A rapid succession of Israeli air strikes against a broad swathe of Lebanese territory on 23 September has significantly expanded the scope and intensity of the Israeli aggression against Lebanon.

The aerial assaults throughout the day spanned the entire south of the country from Tyre on the Mediterranean to the western Bekaa Valley, killing 356 people, including 21 children, and injuring 1,246 others.

The civilian casualty toll continues to rise. Israel concluded the day’s bombing spree with what it billed as a “precision strike” against the southern suburbs of Beirut that was intended to kill Ali Al-Karaki, the commander of Hizbullah’s southern military sector.

Hizbullah denied that Al-Karaki has died, but seven civilians were injured in the strike. 

Following through on its terror attack on Lebanon on 17-18 September using booby-trapped pagers, Israel launched several days of “precision” strikes, causing two buildings to collapse in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital.

The strikes targeted the leaders of Hizbullah’s Radwan Unit, which is tasked with carrying out offensive operations in northern Israel in the event of a full-scale war. The leaders were meeting in a two-storey underground basement between the targeted buildings. 

The explosions of the pagers killed 37 people and injured about 3,000. According to Hizbullah, 25 of the dead were its members. The strikes against the residential quarters in southern Beirut killed 31 people and injured 68. Of those killed, 16 were Hizbullah members, including two prominent military leaders, Ibrahim Aqil, the commander of the Radwan Unit, and Ahmed Wahbi, a former commander of the same unit.

As Hizbullah began to rally after these painful blows, it launched what it called its “initial retaliation.” On the morning of 22 September, it fired a barrage of missiles into Israel, targeting the Ramat David Airbase and the Rafael Military Industries Complex near Haifa.

This was just the beginning of the “severe reckoning” and “just retribution” that Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah vowed to exact in his speech following the pager bombings. 

Hizbullah intended its “initial response” to signal the start of an incremental strategy, perhaps calculating that it had time to demonstrate its capacity to strike deeper and deeper into Israel over the coming days. However, Israel took it by surprise the following day with its massive bombardment of the south and the Bekaa Valley, jettisoning the longstanding rules of engagement in the region. 

On the morning of 23 September, Israel reportedly called tens of thousands of Lebanese phones ordering people to evacuate and stay clear of Hizbullah’s weapons storage areas. It then barraged southern towns and villages, deliberately targeting residential areas instead of the open hills and forest areas it had previously targeted.

Lebanese Health Minister Firas Al-Abyad said that Israel also targeted ambulances and civil-defence vehicles in the south. The intensive strikes, both south and north of the Litani River, created a long belt of missile fire aimed to clear the area of any human presence. 

In its initial response, which it held back until the end of the day, Hizbullah fired rocket salvos at several points in northern Israel, including the main storage facilities of the Northern Corps at the Nimra Base, the rocket and artillery battalion at the Yoav Barracks, and the Rafael Military Industrial Complex east of Haifa.  

Subsequent volleys reached up to 120 km into Israel, landing east of Haifa. Iron Dome sirens sounded in areas from the east of Haifa to the east of Tel Aviv, just a few km from Ben Gurion Airport. 

The Ramat David Base and Rafael Military Industrial Complex had both featured in the drone footage that Hizbullah circulated online in July, Hizbullah used medium-range Fadi 1 and 2 missiles to hit these targets. With ranges of 70 to 120 km, these are guided missiles, but not “smart missiles” with self-navigation capabilities.

Hizbullah is probably reserving its more sophisticated missiles for a later stage, in keeping with its incremental strategy. 

Missiles also struck the Kiryat Bialik settlement, damaging some buildings without causing any fatalities. But as this was a residential area, it suggests that Hizbullah might be planning to cause another wave of evacuations from the north, challenging the Israeli government’s declared aim of bringing the settlers back to their settlements. 

Israeli military censorship exerts strict control over the broadcasting of photographic and video images of areas hit by Hizbullah missiles. In this case, the army allowed images of the destruction in Kiryat Bialik to be widely disseminated, so it could use them the following day to justify its carpet-bombing of Southern Lebanon. 

