NOV. 26, 2024
What a Cease-Fire Would Look Like on the Ground
Under a cease-fire proposal that Israeli ministers approved on Tuesday, both Israel and Hezbollah would observe a 60-day truce. During that period, combatants from both sides would withdraw from southern Lebanon, likely the area below the Litani River.
Here’s what the agreement would look like.
The cease-fire would end Israel’s ground invasion of southern Lebanon, which began when its troops crossed the border two months ago. The invasion was in response to months of rocket attacks by the Iranian-backed militants in support of the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, which kicked off a year of back-and-forth attacks. Israel said its goal was to clear the border area of Hezbollah fighters, weapons and tunnels.
Under the proposal, the Lebanese Army — which is not a combatant in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict — would fill the vacuum in southern Lebanon. United Nations peacekeepers who monitored an earlier truce would also be present. But many questions about the proposal remain unanswered, including how the Lebanese army would exert authority over the powerful militants.
In the past two months, Israeli forces have advanced several miles into many parts of southern Lebanon’s border area, raiding many towns and villages with a strong Hezbollah presence.
Over the course of the ground invasion, Israeli troops captured and decimated several villages and towns in southern Lebanon. Israeli officials have said they are targeting Hezbollah military infrastructure that is deeply embedded in those villages, including arms depots, staging areas and tunnels.
An analysis of satellite imagery shows that damage from the conflict extends across Lebanon, with the most heavily hit areas close to the border and near Beirut. Much of the damage in southern Lebanon predated the ground invasion.
The war has driven roughly one million Lebanese from their homes, and Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel have displaced tens of thousands of Israelis.
Israel escalated its assault in September. A week before the ground invasion, Israel said it had struck more than 1,600 targets in Lebanon in a single day, causing significant destruction and one of the highest daily death tolls in recent wars. Israel has also assassinated several top leaders of the Lebanese militant group, including its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, as well as his presumed successor, Hashem Safieddine.
Oct. 15, 2024
Where Israel has opened a new front in southern Lebanon
Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon, now in its third week, expanded in recent days to include a new front near the Mediterranean coast. An analysis of commercial satellite imagery shows multiple locations where Israeli armored vehicles crossed the border from what Israeli officials call a newly established military zone.
Israel has further expanded its closed military zones along the border. On Monday, the Israeli military told residents of Lebanese towns nearly 30 miles from the border — the farthest north yet — to leave their homes and move north of the Awali River.
As Israeli forces have marched into Lebanon, U.N. peacekeeping missions near the border have come under Israeli fire in the last week, injuring several peacekeepers.
On Sunday, Israeli tanks entered a U.N. base near Ramyah, Lebanon, the latest in a series of Israeli challenges to the peacekeeping force since the ground invasion began. The tanks left about 45 minutes later, after the United Nations warned the military was putting peacekeepers in danger.
U.N. peacekeeping forces have been in southern Lebanon since 1978. Israeli officials have called on the United Nations to pull its peacekeeping forces back, but the U.N. force has rejected those calls.
Farther north, Israel has continued its airstrikes on targets in and around Lebanon’s capital, Beirut.
Last week, Israeli airstrikes reduced part of a densely populated area in central Beirut to ruins, killing at least 22 people and injuring more than 100 others, Lebanese officials said.
Israel has struck the area immediately south of the city, known as the Dahiya, dozens of times since it assassinated Hezbollah’s longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in late September. But the strikes in central Beirut last week were only the third and fourth time Israel is believed to have struck the city itself since 2006.
The strikes hit a largely Sunni area of Beirut where displaced people had been sheltering, seeking safety from heavy Israeli bombardment in the Dahiya and in other parts of the country.
UPDATED Oct. 11, 2024
Where visual evidence shows Israeli troops in Lebanon
Israel is conducting a multipronged attack into southern Lebanon, a New York Times analysis of commercial satellite imagery and videos posted by the Israeli military found. The attacks are being launched from areas in northern Israel that were designated as closed military zones.
In early October, Hezbollah reported clashes with Israeli forces in three border towns, but details on the exact extent of Israel’s invasion have been scarce. This visual evidence is some of the first independent verification of where Israeli troops have been operating and how far they have advanced into Lebanese territory.
A comparison of commercial satellite imagery from before and after Israel launched its invasion found at least seven locations where new vehicle tracks had been created near the Israel-Lebanon border. For example, images near the village of Yaroun, Lebanon, shown below, indicate likely crossing points into Lebanon for Israeli armored vehicles.
Locations could also be determined from videos posted by the Israeli military on social media. A video posted on the Israel Defense Forces’s Telegram channel showed Israeli troops entering a building in Yaroun, which is about a mile from the border.
