Israel strikes Lebanon

Photo via: IDF Iron Dome/Public domain/Wikimedia Commons

For the last 11 months, there has been major bloodshed due to the Israel-Hamas war. In 2023, a record number of Palestinians had been killed by Israel, leading to Hamas launching a surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Now, after almost a year of fighting, over 40,000 Palestinians and 1,100 Israelis have died. Additionally, over 100,000 Palestinians and 8,700 Israelis have been injured.

This war has stayed stagnant with very few signs of forward progress, and now Israel has started attacking Lebanon, making this a war on two fronts. Israel has an extensive history with Lebanon, more specifically Hezbollah. 

From 1975 to 1990, Lebanon faced a brutal Civil War. During this war, the Shiite-Muslim political party and militant group, Hezbollah, was formed. 

Israel is Hezbollah’s main enemy due to their invasion of Lebanon in 1978, and many terrorist attacks against Israeli and Jewish people have been attributed to Hezbollah. Hezbollah receives funding, resources, weapons and training from Iran, Syria, and the Lebanese diaspora. Additionally, they have been designated as a terrorist organization by many different countries and organizations, including the U.S. in 1997 and the EU in 2013. Hezbollah is known to be the world’s most heavily armed non-state actor.

Amid the Israel-Hamas war, Hezbollah began firing rockets across the Lebanon-Israel border as acts of solidarity for Palestine, vowing not to stop until there is a ceasefire. 

Tensions continued to rise between the two countries as rockets and guns were fired back and forth over the border. This led to Israel’s decision to assassinate multiple commanders of both Hezbollah and Hamas. 

Things settled down for a few months after that, but tensions spiked again Sept. 17, after 3,000 pagers exploded killing twelve people and injuring several thousand. Two of those killed were children and four were healthcare workers. Months ago, an Israeli spy agency intercepted an order of 5,000 pagers from Taiwan going to Lebanon and planted explosives in each one, and on Sept. 17, they were each sent a code prompting them to explode. 

This was not the only attack though. The next day, thousands of walkie-talkies exploded across Lebanon resulting in another 25 deaths and hundreds more injuries. 

This has been the largest round of Israeli strikes on Lebanon since the Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006. During that war, over a thousand Lebanese people died and thousands of people were displaced due to the disruption of their infrastructure. 

On Sept. 23 and 24 alone, large waves of air strikes have taken the lives of 560 Lebanese people, with more than 90,000 displaced. 

Additionally, the U.S. currently has about 40,000 troops throughout the Middle East, but as a result of this fighting, they intend to send more soon. 

Since this fighting began (at the time of the publishing of this article), a total of 600 people have died in Lebanon, and thousands of people have started to flee their homes.