In his speech on 19 September, Nasrallah dismissed Israeli threats to push Hizbullah forces north of the Litani River so that Israeli settlers could return to their homes in the north. He even dared Netanyahu and Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant to try to return the evacuees to the north without stopping the war on Gaza, and he scoffed at the idea of a “security belt” inside Lebanon.

He added that Hizbullah had been waiting for this moment to ensnare Israeli soldiers in a trap in Southern Lebanon. 

He did not mention any details of how he would retaliate against Israel, saying that the response would only be discussed within his inner circle, which suggests that Hizbullah is still searching for the source of the intelligence breach within its ranks.

However, fewer than 24 hours after Nasrallah’s speech, Israel bombed the southern suburbs of Beirut and assassinated leaders and members of the Radwan Unit. Within 24 hours of the “initial response,” Israel then expanded its aerial aggression to the entire south and Bekaa before carrying out another strike on the southern suburbs to assassinate Ali Al-Karaki.

Hizbullah’s threats may have been calculated to buy time as it rallied from its losses, assessed the damage, and raced to identify how its security had been compromised. It also needed to take precautions to safeguard its weapons depots.

As Israel kept up its attacks, Hizbullah’s vows of revenge kept accumulating, making it appear as though it could not catch its breath due to the rapidity of the onslaughts, the last wave of which struck more than 1,300 Hizbullah targets, according to the Israeli army, causing the massive displacement of civilians from the south towards the capital Beirut.

Evidently, Iran has taken precautions, through consultations with Hizbullah leaders, not to appear involved in the current round of escalation along the Lebanese-Israeli front. Iran does not want to be drawn into a war just weeks before the US presidential elections in November. As Israel unleashed its sweeping offensive against Lebanon, Tehran raised the possibility of new talks with the US over the Iranian nuclear programme. 

Israel appears to have freed itself of the need to consult with the US over expanding the war, while the delayed international reactions seem calculated to give Israel the space to complete its military mission before mediators step in to exert pressure on Hizbullah to make a deal.

In inflicting such a high casualty toll on Lebanon over a few days, Israel intends to intimidate the Lebanese into pressuring Hizbullah to accept a US or French-mediated deal to withdraw its forces from the border.

Following the pager bombings and the subsequent Israeli strikes, Hizbullah has been determined to demonstrate its unshakability and the continuity of its operations. After the last Israeli bombardment of the south and Bekaa, it will be even more resolved to sustain its strikes into Israel. Its aim now is not just to support Gaza, but also to defend Lebanon and, perhaps, to strengthen its hand when the time comes for negotiations. 

New equations are taking shape between Israel and Hizbullah. Instead of the rules of engagement that had been calibrated to keep that front limited to tit-for-tat missile exchanges, the objective now is to use intensive bombing to build up domestic pressures on the other side to compel it to throw in the towel or compromise.

Through its sudden and massive escalation against Lebanon, Israel has burnt through all the stages to a full-scale war. Although Hizbullah has repeatedly stated that it does not want such a war, it has now been forced to prove it can fight back and inflict heavy losses on the Israeli side.

However, Hizbullah had been betting on an Israeli ground offensive, in which it would have had a relative advantage due to its control of the south, its knowledge of the terrain, and its ability to set ambushes for Israeli soldiers. 

It is unlikely to have planned for the scale of the initial Israeli air assault. Israel’s intensive day-long bombardment from Tyre to the Bekaa and the assassination strikes in the southern suburbs of Beirut are clearly intended to achieve multiple debilitating objectives before launching a ground offensive.

As for Hizbullah, in striking two military bases north of Haifa and West Bank settlements east of Tel Aviv in its initial response, it has proved it has absorbed the shock of the first wave of Israel’s offensive.

But now it must show it can absorb the subsequent wave and disrupt Israel’s plans for the south and Bekaa, despite the damage to its ranks and the loss of three important military leaders. In large measure, Hizbullah’s survival depends on its ability to plug the security breaches that made it possible for Israel to take out several of its top military leaders in a matter of days. 

* A version of this article appears in print in the 26 September, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly