As Israel’s Bombardment of Lebanon Grows, So Do Fears of Regional War

After months of cross-border attacks and a week of heavy bombardment, Israel has announced a ground invasion in Lebanon in the latest stage of its war against the country. “Israel has been trying to carpet bomb the south as much as possible before invading,” Sintia Issa, editor-at-large of Beirut-based publication, The Public Source, told Truthout. “Israel will try to invade and occupy the south again, at least until the Litani River, but perhaps further.”

While Lebanon’s south has been under bombardment ever since October, Israel’s attacks have steadily moved to encompass more and more of the country. In a massive escalation on Friday, September 27, Israel dropped 2000-pound bombs on the Dahiya neighborhood of Beirut, flattening at least six residential buildings and assassinating Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

The bombing, the largest attack on the Lebanese capital in Israel’s assault so far, continued into early Saturday morning; Israel dropped 85 “bunker-buster” bombs in total. The explosions were so strong that it has been difficult to locate remains of those killed, but estimates are that hundreds were killed on Friday night alone. Even after Hezbollah and Israel each individually announced the death of Nasrallah, who led the group for 32 years, Israel continued its bombing campaign on the Beirut suburb as well as areas in the country that had not yet been targeted, including central Beirut — demonstrating that its primary goal is collective punishment and mass death, and the expansion of its year-long war on Gaza into Lebanon.

The attack on Dahiya came at the end of a week of escalated bombardment of Lebanon. On Monday, September 23, around 6 am, Israel began bombing dozens of towns across southern Lebanon, where it has waged a low-level war for months. Israel then announced that it was expanding its bombing campaign to the Beqaa Valley, in eastern Lebanon, and instructed civilians to leave their homes within two hours. Tens of thousands of people fled both eastern and southern Lebanon as the bombing continued throughout the day, settling in temporary schools quickly repurposed as shelters. Israel bombed and flattened entire buildings and neighborhoods in scenes reminiscent of Gaza.

Over 558 people were killed on September 23 alone, including 50 children and 94 women. The level of bombardment, and consequent death rate, surpassed any single day of Israel’s month-long 2006 war on Lebanon, and marked the deadliest day for Lebanon since the end of the country’s civil war 35 years ago. By September 29, Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati estimated that nearly 1 million people in Lebanon had been displaced from their homes due to the ongoing bombardment. Over 1,000 have been killed.

Israel unleashed its bombing campaign just days after its attacks on pagers and walkie-talkies across Lebanon on September 18 and 19 — attacks that opened this latest phase of escalation and were designed to instill panic and fear. Many of the pagers and walkie-talkies belonged to Hezbollah members — who are, it must be remembered, part of the Lebanese government — but their explosions targeted a much wider public, as the phones exploded in supermarkets, cars and homes. The attacks killed at least 39 people and injured thousands. British-Palestinian doctor Ghassan Abu-Sittah decried the pager attacks as “the largest act of mass mutilation,” explaining that the pager bombings were designed to maim rather than to kill, resulting in numerous cases of mangled hands and loss of eyes.

“Scenes Familiar to Us From Gaza”

Despite the widespread damage it has inflicted over the last two weeks, Israel shows no sign of stopping, instead expanding its bombing to towns across Lebanon. While it claims that its target is individual leaders of Hezbollah, its method is collective punishment and mass death, particularly among the Shia population of Lebanon, which it sees as Hezbollah’s base.

Like in Gaza, Israel has targeted health care facilities and paramedics specifically in its attacks on Lebanon.

