Command Palette

Search for a command to run...

Discover

Israel Prepares Major Ground Invasion in Southern Lebanon to Dismantle Hezbollah

Israel Prepares Major Ground Invasion in Southern Lebanon to Dismantle Hezbollah
View gallery

Israel was reported to be preparing its largest ground invasion of Lebanon since the 2006 war, with plans to seize the entire area south of the Litani River and dismantle Hezbollah’s military infrastructure as regional fighting tied to the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran intensified axios +1. The United Nations said more than 800,000 people had already been displaced inside Lebanon, launching a $308 million emergency appeal to cope with what it called “massive” humanitarian needs acleddata.

Israeli and U.S. officials described a forthcoming “massive” operation in southern Lebanon, involving several armored and infantry divisions already massed along the border and additional reserve mobilizations axios +1. The push followed a Hezbollah barrage of more than 200 rockets and drones at northern Israel in early March, coordinated with Iranian strikes, which Israel cited as the trigger for a decisive move to push Hezbollah away from its border communities axios +1.

What Israel Says It Wants in Southern Lebanon

Israeli officials said the objective was to take control of territory up to the Litani River, destroy Hezbollah command posts, tunnels and weapons depots in villages, and create a durable buffer zone for northern Israel axios +1. One senior official bluntly told Israeli media, “We are going to do what we did in Gaza,” signaling an operation that could include prolonged urban fighting and heavy air and artillery support axios.

Military planners framed the assault as an overdue enforcement of long-standing ceasefire understandings that were supposed to keep heavily armed Hezbollah fighters north of the Litani after previous rounds of conflict timesofisrael. Analysts noted that the war with Iran gave Israel an opening to pursue a long-held ambition of severely degrading Hezbollah’s arsenal and political weight in Lebanon, though they warned that an extended ground presence risked dragging Israel into a costly insurgency dailynewsegypt.

Humanitarian Alarm and Fears of a Wider War

Even before a full-scale invasion, Israeli ground incursions and bombardment had driven more than one in seven people in Lebanon from their homes, with UN agencies warning that shelters were overwhelmed and aid stocks were being rationed because of funding shortfalls acleddata. The UN human rights office said expanded ground operations in the south were “bringing more misery, more suffering to an already weary civilian population,” while Secretary‑General António Guterres urged that “solidarity in words must be matched by solidarity in action” as he appealed for donor support acleddata +1.

Regional incidents underscored how quickly the conflict could spiral beyond Israel and Lebanon. On March 2, Kuwaiti defenses mistakenly shot down three U.S. F‑15s amid overlapping air operations, and Iranian-linked attacks reached as far as a British base in Cyprus, heightening concerns among Western and Gulf governments about miscalculation and forced involvement timesofisrael. Diplomatic efforts by European and Arab mediators continued, but think tanks and conflict monitors warned that a deep Israeli thrust into Lebanon could entrench Hezbollah resistance, strain Lebanon’s already fragile state, and harden a multi-front regional war involving Iran and its allies timesofisrael +1.

The Bigger Picture

The planned assault on southern Lebanon positioned the country at the center of a widening Middle East war that had already stretched from Iran to the Mediterranean. As Israel sought strategic gains against Hezbollah and reassurance for its northern communities, Lebanon’s economic collapse, mass displacement and damaged infrastructure raised the risk that even a successful Israeli military campaign would leave behind a more unstable neighbor and a deeper humanitarian crisis, with consequences likely to reverberate well beyond the Litani River.