Human Rights Watch determined that Israeli forces carried out the attack using an air-dropped bomb equipped with a United States-produced Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) guidance kit. The US government should suspend weapons transfers to Israel because of the military’s repeated, unlawful attacks on civilians, for which US officials may be complicit in war crimes.

“Israel’s use of US arms to unlawfully attack and kill journalists away from any military target is a terrible mark on the United States as well as Israel,” said Richard Weir, senior crisis, conflict and arms researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The Israeli military’s previous deadly attacks on journalists without any consequences give little hope for accountability in this or future violations against the media.”

The attack took place in the early morning at the Hasbaya Village Club Resort in Hasbaya, a town in southern Lebanon, where more than a dozen journalists had been staying for over three weeks. Human Rights Watch found no evidence of fighting, military forces, or military activity in the immediate area at the time of the attack. Information Human Rights Watch reviewed indicates that the Israeli military knew or should have known that journalists were staying in the area and in the targeted building. After initially stating that its forces struck a building where “terrorists were operating,” the Israeli military said hours later that “the incident is under review.”

Human Rights Watch interviewed eight people who were staying at or near the resort, including three injured journalists and the resort’s owner. Human Rights Watch also visited the site on November 1 and verified 6 videos and 22 photos of the attack and its aftermath, plus satellite images. There has been no response to letters sent to the Israeli military on November 14 with findings and questions and to the Lebanese military on November 5 with questions.

The attack on the building in which the journalists were staying took place just after 3 a.m., based on interviews and CCTV footage with the same time code. Most of the journalists were sleeping. Zakaria Fadel, 25, an assistant cameraman for Lebanon-based ISOL for Broadcast, a Lebanese satellite and broadcast services provider, said he was brushing his teeth when the blast threw him into the air.

A munition struck the single-story building and detonated upon hitting the floor. The blast killed Ghassan Najjar, a journalist and cameraman, and Mohammad Reda, a satellite broadcast engineer, both from Al Mayadeen TV, and Wissam Kassem, a cameraman from the Hezbollah-owned outlet Al Manar TV. Al Mayadeen is a Lebanon-based pan-Arab television station politically allied with Hezbollah and the Syrian government.

Human Rights Watch verified videos taken minutes after the attack which show the targeted building completely destroyed and nearby buildings damaged. The strike collapsed a wall in the adjacent building, seriously injuring Hassan Hoteit, 48, a cameraman for ISOL for Broadcast, and substantially damaged the wall of a small building about 10 meters away, injuring other journalists, including Ali Mortada, 46, a camera operator for Al Jazeera.

Mortada said he woke to the blast and pieces of concrete falling on him, injuring his face and his right arm. When the debris stopped falling, he went to see if his colleagues were okay. He and others found Hoteit injured, and the building struck destroyed. Mortada said he saw the bodies of Kassem and Najjar nearby. They found Reda’s remains further away.

Soon after, the resort’s concierge approached them, saying he had found two human legs in one bedroom. Ehab el-Okdy, a reporter for Al Jazeera who was staying at the resort, said that he also saw the bodies and body parts of the dead reporters. “We saw the bodies,” he said. “We saw Mohammad Reda was shattered all over the place.”

Anoir Ghaida, the resort’s owner, said the journalists had arrived on October 1, following an evacuation order from the Israeli military for an area south of Hasbaya. The journalists had been reporting from Ibl al-Saqi, an area included in the evacuation order.

The journalists said that from October 1 until the day of the attack, they made routine and repeated trips, reporting from the Hasbaya area, frequently doing live television reports from a hilltop that overlooked large parts of southern Lebanon. The journalists and Ghaida said they would leave the resort in the morning and return in the evening, about the same time each day. Most of the vehicles at the resort were marked “Press” or “TV.”

The journalists and Ghaida said they constantly heard the buzzing of aerial drones in the area, indicating it was most likely under Israeli surveillance. Prior to October 25, there had been no attacks on Hasbaya town.

Since the current hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah began on October 8, 2023, the Israeli military has attacked and killed journalists and targeted Al Mayadeen TV. On October 23, Israeli forces attacked and destroyed an office used by Al Mayadeen in Beirut. Al Mayadeen had evacuated their staff from the building.

Israeli strikes killed at least six Lebanese journalists between October 8, 2023, and October 29, 2024, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Human Rights Watch found that the October 13, 2023 attack, which killed the Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah and injured six other journalists, was an apparent war crime. On November 21, 2023, an Israeli strike killed two Lebanese journalists reporting for Al Mayadeen TV, Rabih al-Maamari and Farah Omar, and their driver, Hussein Akil, in Tayr Harfa in southern Lebanon.

“Journalism Targeted,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3, 2024

Human Rights Watch verified a photo and video from Najjar’s funeral that showed his casket wrapped in a Hezbollah flag and buried in a southern Beirut cemetery where Hezbollah fighters are buried, near the grave of al-Maamari. A Hezbollah spokesperson told Human Rights Watch on November 14 that Najjar had asked to be buried near his friend and colleague al-Maamari, but that Najjar “was just a civilian” and “had no involvement whatsoever in any military activities.”

Human Rights Watch found remnants at the attack site and reviewed photographs of remnants collected by the resort owner and determined that they were consistent with a JDAM guidance kit assembled and sold by the US company Boeing. Human Rights Watch identified one remnant as part of the guidance kit’s actuation system that moves the fins. It bore a numerical code identifying it as having been manufactured by Woodard, a US company that makes components for guidance systems on munitions, including the JDAM. The JDAM is affixed to air-dropped bombs and allows them to be guided to a target by using satellite coordinates, making the weapon accurate to within several meters.

Human Rights Watch wrote to Boeing and to Woodard on November 14, but did not receive responses. Companies have responsibilities under the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the OECD Guidelines on Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct, and related guidance to stop, prevent, mitigate, or remediate actual and potential violations of international humanitarian law that they cause, contribute to, or are linked with. 

Given Israel’s record of widespread laws of war violations and lack of accountability, companies should end arms sales, recall already sold weapons wherever possible, and stop all support services for already sold weapons.

Human Rights Watch has previously documented the Israeli military’s unlawful use of US-equipped weapons in a strike in March that killed seven aid workers in southern Lebanon.

International humanitarian law, or the laws of war, prohibits attacks against civilians and civilian objects. Journalists are considered civilians and are immune from attack so long as they are not directly participating in hostilities. Journalists cannot be attacked for their work as journalists, even if the opposing party considers the media biased or being used for propaganda. When carrying out any attack, warring parties must take all feasible precautions to minimize civilian harm and damage to civilian objects. This includes taking all necessary actions to verify that targets are military objectives.

Individuals who commit serious violations of the laws of war with criminal intent—that is, intentionally or recklessly—may be prosecuted for war crimes. Individuals may also be held criminally liable for assisting in, facilitating, aiding, or abetting a war crime.

Lebanon should urgently accept the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction to give the court’s prosecutor a mandate to investigate serious international crimes committed on the country’s territory.

Israel’s key allies—the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Germany—should suspend military assistance and arms sales to Israel, given the real risk that they will be used to commit grave abuses. US policy prohibits arms transfers to states “more likely than not” to use them in violations of international law.

“As evidence mounts of Israel’s unlawful use of US weapons, including in apparent war crimes, US officials need to decide whether they will uphold US and international law by halting arms sales to Israel or risk being found legally complicit in serious violations,” Weir said.

Actually, of course, in most wars both sides lose, and certainly the people of both sides do.

