The Israeli War on Lebanon: A Harsh Toll and a Fragile Truce

After a limited military confrontation between Hezbollah and Israel, initiated by the party on October 8, 2023, in support of the resistance in the Gaza Strip, and which Israel turned into an open war on Lebanon on September 23, a ceasefire agreement was reached on November 26, stipulating a period of sixty days during which the Israeli army would gradually withdraw from the areas of southern Lebanon it had occupied, and Hezbollah would withdraw its fighters to the north of the Litani River, about 30 kilometers from the border, and the Lebanese army would deploy along the border in cooperation with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), with an international committee led by the United States of America, and including France, to examine any violations of the agreement.

Some sources reported that Benjamin Netanyahu received a “message of assurance” from the US administration stating that “the Israeli army will be able to attack southern Lebanon in the event of an immediate danger,” such as Hezbollah’s readiness to fire missiles at Israeli sites. He also received a promise from this administration to approve a new arms sale deal to Israel worth $680 million, including offensive ammunition and small bombs (1).

Many observers considered this agreement a success for President Joe Biden, who “can be proud of ending his troubled career with a remarkable diplomatic success,” which encouraged him to announce his administration’s intention “to launch a new effort to reach an agreement to end the fighting in the Gaza Strip and secure the release of the Israeli hostages,” noting that the Axios website does not have much confidence in this, as it estimated that “if we follow the current path, it seems that the crisis in Gaza will continue under the Donald Trump administration” (2).

Harsh toll of Israeli war on Lebanon

On November 29, the Israeli army admitted that it had carried out 12,500 raids against Hezbollah “sites,” while killing 82 soldiers and 47 Israeli civilians during the thirteen months of war. On the other hand, Israeli sources reported that Hezbollah’s rockets, which continued to be fired until the last day of the war, prevented 60,000 people from returning to northern Israel, one of the goals the Israeli government sought when it expanded the scope of the war, and destroyed more than 8,800 buildings, damaged more than 7,000 vehicles, and damaged more than 300 agricultural sites (3).

While the Israeli military claimed to have “eliminated 2,500 Hezbollah fighters,” Lebanese authorities say at least 3,961 Lebanese men and women, mostly civilians, have been killed since October 2023, and some 16,000 others have been wounded. According to the Lebanese government, more than 1.2 million people, or about 20 percent of the population, have been displaced from their homes, with schools, churches and mosques turned into overcrowded shelters. More than 557,000 people have crossed into Syria, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 80 percent of them women and children, often on foot and in difficult conditions due to Israeli airstrikes on crossing points between Syria and Lebanon.

According to the United Nations World Food Programme, 1.3 million people, or 23% of Lebanon’s population, faced high levels of food insecurity during the months of war. Since last September, Israeli airstrikes have left a trail of destruction in southern Lebanon, destroying or damaging homes, schools, health centers and municipal buildings. In the Lebanese town of Tyre, with a population of 120,000, Israeli airstrikes have destroyed hundreds of homes, vital infrastructure and archaeological sites, rendering some neighborhoods uninhabitable.

“More than 50 buildings, between three and 12 floors, were completely destroyed by the strikes,” Mayor Hassan Dbouk told Agence France-Presse, adding that dozens of other buildings were damaged by up to 60 percent. He confirmed that “there is no longer electricity in the neighborhoods most affected by the Israeli raids.” On November 18, an Israeli raid targeted the water company, destroying the building, killing two of its employees, and depriving 30,000 subscribers of water in the city and its suburbs (4).

However, the massive destruction was inflicted on the southern suburbs of Beirut, where hundreds of buildings were destroyed, turning it into a ghost town. Israeli raids also targeted many buildings in the heart of the Lebanese capital, as well as the Baalbek area and large areas in the Bekaa. Faced with the real danger facing Lebanon’s cultural heritage, 300 cultural specialists called on UNESCO on November 17 to work on protecting historical sites such as Baalbek. The following day, the organization placed 34 Lebanese cultural sites under enhanced protection, in accordance with the 1999 Second Protocol to the 1954 Hague Convention, which aims to protect heritage in the event of armed conflict (5).

Since last October, Israeli raids have targeted branches of the Al-Qard Al-Hassan Foundation, which is close to Hezbollah, in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Tyre and Baalbek, which has led to the freezing of the work of this small loan institution, which served as a social safety net for many families in times of financial crisis (6).