As it expanded its war on Lebanon from the south to the rest of the country on September 23, Israel began deploying methods it has used in its year-long war on Gaza. Israel once again framed its strikes as being a preemptive measure against a potential Hezbollah attack, a counter-factual and circuitous claim that could only make sense to someone willing to ignore blatant double standards. As it began its attack on the Beqaa Valley, the Israeli military issued a video instructing civilians to leave their homes in the area, claiming that it was targeting homes where Hezbollah stored weapons, and that if residents near those homes did not leave within two hours, they would be killed. Israel frequently uses this type of warning to make it seem as if it is upholding international laws of war. In reality, these are tactics of psychological warfare, and repeated acts of mass ethnic cleansing. Residents do not know where weapons are stored and if they are situated near them. And the idea that Israel is targeting primarily military sites has been repeatedly shown to be false. On Saturday, for example, Israel bombed a building in Saida sheltering over 100 displaced people, killing 45 of the displaced.

“We’ve started seeing scenes familiar to us from Gaza,” Issa told Truthout. The displaced are “in schools, mosques, churches, community centers. Some are sleeping on the streets,” Issa explained. “Some of the displaced are constantly moving as safe spaces are starting to shrink. For example, some of those who evacuated from the south or the Beqaa found themselves in the suburbs of Beirut, which was then bombed, and they had to flee again. We’re also starting to see strikes on paramedics, strikes near hospitals — you can think about these as warning shots. Israel also killed two journalists, who were off duty, in their homes.”

Like in Gaza, Israel has targeted health care facilities and paramedics specifically in its attacks on Lebanon. This past weekend alone, Israel’s bombardment killed 14 paramedics in 48 hours. Israel has bombed hospitals and healthcare centers in the south of Lebanon in particular, increasing the likelihood of carnage in the coming days and weeks.

The Dahiya Doctrine

“Whether you are a supporter of Hezbollah or not does not seem to be part of the calculation; it is a collective punishment,” Issa told Truthout. “We can think of it in terms of the Dahiya Doctrine, which is premised on causing excessive harm to the population, killing and disabling as many people as possible; and the objective of this doctrine is to sow enough doubt within the popular base of Hezbollah to delegitimize and gradually defeat it. That’s the aim.”

“We’ve started seeing scenes familiar to us from Gaza. Some of the displaced are constantly moving as safe spaces are starting to shrink.”

Israel established the Dahiya Doctrine during its 2006 war on Lebanon as it focused its bombardment on the Dahiya suburb of Beirut, where Hezbollah’s political center is based. The military doctrine calls for disproportionate force and the targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure. Its consequences are massive destruction and death. The Israeli military has recycled this doctrine since 2006, including in Gaza, blatantly declaring in the days after October 7 that Israel’s “emphasis” is “on damage and not on accuracy.”

Now, Israel has revived the doctrine in full force across Lebanon. Israel has stated its plans to continue to bomb Lebanon until it weakens Hezbollah sufficiently, and that it will use “all the means” at its disposal to do so. The Israeli military is using the Dahiya doctrine to punish Shia areas of the country most acutely, but its latest strikes in central Beirut show that Israel is unlikely to stop there. The doctrine relies on disproportionality, a war crime under international law. The assumption underlying the doctrine is that the base of Hezbollah will turn against it once under attack. But the doctrine did not work to push Hezbollah’s base away from it in the past– if anything, resistance to Israel is more likely to strengthen its largely Shia base’s support for the party. Hezbollah’s popularity peaked in 1990 and then in 2006 when it kicked Israel out of south Lebanon and defeated Israel in its war against Lebanon. Its popularity has dropped significantly in the last decade, in part due to a perception that it has strayed from its historic role of resisting Israel to becoming yet another part of the dysfunctional political system in the country and region.

But with the assassination of Nasrallah and other key leaders of Hezbollah, Lebanon may be facing a power vacuum in a time of war. Issa described the Lebanese government as expectedly dysfunctional. “It seems as if the Lebanese government is once again relying on civil responses to crises and to the war, as was the case in 2006 when the government was also absolutely ill-prepared, relying on people coming together to support each other through mutual aid, to basically enact a form of self-governance.” While people’s self-mobilization and mutual aid has been heartening, the void in institutional agency and leadership is worrisome.

