Smoke rises following Israeli bombardment on the village of Khiam in southern Lebanon near the border with Israel, as seen from nearby Marjayoun, on Monday.-/AFP/Getty Images
Israel expanded its ground invasion and aerial attacks on Monday against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and held out the possibility of occupying the area immediately north of the Israeli border.
The leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Britain issued a statement late on Monday to plea for de-escalation between Israel and Hezbollah and for immediate peace talks.
They called for the disarmament of Hezbollah and said: “A significant Israeli ground offensive would have devastating humanitarian consequences and could lead to a protracted conflict. It must be averted. The humanitarian situation in Lebanon, including ongoing mass displacement, is already deeply alarming.”
The Israeli military said in the morning that the 91st Division of its Northern Command, which is responsible for the Lebanese front, has begun “limited and targeted ground operations against Hezbollah strongholds in southern Lebanon.”
Israel may be splitting Lebanon in two, Lebanese cabinet minister says
In Depth: How the ‘Dahiya Doctrine’ rose from the ashes in Lebanon
It added that the operations are “aimed at enhancing the forward defence area” – a hint that Israel may not withdraw its soldiers and armour any time soon as it tries to reinforce its buffer zone along the border.
Ghassan Moukheiber, a lawyer who was an independent member of the Lebanese parliament for 16 years until 2018, told The Globe and Mail that he does not believe Israel intends to withdraw from southern Lebanon. “They will go six or seven kilometres north of the border and keep it eternally,” he said. “They will create an empty zone with no houses, no life – though they will control it.”
Israel hasn’t given any indication about the size of the territory in southern Lebanon that it intends to invade and possibly occupy. It has held parts of southern Lebanon several times since the late 1970s. After Israel launched a full-scale invasion of Lebanon in 1982 to expel the Palestinian Liberation Organization, it held a 15-kilometre “security zone” along the border until 2000.
A single Israeli missile hit a four-storey apartment building in Lebanon at 8:40 a.m. on March 14, destroying the two upper floors and killing 11 people.
The Globe and Mail
The Israelis want the want the Lebanese Armed Forces to disarm Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Shia proxy, of its offensive weapons, mostly drones and missiles. Israel has made it clear that if the Lebanese forces do not disarm Hezbollah, it will do so itself.
But the Lebanese army is widely considered too weak to break Hezbollah. “Hezbollah has more fighters and weapons than the army,” said Fadi Asrawi, an economics professor at Beirut’s Haigazian University.
He also said that about one-third of the Lebanese army is composed of Shia soldiers. “The Shia in Hezbollah and in the army are often cousins or brothers,” he said. “They won’t fight each other.”
Late on Monday, Lebanese time, the Israeli military said the 91st Division had dismantled a Hezbollah weapons cache in southern Lebanon. It said Israeli soldiers were operating in “evacuated areas.”
The term refers to the areas where residents were ordered to leave by Israeli forces because of the fighting with Hezbollah. The outflow of Lebanese from the southern parts of the country and from South Beirut, which has also come under intense aerial attack in the last two weeks, has created a humanitarian crisis throughout Lebanon. Beirut, which is filling with hundreds of thousands of IDPs – internally displaced persons – is overwhelmed with homeless people.
In Lebanon’s nightclubs, revellers find an escape from the destruction around them
On Monday, the Disaster Risk Management unit within Lebanon’s Council of Ministers reported more than one million self-registered IDPs, equivalent to more than 15 per cent of the country’s population.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said in a Monday statement that the “hundreds of thousands of Shi’ite Lebanese residents will not return to their homes south of the Litani River until the safety of residents of the north [of Israel] is guaranteed.” The river runs east to west across southern Lebanon, about 25 kilometres north of the Israel border.
There were no reports of direct combat between Israeli soldiers and Hezbollah on Monday, though Lebanese health authorities said that seven civilians, including two children and two medics, were killed in Israeli airstrikes.
The Disaster Risk Management unit said 886 Lebanese had been killed and 2,141 had been injured since Hezbollah and Israel went to war on March 2, two days after Israel and the U.S. began their attacks on Iran. On Friday night, an Israeli strike on a health care centre in southern Lebanon killed 12 medics, health authorities said.