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Lebanon plunged back into war as Israel targets Iran-backed Hizbollah Shia militant group strikes northern Israel for first time since 2024, triggering retaliatory offensive The aftermath of Israeli strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs © Ibrahim Amro/AFP/Getty Images Lebanon plunged back into war as Israel targets Iran-backed Hizbollah on x (opens in a new window) Lebanon plunged back into war as Israel targets Iran-backed Hizbollah on facebook (opens in a new window) Lebanon plunged back into war as Israel targets Iran-backed Hizbollah on linkedin (opens in a new window) Save current progress 0% Malaika Kanaaneh Tapper in Beirut PublishedYESTERDAY Updated02:01 Print this page Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Lebanon has been plunged back into war with Israel after Hizbollah intervened in the US-Iran conflict on the side of Tehran. Israeli strikes have pounded the country and sent thousands fleeing from their homes while Lebanon’s government has struggled to contain the escalation. Israeli strikes began on Sunday night after Hizbollah, the Iran-backed Shia militant group, launched rockets against Israel in its first such attacks since 2024 — despite the pleas of Lebanese authorities — and so joined the broader regional conflict sparked by Israeli and US attacks on Iran. Waves of Israeli bombings across the country — including barrages aimed at Beirut’s southern suburbs — have so far killed more than 50 people and wounded over 150, according to Lebanese authorities. The scenes of bombings and mass displacement were reminiscent of the start of the last war between Hizbollah and Israel in 2024, which devastated large swaths of Lebanon and killed more than 3,000 people. That erupted after Hizbollah fired missiles towards Israel a day after Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack. Responding to Hizbollah’s decision to join the conflict, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said his government had decided to “ban” all Hizbollah military activities — saying they were illegal and demanding the group hand over all its weapons and become a purely political organisation. Salam said the government asked the military and security forces to take “immediate steps” to implement the decision and “to prevent any military operations or launches of missiles or drones from Lebanese territory”. But despite the confrontational tone by Lebanese authorities — who had warned Hizbollah against intervening on behalf of Iran, hoping to keep the war-weary nation on the sidelines of the new Middle East conflagration — it was unclear what government security forces would actually do to implement the “ban” and whether such action would meet Israeli demands. Even after Salam’s statement, the Israeli military’s chief of staff said: “We will end this campaign with not just Iran being struck but with Hizbollah suffering a devastating blow. We will continue to insist that Hizbollah be disarmed — this is a demand we will not relinquish. The IDF will not conclude the campaign before the threat from Lebanon is eliminated.” Lebanese authorities appear to have little ability on the ground to prevent Hizbollah from launching further attacks in the near term. The state has been seeking a phased disarmament of the militant group as part of the conditions of the US-brokered ceasefire deal that was supposed to end the last conflict with Israel in 2024, but the government has until now been unwilling to clash directly with Hizbollah and try to take its weapons by force. The government said, however, that it had tasked the security services with arresting those behind the rocket launch. The head of Hizbollah’s parliamentary bloc, Mohammad Raad, who had previously been rumoured to have been killed by Israeli air strikes overnight, hit back at Salam’s comments on Monday evening, saying that the Lebanese government’s “incapacity before the Israeli enemy” did not mean it should make “bravado-filled decisions against Lebanese who reject the occupation”. Raad suggested the government was creating “additional internal problems that could further inflame” an already tense atmosphere — a veiled threat of civil discord. Despite the ceasefire agreement, Israel has continued to carry out near-daily strikes on what it says are Hizbollah targets, accusing the group of trying to rebuild. A damaged building after an Israeli air strike in Beirut’s Haret Hreik neighbourhood on Monday © Ibrahim Amro/AFP/Getty Images Last week, Lebanon’s foreign minister said Lebanese officials had received indirect warnings that if Hizbollah were to get involved in a war between Iran and the US, the Israeli military could target civilian infrastructure in the country, including Beirut airport. During the first two days of war there was hope in Lebanon that a severely weakened Hizbollah might sit out the conflict, sparing the country Israel’s wrath, as it did in the 12-day war between Israel and Iran during the summer. But on Sunday night the group, whose ranks and military capabilities were significantly diminished in the last conflict, said it had fired missiles into Israel for the first time since the war ended in 2024 — a calculation that Mohanad Hage Ali, of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, said was based on the threat that the US-Israeli war against Iran posed to Hizbollah. “This is an existential war for Hizbollah. For them, this is a war to eliminate their main patron, which is the Iranian regime.” PLAY | 00:08 Show video description The Israeli Air Force release footage of its strikes on Hizbollah targets in Lebanon © IAF/X Hage Ali said that while there were disagreements within Hizbollah about whether to get involved, the group may have decided that if it did not intervene and the Iranian regime was deposed, it would have been left without a backer and would still have faced a renewed Israeli offensive down the line, once Israel had finished with Iran. “For Hizbollah, it’s a lose-lose situation,” he said. “If they don’t join, they lose Iranian support, and they lose [anyway] when Israel decides to take them out.” A displaced family who fled their home sit on a street in the port city of Sidon © Mohammed Zaatari/AP Israel vowed a large-scale offensive campaign against Hizbollah in what it said were pre-organised war plans for a multifront campaign. Israeli defence minister Israel Katz also threatened to assassinate Hizbollah’s leader Naim Qassem, successor to Hassan Nasrallah who was assassinated in 2024. The latest attacks on Lebanon have sent the country back into a full-blown state of war that for many is all too familiar from just over a year before. On Monday, Israel issued widespread evacuation orders for towns and cities across Lebanon and said it was striking Hizbollah’s microfinance institution and military targets as well as carrying out targeted assassinations of officials in Beirut and in the south. Just as in 2024, Beirut’s streets were filled with families carrying plastic bags who had fled their homes in the middle of the night and were now seeking shelter. Some sat on the seaside walkway in Beirut, unsure of where to go. Many fled to stay with relatives or friends. Meanwhile, Lebanon’s social affairs minister said 29,000 displaced people were staying in over 170 government shelters across the country. Outside an unfurnished building that was being used as a “hotel” charging displaced people to sleep on the floor, a young man named Ali said he had decided to flee southern Lebanon on Sunday night with his mother because she was so afraid. He said that while he had lived through the previous war, he had a feeling that “this time will be worse”. Cartography by Steven Bernard