That is the outcome of the Israel-Hezbollah War of 2023-2024, in which US President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron announced a ceasefire for 4 am today, Wednesday, November 27, Beirut time. The ceasefire was possible because both sides had lost.

Lebanon is a small country with perhaps 5 million citizens. They fall into about 30% Christian, 30% Sunni Muslim, and 30% Shiite Muslim, with some other small groups such as the Druze making up the rest. So that is about 1.5 million Shiites, mainly in East Beirut, Baalbak, and southern Lebanon. About half of them belong to the Amal party, and the other half are affiliated with the Hezbollah party-militia, or about 750,000 people. Jane’s said a few years ago that Hezbollah has about 20,000 full-time fighters in its paramilitary and 20,000 reservists. The organization claims over twice that, but Jane’s estimates are probably about right. The point is that Hezbollah is a small part of Lebanon and its fighters are a small force.

In contrast, before the current wars Israel had 169,000 active duty personnel and some 465,000 reservists. That is, the Israeli military is almost as big all by itself as the total Shiite population of Lebanon that supports Hezbollah.

Hezbollah had over the years since its last war with Israel in 2006 amassed a big stockpile of rockets and drones. These had some value as deterrents to Israeli aggression, as with the Israeli invasion of 1982 and its 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon. The Israelis made a relatively poor showing against Hezbollah in 2006, and few in Tel Aviv had an appetite for further adventurism on that front. The rockets were only useful for defense, however.

Hamas did not forewarn allies Iran and Hezbollah about its October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. As a result, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s clerical leader, told Hamas that he did not intend to get involved, according to Reuters. Likewise, he pressured Hezbollah to avoid sparking an Israeli attack on Lebanon, according to the Israeli press.

Despite Iran’s caution, however, Hezbollah leader, the late Hassan Nasrallah, tried to use its rockets for offensive purposes after Israel’s total war on Gaza began in October, 2023. It forced 60,000 Israelis to leave the north near the Lebanese border, launching rocket attacks in sympathy with peoples’ resistance in Gaza.

In September, Israel launched an all-out campaign on Hezbollah. Israeli intelligence had infiltrated Hezbollah and was able to set off thousands of booby-trapped pagers, wreaking havoc on its cadres. Tel Aviv used air strikes to kill many high-level leaders, including Nasrallah. That means some high-level Hezbollah leaders were spying for Israel and providing Mossad with real-time intelligence on their whereabouts.

Israel’s war on Hezbollah depended heavily on airstrikes, but the Israeli army did also launch ground operations in the south. These operations, however, were costly in men, with at least 62 Israeli troops killed in October alone. Hundreds, perhaps a thousand, were wounded. Although these seem like small numbers to Americans, Israel is a small, tightly knit country, and the loss of dozens of troops a month affects the public deeply. If you figure most people have a close circle of friends and family of about 200 people, a thousand dead or injured Israel troops would be heartbreaking to 200,000 people, nearly 3 percent of the Israeli population. Although the Israeli army has been able occasionally to advance miles into Lebanon, it hasn’t been able to take some key hills that it could have used to dominate highways going north.

This past Sunday, Hezbollah launched 49 operations against Israeli troops inside Lebanon. It also launched 255 rockets and drones at Israel proper, mostly hitting northern military and civilian targets but reaching as far as Tel Aviv.

The long, brutal campaign in Gaza, where Israeli troops still come under concerted fire, has produced low morale in the army, exacerbated by the reckless disregard for civilian life, giving many reservists a guilty conscience (which their cheeky TikTok videos boasting of their brutality are sometimes an attempt to hide). Something like a quarter of troops appear not to show up when called, i.e., they are AWOL. The response rate of the Ultra-Orthodox to being drafted is pitiful. In October, only 49 out of 900 called up for military service reported for duty.

In other words, yes, the Israeli air force can bomb apartment buildings, schools and hospitals and kill nearly 4,000 people, mostly civilians. It can displace 800,000 Lebanese — a sixth of the population. That kind of terror from the air, however, doesn’t actually translate into clear victories against Hezbollah. As a locally-based republic of cousins in Shiite areas, Hezbollah can “honeycomb” its defenses and the loss of top leadership has not paralyzed it.

So certainly Hezbollah has suffered significant setbacks. It hasn’t come close to being destroyed. The ceasefire, which pushes its land forces beyond the Litani River, merely gives its cadres an opportunity to regroup. Since it springs from the civilian Shiite population, the equivalent of Hezbollah reservists will certainly remain in the deep south, even if the Lebanese Army and UNIFIL take over the main patrolling responsibilities. Hezbollah’s rockets can still hit Israel even if it isn’t on the border. Their usefulness for defensive deterrence remains significant.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu dreamed of reshaping the Lebanese government as a prelude to reshaping the Middle East. In that he failed miserably. Hezbollah dreamed of forcing an end to the genocidal Israeli total war on Gaza while retaining deterrence against Tel Aviv in south Lebanon. In that it failed miserably, and its leadership paid the ultimate price for their hubris.

The ceasefire is the truce of the weak on both sides.

—–

Bonus Video:

Al Jazeera English: “President Biden hails Lebanon ceasefire as ‘good news’”

As of October 25, Israeli attacks have killed at least 163 health and rescue workers across Lebanon over the past year and damaged 158 ambulances and 55 hospitals, according to Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health. The Israeli military should immediately halt unlawful attacks on medical workers and healthcare facilities, and Israel’s allies should suspend the transfer of arms to Israel given the real risk that they will be used to commit grave abuses.

“The Israeli military’s unlawful attacks on medical workers and hospitals are devastating Lebanon’s already frail health care system and putting medical workers at grave risk,” said Ramzi Kaiss, Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Strikes on medical workers and healthcare facilities also compound risks to injured civilians, severely hindering their ability to receive urgently needed medical attention.”

The United Nations should urgently establish, and UN member countries should support, an international investigation into the recent hostilities in Lebanon and northern Israel, and ensure that it is dispatched immediately to gather information and make findings as to violations of international law and recommendations for accountability.

Human Rights Watch interviewed eight people, including paramedics, civil defense, and hospital officials, and visited the site of the attack on the Islamic Health Committee’s civil defense center, where it additionally interviewed three residents and witnesses to the attack. Human Rights Watch also analyzed photographs, videos, and satellite imagery of the attacks. Human Rights Watch sent a letter outlining its findings and posing questions to the Israeli military on October 7 but has not received a response. On October 21, Human Rights Watch sent a letter outlining its research findings and posing questions to the Islamic Health Committee, which responded on October 23.

An overnight Israeli strike on October 3 struck a civil defense center in the Bashoura neighborhood of central Beirut, killing seven paramedics. The center belonged to the Islamic Health Committee, a civil defense and ambulance organization affiliated with Hezbollah. In Lebanon, the civil defense is a civilian force whose duties include providing emergency medical and rescue services and assisting with the evacuation of the civilian population. On October 4, the Israeli military struck an Islamic Health Committee ambulance near the entrance of Marjayoun Hospital in southern Lebanon, killing seven other paramedics and forcing the hospital to evacuate its staff and shut down. That same day, the Israeli military struck Salah Ghandour Hospital in the southern Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil, around two and a half hours after issuing an evacuation warning by phone to local officials.

The Israeli government has accused Hezbollah of using ambulances to transport fighters and hospitals to hide weapons and equipment. Human Rights Watch did not find any evidence indicating use of these three facilities for military purposes at the time of the attacks that would justify depriving them of their protected status under international humanitarian law.

