As Israel’s cross-border fire with Lebanon’s Hezbollah reaches new heights, fears of a ground war grow

Hezbollah carried out one of the largest attacks in five months of escalating conflict on the border between Lebanon and Israel this week, firing more than a hundred rockets, and vowing that the barrages would continue.

The strikes on Tuesday led to Israel’s hardline national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir demanding a “war now” while criticising defence minister Yoav Gallant for not seeking severe retribution: “What are you waiting for? Over 100 rockets fired and you sit quietly? We have to start responding, attacking.”

Hezbollah said it had launched the Katyusha missiles in response to Israeli air raids in the Bekaa Valley 24 hours earlier, and also to show continuing support for Palestinians in Gaza. Israeli military did, in fact, respond immediately, hitting Hezbollah targets near Baalbek. One man was killed, eight injured and a warehouse destroyed. It was the second time in a fortnight that sorties had been carried out so deep into Lebanon. A drone strike on a car near Tyre followed, killing two others.

Mr Ben Gvir, one of the most right-wing ministers in Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition government, regularly makes statements which will appeal to his ultra-nationalist support base. In his latest pronouncement, he fulsomely praised a police officer who shot dead a Palestinian boy who was letting off fireworks in Jerusalem.

The family and neighbours of Rami Hamdan Al-Halhouli at the Shuafat refugee camp insisted the fireworks were not directed at the security forces who have established a heavy presence in the area. Mr Ben Gvir said that he fully backed “the fighter who killed the terrorist who tried to shoot fireworks toward him and toward forces. This is exactly how we must [act] again against terrorists – with determination and precision”.

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But there are rumours of war now from a number of sources. According to US media reports, the Biden administration has stated in intelligence briefings that Hezbollah will almost certainly refuse to withdraw from the border and this will lead to an Israeli ground offensive in the coming months.

A senior security official stated that the US was “operating in the assumption” that an “Israeli military operation is a distinct possibility… airstrikes will grow to an expansive air campaign reaching much further north into populated areas of Lebanon, and eventually grow to a ground component as well”.

The Israeli military has pulled back a number of units from Gaza for rest, say officials, before a possible spring ground offensive in southern Lebanon. Emergency services and first responders have been holding drills to prepare for some of Hezbollah’s large arsenal of missiles breaking through the Iron Dome air defence system and hitting critical infrastructure in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

The US has sent a special envoy, Amos Hochstein, to hold talks to end the fighting at the border. Other plans presented include Gulf states funding the recruitment of 7,000 soldiers for the Lebanese army and the construction of watchtowers along the border. A French proposal has called for Hezbollah to withdraw six miles (10km) from the border.

Israel has demanded that Hezbollah pull its fighters to the north of the Litani River, 19 miles (30.5km) to the north as mandated under a United Nations resolution that ended the 2006 war between the two sides. But there is little expectation that Hezbollah, one of Iran’s chief allies in the so-called “Axis of Resistance” alongside Hamas, the Houthis, and Iraqi and Syrian militias, will accept giving up such a swathe of strategic territory.

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Around 316 Hezbollah fighters and 53 civilians, including three journalists, have been killed in Lebanon since October. Seven Hamas members were killed in an Israeli strike in January, including Saleh al-Arouri, a founder of the group’s military wing. Israel has lost 11 soldiers and four civilians in that time.

On Wednesday, the Israeli military said it killed Hamas member Hadi Ali Mustafa in southern Lebanon. It said Mustafa, who was struck in Tyre, was a “significant” operative who was responsible for attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets around the world.

Rounds of 30 and then 70 rockets were fired from Lebanon on Tuesday. There were prolonged, heavy sounds of blasts over a wide area, the vast majority of that, however, were from rockets being shot down or crashing into unpopulated rural areas. Evidence of the impacts could be seen in blackened, gouged holes in fields around the villages of Ein Kuniya Snir, Sha’ar Yashuv and Kfar Szold.

One abandoned building was also said to have been hit. There has been a civilian exodus from both sides of the border since the fighting began. More than 150,000 people have had to leave their homes in Israel and Lebanon. The borderland has turned into a landscape of deserted towns and farms.

The Peretz family are among the 80,000 on the Israeli side of the Lebanese border who have been evacuated. The government has been paying for their upkeep in hotels and rented properties, as they are doing for 120,000 from the Gaza border following the Hamas attack on 7 October during which around 1,100 people were killed and another 250 taken hostage.

Like most of his fellow evacuees from the north, Miki and Shira Peretz do not intend to return home while the lethal threat from Hezbollah remains.

Speaking at a hotel near Tiberias where his family has been moved from their home near Kiryat Shmona, Mr Peretz, 55, described how the shock of what happened on 7 October has led to their extreme caution.

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He and his wife spent hours that day on telephone calls and text messages to find out the fate of those he knew on the kibbutzes and towns where the Hamas killings and abductions took place. In the evening, as they sat exhausted, Ms Peretz asked “Do you think we’ll be next?” They could see the Lebanese border from their home.

Mr Peretz, who ran a carpentry business, said: “Hezbollah hasn’t come across the border like Hamas, but we know they are powerful, more powerful than Hamas. Going back now will mean living with rockets and cannons [ artillery] firing all around us. Hezbollah are very near, people won’t go back until they are forced to leave. I am not saying we should have a war over it, but they need to be pushed back somehow.”

His friend and neighbour Asher Katz wanted to stress: “This country has paid a terrible price for leaving an enemy, Hamas, close to where they carried out a massacre. So people are worried, of course, who in the world wants to become targets for terrorists?

“Of course, we want to go home, we have been here months and months. Our houses are lying empty, our gardens and farms getting back to wildness. It is especially hard for people with young families. Schooling has been affected, [children] have been separated from their friends and relations.”

Mr Katz continued: “We hear, unofficially, that people would be allowed back to their homes in July or August. Is that going to be with or without Hezbollah, that is the question? If it is without Hezbollah, does it mean there are plans to move them back?”

At an Israeli military checkpoint near the border, soldiers said a few residents have been visiting the properties they left behind.

“They are worried about what has happened to their homes, they are worried about their farms, one can understand that, they are not really permitted,” said a young lieutenant. “No one is moving back permanently. It is a dangerous area, as you can see. Hezbollah see movement and they open up, they have lots of rockets, drones. They get plenty of supplies from Iran. Is there going to be a war? We had one against Hezbollah in 2006, my father fought in that. That decision is not up to us, it is up to the government, but this situation cannot go on without being settled, that’s obvious.”