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On March 2nd, while global attention was riveted on US-Israeli operations targeting Iran, a separate conflict erupted miles away with a barrage of missile strikes.
The initial assaults in Tehran resulted in the death of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sending shockwaves across the globe. In a swift reaction, Hezbollah, the militant group backed by Iran, launched six missiles into Israel. The group declared in a statement that they were compelled to “fulfil” their “duty in confronting aggression.”
This marked Hezbollah’s first missile attack on Israel since a tenuous ceasefire was established in November 2024.
The incident reignited hostilities between the two adversaries, prompting Israel to retaliate with fierce strikes throughout Lebanon. This escalation added further strain to Lebanon’s already fragile state and a weakened Hezbollah.
In response, the Lebanese government has been keen to distance itself from Hezbollah. The group is classified as a terrorist organization by several nations, including Australia, the US, Israel, Germany, and the UK. However, the European Union designates only its military faction as a terrorist entity.
However, Hezbollah itself makes no distinction between its political and military wings.
“[Hezbollah] did know there’d be consequences,” Ian Parmeter, a research scholar at the Australian National University’s Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies and a former Australian ambassador to Lebanon, told SBS News.
“Essentially, Hezbollah is the creature of Iran and is determined to support Iran in its fight against Israel and the United States.
“Hezbollah feels that it has a stake in this war because of Iran.”
Since then, Israel’s military strikes on Lebanon have killed at least 886 people, according to figures from the Lebanese health ministry. It has also resulted in major waves of displacement, with more than one million people leaving their homes according to government figures.
The UN human rights office has also raised concerns that Israeli strikes on residential buildings may be considered a war crime.
Israel’s military has said it is targeting Hezbollah infrastructure, and frames a ground operation it has launched in Lebanon as a defensive effort to protect northern Israel from Hezbollah attacks. Hezbollah says its attacks are intended to avenge the killing of Iran’s supreme leader during the war.
Here’s how the conflict has developed and where it could go from here.
Why was a tenuous ceasefire broken?
Mariam Farida, a lecturer in terrorism and counter terrorism studies and Middle East politics at Macquarie University, said that the recent clashes are “not surprising at all”.
Hezbollah began launching strikes at Israel as its neighbour bombarded Gaza in retaliation for Hamas’ attacks on Israel on October 7 2023. Israel responded, attacking Lebanon.
Israel and Hezbollah signed a ceasefire agreement in November 2024, which was brokered by the previous US government, though this served to lessen the strikes from both sides rather than end them completely.
Hezbollah is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and militant group founded in 1982, and has been backed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
As part of the agreement, the Lebanese army was going to regain control of its territory, and Hezbollah’s infrastructure in southern Lebanon would not be allowed to be rebuilt, while Israel would gradually withdraw its remaining forces from the region.
“One of the fundamental things of the ceasefire agreement was the disarmament of Hezbollah’s infrastructure, military infrastructure, by the Lebanese army,” Farida said.
This decision was welcomed by Lebanon’s government, with its president, Joseph Aoun, saying in an interview in April that a decision has been made that “weapons will only be in the hands of the state”.
However both Israel and Hezbollah accused each other of breaching the ceasefire.
Farida says there have been “targeted assassination campaigns by the Israeli government for top-tier leadership in Hezbollah to try to create a fundamental shake in the organisation and to weaken them to a point where they are no longer considered a threat”.
Hezbollah’s firing six rockets at Israel as a retaliation for the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei broke down the ceasefire completely, as Israel responded by striking multiple parts of the country and starting a ground invasion.
“This has shown … the Lebanese army was actually not successful in disarming Hezbollah’s weapons, and in weakening the organisation in itself.”
After Hezbollah opened fire on Israel, Lebanon’s government banned military activities by the group, a decision which was rejected by a senior Hezbollah official.
The Lebanese government’s announcement, however, did not stop Israel from responding by attacking different parts of Lebanon.
Parmeter believes there are two main reasons behind Israel’s reaction.
“Israel really does not want a second front reopened in the war and is now trying to basically prevent Hezbollah from becoming a serious threat to essentially the northern towns of Israel,” he said.
“The other fact that you’ll have to take into account is that Israel faces an election … Netanyahu wants, as soon as he can, to declare victory, with the war against Iran … And also to be able to declare victory in Lebanon as well in the sense of preventing Hezbollah from being able to launch attacks on Israel.”
Israel is scheduled for an election in October, but some local media suggest it might be moved to an earlier date to avoid coinciding with the anniversary of the October 7 attack.
How does Israel want to ‘finish the job’?
Israel has destroyed a number of bridges in southern Lebanon and dropped leaflets in Beirut threatening Gaza-scale devastation.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Hezbollah had used one of the bridges to smuggle weapons and operatives south described the destruction as as “a clear message to the Lebanese government: the State of Israel will not allow such a reality,” referring to his claim he
A senior Israeli official has told CNN that Israel wants to “finish the job in Lebanon” in these new attacks.
Farida said Israel is trying to “eliminate the threat of Hezbollah”, but there could be multiple meanings to this concept.
“It could mean that a complete liquidation of the organisation or a complete disarmament of the group will result in it no longer having any capacity to launch any missiles. And it can also mean that Hezbollah as an organisation becomes just a political entity in the Lebanese political life rather than an armed militia.
“We don’t really know what the main objective of the Israeli government is in the invasion. The only thing we know is that they want to destroy Hezbollah’s military infrastructure.”
On Wednesday, Israel stepped up airstrikes on Beirut on Wednesday, killing at least 10 people and destroying a 10-storey building near the city centre.
The Israeli military statement said it had “struck assets” of a Hezbollah-run financial institution, Al-Qard Al-Hassan, in Beirut, and that the Israeli navy had targeted Hezbollah militants in the city.
Simultaneously, the IDF has started ground operations in southern Lebanon, which experts believe is to expand its buffer zone in the region.
A buffer zone is a neutral area established to separate countries facing conflict. According to Lebanese authorities, Israeli warplanes attacked bridges over the Litani River that link southern Lebanon to the rest of the country, destroying at least two of them.
Parmeter said: “They’re trying to drive the civilian population of Lebanon, north of the Litani River and even further north, through bombing various targets there.”
“They’re bombing parts of Beirut, as well, with the aim of simply withdrawing popular support for Hezbollah and isolating it within the Lebanese community.”
What is next?
Fears are growing in Lebanon that cutting off southern Lebanon from the rest of the country could pave the way for a large-scale Israeli military operation into Lebanese territory.
On Wednesday, an Israeli military officer commanding troops operating in Lebanon told Reuters that his troops are “prepared to do all kinds of operations” if the military issued orders to establish positions as far as the Litani, nearly 30 kilometres (20 miles) north of the Israeli border.
However, experts have questioned whether Israel can maintains all of its objectives with the strikes.
“Another key question here, and this will only show with time, whether the Israeli army will be able to hold those military stations, because one thing is for sure: Hezbollah is really, really, really good at combating a guerilla attack tactics in the South,” Fariba said.
Guerrilla warfare is a type of combat in which small units employ tactics such as ambushes, sabotage, and hit-and-run strikes against larger, conventional military forces.
Parmeter echoed the same sentiment.
“Hezbollah has been a very resilient organisation and has always managed to come back after particular defeats,” he said.
“The big problem with wars in the Middle East is that they always have unintended consequences, and it’s very rarely that war itself actually achieves what those who initiate it hope [for].”
— With additional reporting by the Reuters news agency.
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