In the absence of military justification for the attacks on the facilities, the attacks are unlawful. Such attacks directed against medical facilities, if carried out with criminal intent—that is, intentionally or recklessly—would be war crimes.

Membership or affiliation with Hezbollah, or other political movements with armed wings, is not a sufficient basis for determining an individual to be a lawful military target. Guidance by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) sets out that people who have exclusively non-combat functions in armed groups, including political or administrative roles, or are merely members of or affiliated with political entities that have an armed component, such as Hezbollah, may not be targeted at any time unless and only for such time as they, like any other civilian, directly participate in the hostilities. Medical personnel affiliated with Hezbollah, including those assigned to civil defense organizations, are protected under the laws of war.

On October 21, a strike near Rafik Hariri University Hospital reportedly killed 18 people, including 4 children, and damaged the hospital.

Under the laws of war, doctors, nurses, paramedics, and other health and medical personnel must be permitted to do their work and be protected in all circumstances. They lose their protection only if they commit, outside their humanitarian function, “acts harmful to the enemy.”

Likewise, ambulances and other medical transportation must be allowed to function and be protected in all circumstances. They could lose their protection only if they are being used to commit “acts harmful to the enemy,” such as transporting ammunition or healthy fighters in service. The attacking force must issue a warning to cease this misuse and can only attack after such a warning goes unheeded.

Under international humanitarian law, all parties to the conflict are under a duty, at all times, to distinguish between combatants and civilians and to target only combatants. Individuals who commit serious violations of the laws of war with criminal intent—that is, intentionally or recklessly—may be prosecuted for war crimes. Individuals may also be held criminally liable for assisting in, facilitating, aiding, or abetting a war crime. All governments that are parties to an armed conflict are obligated to investigate alleged war crimes by members of their armed forces.

In November 2023, Human Rights Watch called for investigations into the Israeli military’s repeated, apparently indiscriminate attacks on medical facilities in Gaza. Human Rights Watch has called on Israel’s key allies to suspend military assistance and arms sales to Israel, given the real risk that they will be used to commit grave abuses.

“With more than a hundred health workers killed, Israeli strikes in Lebanon are putting civilians, including medical workers, at grave risk of harm,” Kaiss said. “Medical workers should be protected, and countries should take action to prevent further atrocities, including by suspending arms sales and military assistance to Israel.”

As of October 28, 2024, Israeli attacks in Lebanon have killed at least 2,710 people and injured more than 12,592 people since October 2023, according to Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health.

As of October 25, the Ministry of Public Health said Israeli strikes in Lebanon had damaged 51 emergency medical centers and facilities tied to various governmental and nongovernmental health organizations, including the Lebanese Red Cross, the General Directorate of the Lebanese Civil Defense, the Amel Association International, the Islamic Risala Scout Association, the Islamic Health Committee, and the Lebanese Succour Association. The ministry stated that the attacks had damaged a total of 158 ambulances belonging to these groups and that 55 hospitals were damaged in strikes that killed 12 people and injured 60, as of October 25. On October 25, the UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon said that, since October 2023, “27 attacks targeted ambulances used by first responders.”

On October 3, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) director general said that 28 on-duty medics were killed in Lebanon in the span of 24 hours. The WHO warned on October 8 about disease outbreaks in Lebanon following the partial or full closure of at least nine hospitals in addition to crowded conditions in shelters for displaced persons. On October 8, an official with the Islamic Health Committee told Human Rights Watch that Israeli strikes had killed 60 of the committee’s paramedics since the escalation of hostilities in mid-September. 

Human Rights Watch did not independently verify the circumstances of each of these cases.

Since October 2023, Hezbollah has launched thousands of rockets and missiles into towns in northern Israel, killing at least 16 civilians. In July, 12 children were killed in an attack on the town of Majdal Shams, in the occupied Golan Heights. Israeli and United States officials said that Hezbollah was responsible for the attack, which the group denies.

The Israeli military has repeatedly claimed that Hezbollah is using civilian infrastructure for military purposes. In a speech before the UN General Assembly on September 27, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Hezbollah of hiding rockets and missiles in hospitals. In March, Israel’s Arabic-language military spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, accused Hezbollah and the Lebanese Amal Movement of using ambulances “for terrorist purposes,” including to transport personnel and combat equipment. In October, the spokesperson reiterated these claims in a post to his X account, warned medical crews to stay away from Hezbollah members, and called on them not to cooperate with the group. He did not distinguish between Hezbollah combatants and other civilian members of the group’s institutions or political office. He said that “any vehicle proven to have an armed saboteur using it for terrorist purposes, regardless of its type, will have appropriate measures taken against it to prevent its military use.”

The claims made by the Israeli military spokesperson are contested. Human Rights Watch has not been able to corroborate them.

Methodology

Human Rights Watch spoke to members of the Islamic Health Committee; the Islamic Risala Scout Association, a civil defense and ambulance organization affiliated with the Amal Movement, a Lebanese political party and Hezbollah ally; and officials at Mays al-Jabal Hospital, Marjayoun Hospital, and Salah Ghandour Hospital in southern Lebanon.

Human Rights Watch also spoke with three officials from the General Directorate of the Lebanese Civil Defense and reviewed statements provided by the Islamic Health Committee and the Islamic Risala Scout Association pertaining to attacks on their centers and crews.

On October 3, Human Rights Watch visited the site of the attack on the Islamic Health Committee’s civil defense center and interviewed residents and witnesses to the attack. On October 7, Human Rights Watch interviewed an individual who operated an art studio in the same building as the civil defense center in Beirut.

One paramedic with the Lebanese Civil Defense, whom Human Rights Watch interviewed, was subsequently killed in an Israeli strike on a civil defense center in the southern Lebanese town of Dardghaya on October 9.

Human Rights Watch analyzed 57 photographs and videos posted on social media platforms or shared directly with researchers. The images were taken in Beirut, southern Lebanon, and the Bekaa governorate. Human Rights Watch analyzed satellite imagery from Salah Ghandour Hospital and Marjayoun Hospital recorded before and after the attacks. Human Rights Watch visited the site of the strike on the civil defense center in Beirut but did not visit the sites of the strikes at the hospitals in southern Lebanon.

Strike on the Islamic Health Committee Civil Defense Center

Shortly after midnight, on October 3, an Israeli strike hit the Islamic Health Committee’s civil defense center in central Beirut, on the second floor of a residential building. A statement published that day by the committee said that the strike killed seven paramedics. Those victims, according to the committee, included two volunteer paramedics, the head of the committee’s civil defense in Beirut, the head of operations in Beirut, the head of equipment in the Beirut area, the head of machinery and maintenance, and the head of rescue work.

The Ministry of Public Health said that the attack killed nine people and that DNA tests on recovered body parts are ongoing to verify the identity of the remaining unidentified victims. Two witnesses said that among the victims were bystanders who were near the building at the time of the strike.

On the October 3 visit to the site, Human Rights Watch observed damage indicating that at least two munitions detonated in rooms containing the Islamic Health Committee’s offices and blast damage on the floors above and below. Researchers also observed primary and secondary fragmentation damage on adjoining and adjacent apartment buildings, businesses, and al-Bashoura Islamic Cemetery, across the street.

The Islamic Health Committee’s civil defense director general said in a statement provided to Human Rights Watch that the center has 13 employees and 45 volunteers, who provided rescue and first aid services to residents and displaced people from the south and the southern suburbs of Beirut.