Exodus Into Syria

The targets of Israel’s assault have not only been Lebanese; over 100 Syrians have also been killed by Israel’s bombing in Lebanon thus far. On Thursday, September 26, Israel bombed a building housing Syrian workers and their families in the Beqaa Valley, killing at least 19 Syrians and one Lebanese person.

Nearly one in four people in Lebanon is a Syrian refugee who fled Syria after counterrevolution and war overtook the country over the last decade. But as Israel bombs Lebanon, tens of thousands have crossed into Syria from Lebanon over the past few days — 36,000 Syrians and 41,000 Lebanese have crossed into Syria, despite the fact that Syria is not safe for most Syrians to return to as they face threats of arrest and torture by the ruling Assad government. And as many turned to cross to Syria, Israel bombed a bridge connecting Lebanon to Syria — as if to reaffirm that its primary goal is to punish civilians and those fleeing for their lives.

A Second Front in a Regional War

Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon and its opening of a second front of its war on Lebanon is a consequence of a year of genocidal war on Gaza that has been given the green light by the U.S. and the rest of the world’s major powers. Over the course of the year, Israel, along with a complicit mainstream media, has managed to normalize massacres in Gaza — so much so that the over 1,000 people killed in the past two weeks in Lebanon, around the same number of Israelis killed on October 7, does not elicit the shock and outrage globally that it deserves.

Haaretz called the pager explosions a “genius move;” the BBC declared it a “tactical triumph.” These statements included little to no mention of the bystanders killed and injured by the indiscriminate attacks.

Instead, some media outlets have looked at Israel’s attacks with a degree of removed reverence. In a show of racist double standards with regards to Arab lives, Haaretz called the pager explosions a “genius move;” the BBC declared it a “tactical triumph;” “the sort of spectacular coup you would read about in a thriller,” while bemoaning that the attacks would not be sufficiently effective. These statements included little to no mention of the bystanders, family members, children and medical workers killed and injured by the indiscriminate attacks. Instead, this coverage provides additional cover for Israel’s genocidal actions and has helped to normalize its increasingly horrific massacres over the past year, in Gaza and now Lebanon.

In addition to quelling Hezbollah, Israel’s aim in opening up a second front of the war is also to lure in Iran into a regional war, and in turn lure in the U.S. and other Western powers to back Israel. On October 1, Iran fired dozens of ballistic missiles into Israel in retaliation for the killings of Nasrallah last week and Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in July.

Meanwhile, Israel has become more brazen in its rejection of Lebanese sovereignty. On Saturday, Israel prevented a plane coming from Iran from landing at the Beirut Airport, threatening to fire at it — another clear sign of all-out war — claiming that it was to stop weapons from arriving to aid Hezbollah; Iran Air then announced that it was suspending all flights to Beirut. And while bombing Lebanon and Gaza, Israel also bombed sites in Syria and Yemen in a 24 hour period. Other global powers, most notably the U.S., are publicly urging de-escalation while simultaneously promising to aid and defend Israel no matter the cost. Biden responded to Nasrallah’s assassination by making familiarly hollow calls for ceasefire before signing off on additional troops and warplanes to the Middle East to defend Israel.

Issa suggests military force won’t end Lebanese resistance, especially to Israeli troops within Lebanese borders. “Of course, the Zionists ignore that the Lebanese, especially the southerners, have lived under occupation for 18 years, from 1982 until 2000, and still commemorate the end of the occupation. And many would rather resist than experience it again.”

Israel’s leaders appear to think they can stop Hezbollah from firing rockets by enacting mass slaughter in Lebanon. Meanwhile, Hezbollah’s leaders have said they have one demand to end their attacks across the border: for Israel to end its assault on Gaza.

This year-long nightmare requires more grassroots pressure on the U.S. to withhold arms and military backing from an increasingly genocidal Israel. Without pressure from the U.S. and other global powers, and a withholding of arms, Israel is likely to expand its war, and the risk of a larger regional expansion of the bloodshed will become even greater.