Satellite images and video indicated that the Israeli military has flattened large parts of Yaroun and a second border village nearby, Maroun al-Ras.
Oct. 3, 2024
Israel expands evacuation warnings in southern Lebanon and strikes the heart of Beirut
Israel issued a new evacuation order for more than 20 towns in southern Lebanon that reached farther north than previous orders. Although it remains unclear how far Israel intends to send ground troops into southern Lebanon, the order expands the area Israel is seeking to clear of residents roughly 20 miles to the north.
All of the towns from Thursday’s warning are north of the Litani River, outside a buffer area established by the U.N. at the end of the 2006 war.
Overnight, Israel struck the Bachoura neighborhood of Beirut, killing at least nine people, according to Lebanese health authorities. No apparent warning preceded the strike, which was the closest to Beirut’s city center since 2006.
The strike hit several hundred yards from Lebanon’s parliament and several Western embassies. Other large explosions throughout the day pounded the Dahiya area, a cluster of densely populated neighborhoods on the southern outskirts of Beirut where Hezbollah has a strong presence.
Oct. 2, 2024
The unforgiving terrain where Israel is fighting with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon
Israel and Hezbollah were fighting at close range in southern Lebanon on Wednesday in at least two areas near the border, according to reports from the Israeli military, Hezbollah and Lebanon’s army.
The reported clashes were near closed military zones where Israel has amassed troops and equipment on its side of the border. One of the locations of fighting reported by Hezbollah, Maroun al-Ras, was the site of a major battle during Israel’s last invasion of Lebanon in 2006.
Southern Lebanon is a rugged area, filled with steep valleys in which defenders can ambush an invading army, a factor that may have shaped Israeli military planning. The tough terrain has historically helped factions in the region to defend themselves.
Oct. 1, 2024
The escalating attacks across the Middle East
It is one of the Middle East’s most dangerous moments since the Arab-Israeli War of 1967: After Israel assassinated Hezbollah’s leader and began a ground invasion of Lebanon, Iran retaliated by launching nearly 200 missiles at Israel.
Israel is expected to respond with its own strike on Iran, raising the prospect that the conflict will continue to intensify.
Israel is now fighting on a multitude of fronts with Iran and an axis of Iran-backed militias across Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen and Syria. On Sunday, Israel launched a missile attack on the port city of Hudaydah in Yemen, targeting Houthi fighters there after the Houthis fired a missile at Tel Aviv.
Meanwhile, Israel has continued to bombard Gaza with airstrikes, including hitting a United Nations school complex that killed 18 people in September. The Israeli military said the site was being used as a Hamas “command and control center,” a claim it has repeatedly made to justify increasingly frequent strikes on schools serving as shelters.
Oct. 1, 2024
Israel launches invasion of Lebanon
Israeli forces crossed into southern Lebanon late on Monday in an operation aimed at Hezbollah forces and infrastructure in the rugged border region. Israel ordered people in more than two dozen towns to move north of the Awali River, which is more than 15 miles from the Israeli border.
There are few details known about where Israeli ground forces are operating in Lebanon, or what the ultimate scope of the invasion will be. The Israeli military said one army division — which typically numbers more than 10,000 soldiers — was conducting “limited, localized and targeted raids,” but it is unclear how many of those troops had already crossed the border.
American officials said on Monday that they believed the invasion would be a limited one.
The Israeli military declared a closed military zone on Monday at the northern tip of Israel bordering southern Lebanon. The landscape there is rugged, filled with steep valleys in which defenders can easily ambush an invading army, a factor that may have shaped Israeli military planning.
Oct. 1, 2024
The extent of Israel’s last invasion of Lebanon
Israel has occupied parts of Lebanon before. It had forces in southern Lebanon from 1982 to 2000, and it briefly invaded again in 2006 during a monthlong war with Hezbollah that affected some of the same villages people that were told to leave on Tuesday.
Oct. 1, 2024
Israel’s invasion of Lebanon was preceded by intense air attacks
Early last week, Israel waged one of the most intense air raids in modern warfare, leaving large parts of southern Lebanon in ruins and forcing tens of thousands of people to flee. The attacks killed more than 500 people in a single day, according to Lebanon’s health minister.
On Friday, a massive Israeli bombing barrage killed Mr. Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, near Beirut, and Israeli strikes continued to pound the area south of Beirut in the hours and days after the assassination.
Before and after Mr. Nasrallah’s assassination, Israeli strikes had hit only south of the city center. But on Monday, an Israeli strike in the Cola neighborhood of Beirut appeared to be the first time it had struck the city center since 2006.
The post Mapping Israel’s Invasion of Lebanon appeared first on New York Times.