One neighborhood resident, who was at his shop at the time of the attack, said he immediately rushed to the building after the strike to help those injured. He said he saw three lifeless bodies, including one that was severely mutilated. “Everybody knows it’s a medical center,” he said. “They help everyone here.”

Mahmoud Karaki, an Islamic Health Committee spokesperson, said that the paramedics at the center at the time of the strike had gone there to rest after a day of rescue work in Beirut’s southern suburbs, after a series of Israeli strikes overnight.

“All of the people who were in the office were paramedics,” Karaki said. “Some were managers, but all are paramedics.” He said the center was established in the Bashoura neighborhood since 2009.

Human Rights Watch reviewed two images circulating on social media that showed one paramedic killed in the strike, Wissam Mahmoud Salhab, in military clothes on martyr posters that are highly similar to those issued by Hezbollah’s military wing, in addition to a video of Salhab firing an assault rifle. Another photo reviewed by Human Rights Watch showed another paramedic killed in the strike, Sajid Shirri, in military clothes donning a Hezbollah patch.

“Hospital,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3 / PS Express / Crop2Comic, 2024.

Human Rights Watch noticed discrepancies in the martyr posters, including the use of two separate photos, ranks and pseudonyms for the same person. The same camouflage and scarf used in Sahlab’s posters were found on other apparent martyrs’ posters circulating online. In its response to a letter from Human Rights Watch, the Islamic Health Committee denied that the martyr posters for Salhab were issued by Hezbollah’s military wing, and said instead that “such posters, often are designed by family members and friends of those killed who consider photos in military clothes post-martyrdom to be a source of pride.”

Human Rights Watch could not verify the source of the martyr posters. The statement said that Hezbollah’s military wing did not issue those posters on its Telegram channel, which Human Rights Watch confirmed, and said that Salhab had worked for more than 10 years as the head of emergency operations and logistics at the civil defense center in Beirut. The Islamic Health Committee also said that Shirri was “never a member of Hezbollah’s military wing and has never held a role in that regard … and his work was limited to health, rescue and emergency services.” It said that the military clothes worn by Shirri in the circulated photos could have belonged to his relatives or have been bought from a store, and that such military clothes do not necessarily belong to Hezbollah. Human Rights Watch could not verify this claim.

The Islamic Health Committee further said that none of the paramedics killed in the Bashoura strike and the strike on a group of paramedics near Marjayoun Hospital had held a combat function or mission in the military wing of Hezbollah since joining the committee. It denied that the committee has any ties to military operations and stated that there is a “complete separation between the military wing [of Hezbollah] and the social services wing.”

Maria Hibri, an artist who owns a workshop on the ground floor of the same building said that the building was made up of three blocks, with 27 families living in each block, and that the targeted floor was solely occupied by the civil defense center. “There was no evacuation warning given to anyone in the building,” she said. “Why? They would have left. Nobody wanted to die.”

Strikes on Ambulance Near Marjayoun Hospital

In an October 4 statement, the Islamic Health Committee said that seven of the group’s paramedics had been killed “in a direct attack on the ambulance crew at Marjayoun Hospital.”

Shoshan Hassan Mazraani, the emergency room head nurse at the hospital, said she witnessed the strike while she was drinking coffee outside the entrance of the hospital’s emergency room. She said that the strike was “directly on the ambulances,” three of which were on the road leading to the hospital’s entrance at the time of the attack.

“I ran to the ambulances and told people that they hit the paramedics,” she said. “Once I got to the road I couldn’t continue. Staff at the hospital were saying don’t go near the ambulances, they might strike again. And the injured paramedics were calling out for me to help them.”

Mazraani, who is usually responsible for providing death tolls from the hospital to the Ministry of Public Health, said that seven paramedics were killed and five were injured.

“These guys, we knew them,” she said. “For a year they were bringing injured people to the hospital. We became familiar with them. They are paramedics, just like any other ambulance crew.”

In statements to the media on October 4, the Marjayoun Hospital director, Dr. Moanes Kalakish, said that the hospital’s main entrance “was targeted as paramedics were approaching” and that the hospital was not warned before the attack. Mazraani also said that neither she nor other hospital staff received evacuation warnings.

The hospital was evacuated and shut down after the strike that day, news reports and Mazraani said. One photograph taken on October 4 and geolocated by Human Rights Watch to approximately 150 meters from the hospital shows a burned ambulance and a truck on fire under a burned palm tree. Human Rights Watch analyzed satellite imagery from October 11 of the area around Marjayoun Hospital showing the burned vehicles.

Human Rights Watch also analyzed one video and two photographs uploaded to X on October 11, showing a large crater blocking one of the main roads into Marjayoun Hospital.

Israeli strikes on roads leading to the hospital hindered hospital staff from returning to their homes, Mazraani said. For 12 days before the hospital shut down, hospital workers had been sleeping there, according to Mazraani.

“There was a lot of danger, and we knew that if we left, we won’t be able to go back to the hospital,” she said.

The Israeli military did not publicly provide any evidence that Marjayoun Hospital or the ambulances targeted near the entrance were being used to carry out hostile acts.

Strike on Salah Ghandour Hospital

The head of Salah Ghandour Hospital in Bint Jbeil, Dr. Mohammed Suleiman, said that the hospital was struck on October 4, two-and-a-half hours after they received an evacuation warning. Suleiman said that a local official in Bint Jbeil received a call, reportedly from an Israeli military official, at around 6 p.m. on October 4 informing him that the paramedics around the hospital should be evacuated within four hours as the hospital could be struck.

“We deemed that this warning did not concern the medical staff of the hospital, so we evacuated the paramedics and the area around the hospitals, but the staff stayed,” Suleiman said. “But we were surprised that 2.5 hours later … a strike took place at 8:30 pm before the end of the [four hour] warning period. The hospital was struck three times. One shell struck the on-call room and two shells struck the paramedics’ waiting room, [both] inside the hospital.”

Nine hospital workers were injured, including doctors and medical workers, three of whom are in critical condition, Suleiman said.

Lebanese media reported that after the attack, the Israeli military did not respond to requests from UNIFIL, the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, to allow a Lebanese Red Cross and Lebanese Army convoy to approach the hospital and help evacuate people. Suleiman said that the hospital staff were forced to evacuate injured people in their own cars.

On October 5, the Israeli military said that an Israeli Air Force aircraft attacked “Hezbollah terrorists who were operating within a command center that was located inside a mosque adjacent to the Salah Ghandour Hospital.” The military said that Hezbollah used the command center “to plan and execute terrorist attacks against IDF troops and the State of Israel,” referring to the Israeli military; and that “notices were sent to residents and conversations were held with significant parties” in villages with hospitals being used “in defiance of the laws of armed conflict.” The military said that it demanded that “any military activity carried out from the hospitals should stop immediately,” but did not give further details of what ‘terrorist activity’ took place from the Salah Ghandour Hospital.

Suleiman said that the military first struck the hospital from the side that is furthest away from the mosque, before striking the mosque afterwards. In the warning to the village, Suleiman said, no mention was made of the mosque or of its use by Hezbollah.

The Israeli military did not provide public evidence that either the hospital or the mosque were being used to commit hostile acts.

Human Rights Watch geolocated a photograph and a video posted to social media the day after the attack and received from a contact, showing the destroyed mosque adjacent to the hospital.

Low-resolution satellite imagery recorded on the morning of October 4 shows no signs of damage in Salah Ghandour Hospital, but an image collected 24 hours later, in the morning of October 5, confirms the site was struck.

