ELBAHRAIN.NET Hezbollah has been trading attacks across the southern Lebanese border with Israel for nearly a year,
since October 8 when it began its attacks to deter Israel from its war on Gaza,
which has killed at least 41,000 people.
Israel has returned fire, escalating and slowing in turn against one of the region’s most experienced
nongovernmental fighting groups, which is well-armed and battle-tested against it.
The conflict between the two is not new, rather it goes back nearly half a century.
People in the Lebanese capital woke up to the news of Israel’s unprecedented level of
attack on the southern and eastern parts of the country.
People here have relatives, family and friends living in the south.
According to analysts I spoke to, about a quarter of the population lives in the southern parts. It is home to roughly 800,000 people.
Now about 100,000 of those people have been relocated, but they’re still in southern Lebanon. There are a lot of phone calls, text messages and videos being sent from residents in the south. Their relatives and friends here in the capital are extremely concerned.
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They are anxious about not only what is happening in the south, but about how close they are to
actually being in a full-out war between Hezbollah and Israel.
This is the first time that they have felt this level of anxiety in almost a year because of everything
that has happened and the continuing level of strikes from Israel as well as Hezbollah’s response. Hezbollah has shown no sign of backing down.
A dramatic Israeli attack on Hezbollah has driven speculation that all-out war may be on the books soon
between the Lebanese group and Israel.
Back-and-forth attacks between Hezbollah and Israel have been ongoing since a day after Israel launched its war on Gaza.
As observers wait with bated breath to see what happens next, here is everything you need to know about Hezbollah.
The Israeli army campaign has left Gaza’s civil infrastructure destroyed and land that can’t withstand extreme
weather conditions, especially with winter around the corner.
The displaced families here have been going through one of the worst humanitarian conditions and now
rainwater is entering their makeshift tents.
They have been forced to take shelter close to Gaza’s beaches. The suffering is immense.
People in Beirut are also receiving text messages, purportedly from the Israeli army, asking them to evacuate
their locations quickly, Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) is reporting.
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Minister of Information Ziad Makary received a call with a voicemail left on his phone,
urging the building be evacuated, the agency said.
On Saturday, an Israeli strike on the southern suburbs of Beirut killed 45 people, including a senior
Hezbollah commander, and wounded 66.
Lebanese media now report that in addition to the one civilian killed in Israeli attacks across
eastern and southern Lebanon, 17 people have been wounded.
Israeli jets launched more than 80 air raids within 30 minutes early this morning.
A Lebanese shepherd was killed and six people were injured, including two family members,
in an attack in Bodai in eastern Lebanon, state media reported.
The Health Ministry said 11 more people were wounded in another strike in Aitaroun, southern Lebanon.
Israeli warnings are a classic example of psychological warfare that is carried out in other areas as well.
We’ve seen similar things in Gaza and the West Bank. Now we’re seeing it in Lebanon.
They issue these warnings, which are really intended to imply to civilians that their leaders,
people fighting on their side, and people surrounding them are using them as human shields.
This is an accusation that the Israeli army has put up against Hamas in the past, and against armed
groups in the West Bank.
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It is part and parcel of what Israel does. It masks its own aggression, tactics and military prowess in this
cocoon of the idea that the other side is using the population that Israel is killing as human shields,
whether that is true or not.
And Israel has shown no differentiation in its own military acts in the past anytime it’s come across a
civilian population.
Residents of southern Lebanon are receiving phone calls from a Lebanese number ordering them to immediately
move away from any post used by Hezbollah, Reuters is reporting.
In a televised statement earlier, an Israeli military spokesperson issued a similar warning and said it was being
“distributed in Arabic on all networks and platforms in Lebanon”.
The Israeli army has been telling Lebanese civilians to “move away” from Hezbollah sites it plans to target and
as the Israeli military said it will carry out more “extensive and precise” strikes against Hezbollah.
It was the first such warning issued to Lebanese people by Israel’s military since the war in
Gaza erupted nearly a year ago.
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A rocket hit an uninhabited mountainside east of the Lebanese port city of Byblos,
according to Lebanon’s state media and a resident Reuters spoke to.
The area was not hit previously by air strikes in months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.
These tit-for-tat attacks have intensified in recent days, with Israel carrying out air raids across a wider region today,
as we have been reporting.
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Israeli forces have continued their raids on the village of Haris, west of Salfit, in the occupied West Bank,
for the second day, Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.
The head of the Haris village council Omar Samara told Wafa that Israeli soldiers harassed
civilians and searched their homes, arresting about 70 people last night, most of them children.
Samara also said the army stormed schools, arresting a number of students and teachers.
Elsewhere, Israeli forces also demolished a house in al-Jiftlik village, north of Jericho. The two-storey house belonged to Nael Mustafa Bani Odeh and was built more than 15 years ago.
