on more than 90 villages harming civilians and destroying public infrastructure such as schools, mosques and churches. According to Human Rights Watch, some of Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon, such an airstrike on a car killing a grandmother, mother and her three children on 5 November 2023 should be investigated as war crimes.

Fact Sheet: Overview of Attacks, Fatalities and Civilian Targeting

The reciprocal military strikes of Hizballah and Israel risk triggering escalation across the region, which would plunge the population into deeper suffering. The rhetoric is hostile as the leader of Hizballah, Hassan Nasrallah, was cited saying: ‘If you Americans want to stop these operations… you must stop the war on Gaza.’ More recently, he threatened that Israel ‘will pay with blood’ for every woman and child killed in Lebanon. According to Avi Hyman, spokesperson of the Israeli government, its ‘message to Hezbollah has been and always will be: “Don’t try us.” As Defence Minister Gallant said at the beginning of the war, ‘we will copy and paste what we’ve done in Gaza to Hamas, in Lebanon.’ On 20 May 2024, the Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir announced that Israel should invade and occupy southern Lebanon to ‘destroy Hizballah.’

So far, such a spill-over of the war on Gaza into the region has been contained as escalating attacks do not yet meet the threshold of a wider war (i.e., more than 1000 persons killed). For US and European decision-makers, it is of paramount importance to recognise that there is no one-sided threat only by Hizballah to Israel. Instead, previously existing conflict lines are reinforced as Hizballah and Israel launch attacks not only on military and state institutions but to a substantial extent on civilians, while civilian attacks by Israel on Lebanon outweigh those by Hizballah on Israel by far. Civilian mass displacement affects both sides of the border. The war on Gaza thus has already expanded and long become a daily reality in Lebanon and Israel alike.

In this series:

• ‘Regional Impact of the Israel-Gaza War: Zooming-in on Iraq‘
• ‘Effects of the Israel-Gaza War on Syria: Multiple New Fronts‘

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