A very high-resolution satellite image from October 11, analyzed by Human Rights Watch, shows the mosque completely destroyed, and heavy damage to the hospital’s northwestern side, facing the mosque, and smaller damage to the hospital rooftop on the opposite northeastern side.

Healthcare facilities are civilian objects that have special protections under the laws of war against attacks and other acts of violence, including bombing, shelling, looting, forced entry, shooting into, encircling, or other forceful interference such as intentionally depriving facilities of electricity and water. Healthcare facilities only lose their protection from attack if they are being used to commit “acts harmful to the enemy,” and after a required warning.

According to the ICRC, “prior to an attack against a medical unit which is being used to commit acts harmful to the enemy, a warning has to be issued setting, whenever appropriate, a reasonable time limit and that an attack can only take place after such warning has remained unheeded.”

Other Strikes on Health Centers, Medical Workers 

Human Rights Watch identified at least two other attacks, in the southern Lebanese towns of Sohmor and Kafra, that significantly damaged healthcare centers and vehicles and killed medical personnel.

On September 29, six members of the Islamic Health Committee were killed in Sohmor, in the Bekaa governorate, the Ministry of Public Health said. Videos taken from the site of the strike, posted on social media on September 30 and analyzed by Human Rights Watch, show a damaged civil defense car and two damaged ambulances with the logos of the committee, as well as a burning vehicle. Human Rights Watch geolocated the site of the strike to a building in the northeastern part of Sohmor but could not determine whether there were military targets present at the site.

The civil defense commissioner for the Islamic Risala Scout Association, Rabih Issa, said that a separate strike on September 30 hit a group of paramedics when they were changing shifts at one of the group’s assembly points in Kafra, in the Nabatieh governorate, damaging three ambulances belonging to the association and injuring several paramedics. Human Rights Watch analyzed two videos received from a contact and posted on social media on September 30 and geolocated them to the main road in Kafra. The videos show one destroyed ambulance in addition to two burned vehicles on a damaged road.

Evacuation Warnings to Medical and Civil Defense Centers

On September 30, Issa told Human Rights Watch that two other civil defense centers belonging to the Islamic Risala Scout Association in southern Lebanon received a phone call from the Israeli military the previous week ordering them to evacuate the centers within two hours. It is unclear whether the two centers were subsequently hit.

The head of the Lebanese Civil Defense Force in Tyre, Abdullah Moussawi, also told Human Rights Watch on September 30 that two civil defense centers in southern Lebanon received a phone call from the Israeli military ordering staff to evacuate their centers. He said that the centers were not attacked despite the evacuation warnings.

Moussawi and four other paramedics were killed in a strike “that targeted the civil defense center” in Dardghaya, near the southern Lebanese city of Tyre, on October 9, according to the General Directorate of the Lebanese Civil Defense.

The director of medical supplies at the Mays al-Jabal Hospital, Dr. Halim Saad, said that the hospital also received an evacuation warning on October 4 from the Israeli military, instructing the staff to leave immediately. Saad said that the attacks in the surrounding area since October 2023 had damaged the hospital. The hospital shut its doors on October 4 and evacuated its staff after the Israeli military reportedly ordered its evacuation.

It remained unclear whether Mays al-Jabal Hospital was directly attacked after the Israeli military’s evacuation warning.

Human Rights Watch analyzed and geolocated seven photographs and one video provided by Saad that showed damage consistent with kinetic damage to the hospital’s facade, entrance doors, and windows facing south, as well as a remnant of an artillery-fired smoke projectile in the hospital’s yard. Saad said that the hospital depended on UNIFIL to deliver needed supplies, such as water, fuel, and medical supplies, but had been unable to receive supplies in the week before it closed.

“The strikes that have happened on and near the hospital since last year, in addition to the evacuation warnings we received and the inability to get medical supplies, water, and fuel to the hospital forced us to close our doors,” Saad said.

Customary international law prohibits “acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population.” Statements that call for evacuating areas that are primarily intended to cause panic among residents would fall under this prohibition. Civilians, including medical workers, who do not evacuate following warnings are still fully protected by international humanitarian law.

Via Human Rights Watch

Undeniably, a core element of Middle East tension has often been the rift between the two main sects of Islam: the Sunnis and the Shiites. While they represent the two biggest branches of the Muslim religion, they are fundamentally different and adhere to contrasting ideologies. However, the line between the two sects hasn’t always been clear cut.

Hezbollah’s began as a resistance movement in 1984 against an Israeli invasion that targeted a weakened Lebanon during the 1975-1989 Civil War. In its founding manifesto, Hezbollah declared itself as a resistance movement aimed at freeing Lebanon from any foreign powers, rallied for the destruction of Israel, and pled allegiance to Iran and its supreme leader. Throughout the years, Hezbollah developed both as a party and a militia. In its former role it became a part of the Lebanese Parliament. But it has been accused of operating “as a government in the areas under its control” (CFR).

Hezbollah gained substantial support from Lebanese Shiites and non-Shiites by providing a vast number of social services to the residents such as infrastructure, healthcare facilities, schools, and youth programs. Outside of Lebanon, Hezbollah had support from many Sunnis in the Arabic world mainly owing to its support for the Palestinians and its hard stance on fighting Israel. However, as the years went on this support began to diminish, especially after Hezbollah intervened in the Syrian civil war to help the al-Assad government crush Sunni rebel groups.

During the Arab Spring revolutions of 2011, Syria was engulfed by demonstrations and protests against the ruling regime of Bashar Al Assad. The unrest in Syria quickly devolved into a full-on civil war, with the government fighting against largely Sunni rebel groups. During this war, Hezbollah sided with al-Assad’s government alongside Russia and Iran. It sent in some 7000 militants in 2013 to support the Syrian Arab Army. While this decision further cemented Hezbollah’s alliance with Iran and demonstrated its military prowess, it diminished its popularity on two fronts; One, it ended most of the Sunnis’ support as many Muslim Sunnis around the world saw the al-Assad regime as an authoritarian regime that needed to be overthrown. Second, according to many Lebanese, Hezbollah’s focus on the war made it fall short in terms of its domestic duties and opened it up for Israeli strikes and penetration. Hence, the assistance Hezbollah provided in Syria caused the groups’ esteem in the Sunni Arab world to undergo a sharp decline, since people saw Hezbollah as a pawn of Iran.

“Taqrib,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3 / Crop2Comic, 2024.

According to a survey done by Pew Research on extremist groups such as Hamas, Al-Qaeda, and Hezbollah, the latter seen a significant decline in popularity in all Middle Eastern countries other than Lebanon. The substantial reduction in popularity can be observed by comparing the percentages in some of these countries. For example, in 2007, 41% of Egyptians had a negative view of Hezbollah, but that skyrocketed to 81% by 2014. The same phenomenon is visible in Jordan where in 2007, only 44% of people had a negative perception of the movement. However, by 2014, it had risen to 81%. Only in Lebanon did Hezbollah perform more consistently and more positively. In Lebanon however, the positive feedback is carried single-handedly by Shiite Muslims. 88% of Sunni Muslims and 69% of Lebanese Christians held negative sentiments towards the group, while 86% of Shiite Muslims supported the group, which sprang from them.

If anything, this survey reflects the rift that’s been widening between the two Muslim factions and the loss in popularity of armed resistance in the Middle East. Not only that, but this rift became one of the main reasons that Hamas, the military resistance organization in Gaza, to temporarily abandon its alliance with Syria, Iran and Hezbollah, the Axis of Resistance in 2012 when the Muslim Brotherhood came to power in Egypt and seemed a better fit for Hamas, which derived from it.