The Israeli technological war and its terrifying psychological effects

“I feel trembling every time I hear a loud noise, even if it’s not an explosion,” said Rima, 25, a Palestinian refugee living in the Shatila camp near Beirut’s southern suburbs. “I don’t sleep at night until 7 a.m., when the explosions stop,” she said. “I always feel in danger because of the drones, and I have regular panic attacks.”

“War has become very technological,” says Beirut-based psychoanalyst Dr. Aline Al-Husseini. “We see the slightest explosions on social media, and images of destruction are everywhere. This increases suffering and internal chaos, and reopens all the wounds inherited from previous wars.” She notes that drones “give a sense of surveillance, persecution and anticipation of danger. With explosions, people no longer sleep and suffer from insomnia… Even those living in the affected areas live in fear of death,” which leads experts to say that “Israel is also waging a psychological war using its advanced technologies.”

In this regard, Jad al-Dilati, a human rights researcher, believes that the Israeli psychological warfare began on September 18 and 19, when the communications devices were blown up. Israel “wanted to make us understand that it is a thousand times more technologically advanced; since then, the airstrikes on the country have continued, with drones and missiles tracking their targets to the farthest parts of the country, even in remote areas.” Israel has become “able to choose any building, demolish it, kill everyone inside, and move on as if nothing had happened. It is being filmed live, and we rely on the tweets of the Israeli army spokesman, our enemy, to know whether we will survive or die, even though they are often misleading” (7).

Although Alessandro Accorsi, senior analyst for war technology at the International Crisis Group, is not certain that Israel used the artificial intelligence program that allowed it to “identify and bomb more than 35,000 targets in the Gaza Strip,” he estimates that the Israeli army used bombs in its war on Lebanon “weighing between 450 and 900 kilograms, bombs that many countries, such as the United States, have stopped using to reduce civilian casualties,” while Israel accepted that these bombs would kill “between 40 and 50 or even 100 civilians, depending on the importance of the target,” and caused some powerful explosions that resembled an earthquake (8).

The serious economic effects of war

The Lebanese economy has been reeling from 13 months of war and five years of financial crisis. A new World Bank report estimates the cost of the war to Lebanon at $8.5 billion, and in its “Interim Damage and Loss Assessment for Lebanon,” published on November 14, it notes that 100,000 homes have been destroyed or damaged, and that nearly 170,000 people have lost their jobs. GDP fell from $54 billion in 2018 to $20 billion in 2023, and is expected to fall by another 15% this year. Experts agree that the war has accelerated the decline in GDP, with the overall bill for damage to the country’s infrastructure estimated at $3.4 billion, with many roads and drinking water facilities damaged, while the Lebanese government estimates losses to electricity distribution networks alone at $400 million. Among the sectors that have been hit hardest are tourism, which typically accounts for 25% of GDP, and agriculture, with more than 1,900 hectares of land in the southern governorate of South Lebanon and neighbouring Nabatieh damaged or left fallow by shelling. Some 65,000 olive trees were destroyed by Israeli shelling, causing the price of olive oil to rise by more than 50%. The retail sector has also been hit hard, with economist Walid Abu Suleiman saying that “in times of war, purchases are limited to what is essential,” adding that “50,000 small and medium-sized businesses are suffering from the war today and have had to lay off their employees.”

Ceasefire agreement in the Israeli perspective

Benjamin Netanyahu gave three reasons for agreeing to the ceasefire, saying: “This agreement will enable us to focus on Iran and its nuclear program that threatens Israel’s existence, to replenish our weapons stockpile and to drive a wedge between Hezbollah and Hamas.” In his speech announcing the ceasefire, he promised to engage forcefully on “seven fronts” stretching from Yemen to Syria and from Gaza to Iran, via the West Bank, Lebanon and Iraq, hinting at “continuing and even intensifying the war on a regional scale.” The Israeli war minister said he was prepared to do “everything” to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, in an interview broadcast by Channel 14 on Thursday evening, November 28. He added: “I will do everything in my power, and I will exploit all the resources that can be exploited to prevent it from becoming a nuclear power,” and threatened to launch an “intensive war” if the truce with Hezbollah was violated.