Yet, the recent war on Gaza and subsequently the exchange of fire between Israel and Hezbollah in the South of Lebanon had begun, to an extent, to heal the relations between Hezbollah and many Sunni Muslims.  Over the past year, Israel has intensified its assault on the Gaza Strip and has even begun to launch attacks on Lebanon, successfully killing the head of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah. Many Sunni groups within Lebanon feared the Israel threat and despite their caution toward and mistrust of  Hezbollah, some of them started to move closer to the Shiite-led paramilitary group.

For instance, against the atrocities happening in Gaza and for the defence of their country, the Lebanese Sunni group al-Jamaa al-Islamiya decided to join hands with Hezbollah in their fight along the Lebanese borders. The Sunni faction sent its Al-Fajr forces to support Hezbollah, and which symbolized the unified front in Lebanon. This stance is strengthened by Sheikh Mohammad Takkoush, the Secretary-General of al-Jamaa al-Islamiya, who explained that whatever the differences and disagreements they had with Hezbollah were unimportant when the country was under external threat.

This alliance between the Sunni group and Hezbollah has some benefits s for both parties. Hezbollah can earn legitimacy for its presence in Sunni villages while al-Jamaa al-Islamiya can bolster its political standing and popularity by gaining an ally in Hezbollah.

Despite the new rise in popularity, the appreciation for Hezbollah’s involvement in the Gaza War is far from unanimous. Many leaders from the Sunni and Christian communities in Lebanon warned that involvement in this war could destabilize the country and urged Hezbollah to show restraint and avoid a full-scale war with Israel. However, the recent Israeli airstrikes on Beirut and the killing of Hassan Nasrallah have raised the possibility of a large-scale war. As in 2006, despite the disagreements between the big factions of Lebanon, if a full scale war were to break out between Israel and Lebanon, these factions would rally around Hezbollah and form a unified front to expel the Israelis.

(The Conversation) – The escalation of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah since September 2024, and Israel’s bombing of civilian areas across Lebanon, have unleashed a profound humanitarian disaster.

The mass displacement of over 1 million people, including Lebanese citizens, migrant workers and Syrian and Palestinian refugees, has created a crisis within Lebanon. Yet an equally significant phenomenon is occurring away from Lebanon’s southern border with Israel: the movement of people who have been displaced within Lebanon into Syria.

An estimated 400,000 Lebanese and Syrians have reportedly fled into Syria through overcrowded border crossings.

Not to be confused with return, this movement represents a reversal of the refugee flow that followed the descent of Syria into civil war in 2011. It is also emblematic of a broader pattern of cyclical displacement crises in the region.

The complex and intertwined histories of Lebanon and Syria – where each has at various points been a refuge for citizens of the other – challenge the simple binaries often associated with the refugee experience.

The exchange of roles between Lebanon and Syria highlights not only the fragility of regional stability but the fluidity of displacement – and the deeper implications that cross-border movement has on the sociopolitical dynamics of both countries.

A history of reciprocal refuge

The relationship between Lebanon and Syria has long been complex, oscillating between cooperation and tension. Despite Syria’s official withdrawal from Lebanon in 2005 after decades as an occupying force, the two countries remain connected due to shared borders, economic ties and security concerns. Cooperation exists in areas such as trade, but there is significant tension, especially over the presence of over 1 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon.

Yet, throughout their modern histories, one of the most enduring bonds has been the shared experiences of displacement and refuge, dating back to Lebanon’s civil war. From 1975 to 1990, thousands of Lebanese fled to Syria to escape the sectarian-driven conflict that engulfed their homeland.

The post-war period, however, was marked by a shift in the dynamics between the two countries. The 2005 withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon marked a new chapter in their relations.

Tensions rose as Lebanon sought to rebuild and assert its sovereignty after nearly 30 years of Syrian occupation. Yet, the region’s tendency for upheaval soon saw the roles reversed again decades later, when an estimated 180,000 Lebanese took refuge in Syria during the 2006 July war.

With the onset of the Syrian civil war in 2011, it was Lebanon’s turn to serve as a refuge. By 2015, 1 million Syrians fleeing violence made the journey into Lebanon.

Despite being one of the 44 countries never to have signed the 1951 Refugee Convention, Lebanon is the country hosting the largest number of refugees per capita globally.

Because Lebanon didn’t sign the convention, it doesn’t formally recognize refugee status, which gives the country what it views as more control over its refugee policies. While Lebanon receives humanitarian support from the United Nations’ refugee agency, refugees remain in a precarious legal status, with limited rights.

For many Lebanese, this most recent influx of fleeing Syrian refugees has rekindled memories of their own displacement, while for others, it has fueled anti-refugee sentiments.

Bouncing between 2 war-torn countries

With the latest escalation of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, history is again repeating itself. Lebanese citizens, primarily from Hezbollah strongholds in South Lebanon and the Beqaa Valley, are seeking refuge in Syria, a country still grappling with its own economic collapse, violence and internal strife.

While the conflict on Lebanese territory has gone on for more than a year, movements into Syria only picked up in late September 2024 as people have become more desperate to flee.

As one displaced person forced to flee from Beirut explained to me: “Syria was certainly not a ‘better’ option than Lebanon six months ago, but in the last week, since the attacks on Beirut and political assassinations, Syria is safer – despite everything it is going through. That’s how unsafe we feel in Beirut – we are bouncing between one war-torn country and another.”

Implications for refugee-host dynamics

The cyclical nature of displacement between Lebanon and Syria overturns the prevailing political narrative of host-refugee dynamics being fixed and unidirectional.

Syrian displacement to Lebanon has been portrayed by some Lebanese politicians as one-directional. This appears to be in order to frame Syrian refugees as the sole recipients of aid – as opposed to Lebanese citizens – as well as burdens on Lebanon.

When displacement occurs in both directions, however, this narrative begins to break down.

Syrian refugees who once sought safety in Lebanon now see their home country as a safer haven – albeit a fragile and temporary one. Meanwhile, Lebanese citizens face the same kinds of vulnerability and desperation that their Syrian counterparts experienced over the past decade.

Importantly, testimonies from those who are making the trip from their ‘temporary’ home in Lebanon back to Syria highlight that these movements should not be mistaken for return. Rather, they are in themselves a temporary solution.

As one Syrian who had fled his Lebanese home explained to me: “No, I am not returning. I am rather leaving one foot in Lebanon and one in Syria. Syria is in no way a safe place. As men, we are at risk of arrest and forced conscription. However, Lebanon is momentarily, at this point in history, much less safe. We do this assessment week by week. I sent my wife and my children first. I will follow.”

For their part, internally displaced Lebanese entering into Syria insist that these movements are “absolutely temporary.” One told me: “Syria is not foreign to us. It feels close and familiar. But most importantly, it feels temporary and is the right proximity to Lebanon. As soon as things calm down we will come back to our homes. Many of us have nothing to go back to, but even in this case, we will not remain in Syria.”

The strain of displacement

Both Lebanon and Syria are, in many ways, ill-equipped to handle the new wave of displacement.

By 2023, Lebanon’s economic collapse had driven 80% of its population into poverty, making it nearly impossible to absorb the additional strain of mass internal displacement.

Government paralysis, compounded by political deadlock, leaves internally displaced people with little to no state support, mostly relying on aid and community networks to survive.

Syria, though in the position of “host” in this current migratory flow, is similarly constrained. The country’s infrastructure remains devastated from more than a decade of civil war. Basic services are stretched thin, and the economy has not recovered. Humanitarian organizations coordinating the response are working amid overextended resources and dwindling support.

A region in perpetual chaos

As the armed conflict between Israel and Hezbollah escalates, the displacement crisis in Lebanon and Syria will, I fear, likely worsen.

The recent wave of Syrian refugees and Lebanese into Syria reveals the cyclical nature of refuge in the region. Ultimately, the ongoing displacement crisis in Lebanon and Syria serves as a reminder that refuge is often temporary, contingent on the shifting geopolitics of the region.

The histories of these two countries, where both have served as havens for the other’s displaced populations, underscore the complexity of displacement in the Middle East.

The fact that Lebanese citizens are now seeking shelter in Syria, a country from which over 1 million refugees fled just over a decade ago, underscores the volatility of regional displacement patterns. It also raises critical questions about the sustainability of international refugee systems that too often rely on static, one-directional models of migration and don’t account for the fluid and often reversible nature of displacement.

Jasmin Lilian Diab, Assistant Professor of Migration Studies; Director of the Institute for Migration Studies, Lebanese American University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for Lebanon, Imran Riza, said Wednesday, “Health care facilities, mosques, historical markets, residential complexes, and now government buildings are being reduced to rubble. Displaced families continue to feel at risk, even after fleeing to safe areas.”

Lebanon is a small country of perhaps 4 million citizens and nearly 2 million refugees. The UN says that some 1.2 million people have been displaced, with 275,000 people leaving for Syria. This latter number includes both Lebanese leaving their own country and Syrian refugees in Lebanon returning to the Baathist dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad. The equivalent of such a vast displacement of residents in the United States would be 51 million internal refugees. It is unimaginable.

We saw this movie in Gaza. It is total war.

Even the humanitarian aid workers attempting to help people get through the violence and displacement are being targeted by the Israeli military. Humanitarian Coordinator Riza added, “This morning a devastating attack claimed the lives of yet more civilians and local authorities working to provide relief, with the strike occurring just as a crisis meeting was convening at the municipality of Nabatieh in South Lebanon. I deplore and mourn the deaths of Ahmad, Sadeq, Mohammed, Qassem – members of a relief team with whom the UN and humanitarian partners have been working for more than a year – and all other victims of this conflict that must stop, urgently.”

The attack referenced by the UN official was an Israeli airstrike on the City Hall of the Lebanese city of Nabatieh, which is a civilian object, not a military one. The Israelis killed the mayor, Ahmed Kaheel, council member Sadeq Ismail, photographer Mohammad Baytar, and employees Qasem Hijazi and Mohammad Zohri. Sadeq Ismail and Qasem Hijazi, along with Mayor Kaheel, were the humanitarian relief team to which the UN official referred to above. The Lebanese Ministry of Health (and no, it isn’t “Hezbollah controlled”) said that the strike killed 16 persons in total and wounded 52.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Miqati condemned the bombing, noting that the city council had been meeting about humanitarian aid issues before they were blasted to smithereens.

“Gazafication of Lebanon,” Digital imagining, Dream / Dreamland v3 / Clip2Comic, 2024

This is what city council member of Nabatiyeh Sadek Ismail was doing before Israel bombed the city hall murdering him, his colleagues and the mayor.#Lebanon pic.twitter.com/usOTIvvQnz

— Abir Kopty (@AbirKopty) October 16, 2024

Sadeq Ismail owned an electronics store in the city and had been involved in trying to develop it, based on what he had seen in Turkey and China. Nabatieh is ordinarily a city of around 40,000, similar to Maryland’s capital, Annapolis, with another 85,000 people living in the metropolitan area. It is now a ghost town, with Israeli threats and strikes having expelled almost everyone from their homes. Only 150 people remain, mostly elderly. Ismail had been organizing help for them. He had the means to leave but chose to remain and aid others. He told journalist Samir Sabbagh a few days ago, “We provide them with bread daily, along with medicine and some canned food, but the situation is getting more dangerous.”

Nabatieh is majority Shiite Muslim, and Israel’s targeting of its municipal building may be a manifestation of the increasing hatred of Shiites visible in Israeli social media, which sometimes sound like Sunni extremists such as ISIL. The city, however, also has substantial Maronite Christian and Eastern Orthodox Christian communities and many churches and mosques. Although Hezbollah is popular there because it does charity work, some Shiites instead favor the rival AMAL Party. It has many old markets and serves as an inland trade node for the Mediterranean city of Tyre, which is much mentioned in the Bible. The Shiites of Nabatieh are known for commemorating the death of the Prophet’s grandson, Husain, with processions and dramatic performances.

A city dedicated to remembering the martyrs is being martyred itself.

(The Conversation) – The United Nations security council has expressed strong concern for the safety of peacekeepers in Lebanon after a series of incidents over the past week in which UN positions have come under fire from the Israel Defense Forces as they continue their push in the south of the country.

“UN peacekeepers and UN premises must never be the target of an attack,” the security council said on October 14 in a statement adopted by consensus of the 15-member council. It urged all parties to respect the security and safety of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) operating in south Lebanon.

In recent days, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have struck the Unifil on several occasions, damaging cameras, shooting directly at peacekeepers and, on October 13, two Israeli tanks entered a UN compound for 45 minutes and set off smoke bombs.

The same day Israel requested that Unifil withdraw five kilometres back from the blue line which constitutes the de facto border between Israel and Lebanon, to keep them “out of harm’s way”.

On each occasion, the IDF has either claimed it was acting in self-defence against Hezbollah or that its actions were accidental. These explanations have failed to convince the rest of the world.

The US, several European countries and the EU have all stated that UN peacekeepers must not be harmed. The UN secretary general, António Guterres, contends these attacks may constitute war crimes and are a breach of both international law and international humanitarian law.

The world is watching the US election campaign unfolding. Sign up to join us at a special Conversation event on October 17. Expert panellists will discuss with the audience the upcoming election and its possible fallout.

Since 1978, Unifil has lost 337 peacekeepers, making Lebanon the most costly, in human terms, of all the UN peacekeeping operations. But despite these risks it has remained in post. Throughout Unifil’s deployment, IDF has put it under pressure both directly and through a proxy force, the South Lebanon Army (SLA). As such Unifil has a strong institutional memory of staying put in the direst of circumstances which makes it unlikely to recommend a drawdown.

“UNIFIL,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3, 2024

What’s more, the security council is aware that if Unifil leaves the area, another UN-led conflict resolution mechanism is likely to be required in future. This logic is why Unifil mandates have always been renewed – albeit sometimes for three months or less.

The biggest threat to Unifil’s deployment is if one or more troop contributing countries decide the risks are too high and withdraw their contingents. The post-2006 Unifil mission comprises the highest number of European troop contingents of all peace operations worldwide with the main contributors being Italy, Spain, Ireland, and France.

The two sectors that comprise the mission – sector west and sector east – are led by Italy and Spain respectively. The biggest non-EU contributors are India, Ghana, Indonesia and Malaysia. If one or more of these countries were to decide to withdraw troops, this could trigger a reevaluation of the mission’s ability to deploy.

If Unifil were to leave, it is worth noting that their compounds have a large amount of expensive equipment – much of it owned nationally by the troop contributing countries. The logistical challenge of moving troops and equipment in a battle zone would be very difficult and dangerous.