The ceasefire agreement elicited mixed reactions in Israel. An Israeli diplomat said: “If we had rejected this agreement proposed by the Americans, we would have risked the UN Security Council calling for a ceasefire on terms that would have been much more difficult for us, and worse, without any guarantee that the United States would impose its veto on it.” Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Minister of Internal Security, denounced the agreement as “a historic mistake that will prevent us from eliminating Hezbollah.” Most mayors and other elected representatives in northern Israel expressed their anger. The mayor of the settlement of Hatzor Haglilit, located on the border with Lebanon, declared that the agreement was “a surrender to terrorists.” (10)

Fragile truce amid repeated Israeli violations

As soon as the ceasefire was announced, tens of thousands of displaced residents rushed to return to their destroyed towns and villages in southern and eastern Lebanon and in the southern suburbs of Beirut, some of them waving Hezbollah flags and pictures of its late leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah from the windows of their cars.

As the Lebanese army began to reinforce its deployment in the sector south of the Litani River, in coordination with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), Israeli violations of the terms of the agreement became more frequent, with Lebanese authorities reporting “isolated incidents of mortar attacks and Israeli gunfire” that injured two civilians trying to return to southern Lebanon. The “Selections from Hebrew Newspapers” bulletin, issued by the Institute for Palestine Studies, reported that Israeli aircraft bombed a building near the town of Al-Bissariyeh in the Sidon district in southern Lebanon, in the first raid carried out on the second day of the ceasefire agreement. Residents of the towns of the Marjeyoun and Hasbaya districts also received communications from the Israeli army, asking those in the area south of the Litani to remain inside and not to leave from 5 pm on Thursday, November 28, until 7 am the following day. It warned residents of 10 villages in southern Lebanon not to return to their homes, then on Saturday urged residents of other villages not to return to them, and announced that the air force had launched raids on military infrastructure near the border crossings between Syria and Lebanon (11).

At the time of writing, the Lebanese National News Agency reported that two people were killed and two others were injured in an Israeli drone strike that targeted a town in Nabatieh Governorate.

CBS News acknowledged that “the outbreak of violence reflects the precarious nature of the ceasefire,” while the Israeli newspaper Haaretz expressed pessimism about the future of the agreement, assuming that Hezbollah “will do everything it can to replenish its ranks with fighters and commanders on the ground, restock its weapons and ammunition depots, and eventually return to southern Lebanon to restore the balance of deterrence against Israel.”

In an interview with the French channel TRT, Khalil Helou, a retired brigadier general in the Lebanese army, said that he was "pessimistic about the scope of this ceasefire, and hopes that the fighting will not resume in a few years," adding: "However, this is a good thing because the displaced will be able to return to their homes, and the destruction will stop." As for Hasni Obeidi, director of the "Center for Studies and Research on the Arab and Mediterranean World" in Geneva, he noted that "this ceasefire has weaknesses, even if it is sponsored by France and the United States," estimating that the Lebanese army "does not have the capacity to fill the security vacuum in the south of the country; therefore, the participation of France, which must monitor the implementation of the agreement, is important," and ruling out the possibility of repeating the Lebanese ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, because "the agreement on Lebanon is the beginning of a diplomatic process, this is certain, but Israel does not want a ceasefire in Gaza."

Conclusion:

Hamas welcomed the ceasefire agreement in Lebanon, and Agence France-Presse quoted a source in the movement as saying that the movement informed "the mediators that it is ready for a ceasefire agreement and a serious prisoner exchange deal, if the occupation commits, but the occupation is obstructing and evading reaching an agreement and continuing the war of extermination." The Israeli Minister of Internal Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, had announced, in the context of his rejection of the agreement with Lebanon, that "Israel has a historic opportunity to reoccupy the Gaza Strip and encourage the voluntary migration of Israel's enemies" from it, which made the Swiss newspaper "Le Temps" estimate that "Benjamin Netanyahu made promises regarding Gaza to the most extremist parties in his government in order to ease their anger over the truce in Lebanon," and therefore, the truce in Lebanon "may further aggravate the fate of the residents of Gaza, whose lands once again constitute Israel's last major front" (14).

Do all Palestinian forces realize the seriousness of what awaits the afflicted Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, and rush to agree on a joint plan of action that combines principles and flexibility at the same time, in order to stop the ongoing Israeli war on the Gaza Strip, and thwart the danger of the Israeli government, which is most hostile to the Palestinians, occupying the Strip or large parts of it, and encouraging projects to return settlements to it and displace its residents?

* Researcher and Historian - Institute for Palestine Studies - Beirut