Despite the intense fighting, many civilians still remain. The death toll from the hostilities is now estimated to be 2,306 dead and 10,698 wounded. Unifil’s presence remains crucial to monitor the hostilities and wherever possible, provide civilian protection and humanitarian assistance. But for that to be possible, Israel’s allies must continue to exert pressure to ensure that the IDF ceases all attacks on Unifil.

A new ‘zone of security’?

One possible reason for the attacks is that the IDF believes ridding the area of Unifil exposes Hezbollah and will enable the IDF to continue their incursion unhindered by the watchful eyes of an international observer.

Israeli Operations in Lebanon: Elements of a brigade assigned to the 210th IDF Division entered Lebanon. There are now elements of five IDF divisions in Lebanon.

Hezbollah claimed that it targeted Israeli forces attempting to advance into Markaba and Rab al Thalatheen on October… https://t.co/jIHqHrYTju pic.twitter.com/VGLxvXSFMC

— Institute for the Study of War (@TheStudyofWar) October 16, 2024

But there’s another possibility. During the Lebanese civil war, the IDF occupied a section of Lebanese land bordering Israel that was known as the “zone of security”. Its purpose was to serve as a buffer zone for northern Israel, initially designed to protect Israeli citizens from Palestinian militia, and later also from the Shia resistance groups Amal and Hezbollah.

The Israeli request for Unifil to move five kilometres back from the blue line could mean Israel is considering reestablishing some kind of buffer zone. Several factors point to this being a possibility – although the IDF and the Israeli government may not be aligned on this issue as recent tensions suggest.

First, the IDF has now deployed units from at least four divisions into Lebanon. The volume of troop numbers deployed is upwards of 15,000 suggesting this incursion is more than a limited operation.

Second, 29 Unifil compounds lie along the blue line. Were they to be evacuated by the UN, there would be nothing to stop the IDF from moving in and developing them into their own strongholds. While UN positions would need reinforcement and protection equipment, they would nonetheless remain useful.

Third, in 2006 the IDF tried to destroy Hezbollah from the air and deployed limited haphazard ground incursions. These tactics failed and the prevailing view may now be that the only way to guarantee the safe return of 65,000 Israelis to their homes in northern Israel is through an occupation.

But unlike the previous occupation, where the IDF was aided by the SLA, Israel currently has no partner in Lebanon, and it is unlikely to find a willing accomplice among the Lebanese population to help them manage the security of a buffer zone. This means IDF troops would directly bear the brunt of attacks from resistance groups, and the northern Israeli villages would be unlikely to remain secure.

The Netanyahu government’s continued use of military solutions to solve political problems has worrying implications for Israel, Lebanon and the Middle East as a whole. At this stage, Israel looks as if it might be settling back into a conflict that could become another “forever war”.

Thus far, the tactics used by the IDF would imply they are not thinking ahead to “the day after” and the cost to Israel that would come with the prolonged occupation of a buffer zone.

Vanessa Newby, Assistant Professor, Institute of Security and Global Affairs, Leiden University and Chiara Ruffa, Professor of Political Science, Sciences Po

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Excerpt from the Interview

Robert Scheer

So this is important for people to consider, because the Israel that I have in my memory is one that was easy for American liberal people and Jews and non-Jews to embrace, people on the progressive side of things, including what were then moderate Republicans and others, as basically a place of tolerance and where the notion of the Jewish people as a tolerant people came out of oppression came out of suffering antisemitism. And therefore the great, most of the great Jewish writers and cultural figures were advocates of tolerance, whether it was Hannah Arendt or Albert Einstein or many, many others, Leonard Bernstein, what have you. And something changed here, and it affects American politics, because right now, the Israel that you described is one that it’s easy for Trump to embrace, but a little more awkward for Democratic politicians to embrace, ever more so by the increase of violence connected with nationalism for Israel. And you saw that even when Netanyahu came to Congress, the people who sort of were not there, were mostly Democrats and the Republicans were quite happy with Netanyahu. Is this going forward, particularly as the violence and the charge of genocide, can be now more supportable as a description, where does this leave American politics?

Juan Cole

Yeah, well, it’s very clear that most members of the Democratic Party — and including American Jews in very large numbers — are disgusted with with Netanyahu policies, and the support for Israel has fallen dramatically among them, especially young people — and, again, including young American Jews. So yes, Israel had benefited from being a bipartisan commitment. Both Democrats and Republicans were committed to it. That’s changing now. It’s becoming a partisan football, and there are Democrats who are beginning to be highly critical of Israel — and the Progressive Caucus of about 60 members of Congress on the Democratic side, I think they all believe that Israel is committing a genocide, and are concerned about the degree to which the United States government is supporting these actions.

So, yes, I think it’s not a good development for the Israelis, and it’s not a good development for anybody, including Jewish Americans, some of whom, you know, are unfairly now being tagged as genocidaires, as supporting all of this, even though it’s not clear at all that most American Jews are on board with what Netanyahu is doing. The American Jewish establishment back in the ’90s wouldn’t meet with Likudniks. They wouldn’t meet with people from Netanyahu’s party. Ariel Sharon couldn’t get a hearing before he was Prime Minister back in the ’90s.

The organized Israel lobby of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, AIPAC, has shifted to the far right, along with Netanyahu, and some of the very wealthy members of the community are all on board — the Adelson’s with their casino money and so forth. But I would say that the average Jewish American in the street is not at all happy with this situation. You know, obviously the October 7 attacks were horrific, and I think everybody in America felt supportive of Israel at that moment. But the things that have happened in the aftermath have been unacceptable to most Americans, and I think most Jewish Americans, so that I think Kamala Harris’s diction about it — that “Israel has the right to defend itself, but it matters how” — is a very widespread sentiment.

And there are people who are much more vehement than that, of course. So yes, you’ve put your finger on an important issue. It’s also the case that Netanyahu is obviously attempting to draw the United States into another war in the Middle East with Iran this time. And were he to succeed, and were it to go badly — and I think inevitably, it would go badly — there’s danger of that feeding into antisemitism as well as “the Jews dragged us into this thing,” and so forth. So it’s an extremely explosive moment.

Robert Scheer

And you just made so much sense about it. And I thought about today, because thinking about Kamala Harris, first of all, she did give a significant speech in Selma, where she preceded her speech by talking about the situation in Gaza and West Bank in very human terms about the suffering and it had to be dealt with, and she clearly has a sensibility in that direction. On the other hand, she’s moved more hawkish and so forth and during the course of this campaign. But today, and I didn’t fully absorb the statement, but I gathered from what I read so far, she sort of singled out Iran as our biggest enemy. And for people who don’t understand anything of the history of Iran, if that’s our biggest enemy, it’s an enemy that US foreign policy created. Just going back to the overthrow of the last secular leader of Iran, which is now 75 years ago, or something Mohammed Mosaddegh and how we installed the Shah and created all these conditions and so forth. How should we think about Iran right now? And they’ve gone through some changes. They have sort of a more moderate elected leader now, but bring us up to date. And how is Israel going to fare? You say it won’t end well, but they think they’re going to have a swift victory and just get rid of the Islamic State, right?

Juan Cole

Well, they, you know, a lot of people told us we’d have a quick victory over Iraq, and we would the Middle East would turn glorious if only we got rid of Saddam Hussein. The United States has the most high tech and most capable military in the world, and certainly could defeat a conventional Iranian force. But Iran is three times geographically larger than Iraq, and two and a half times more populous than Iraq. And so if things didn’t go well for the United States in its eight and a half year occupation of Iraq, imagine how badly things would go in Iran. That’s a much bigger, more populous country, which is, frankly, also more technologically advanced than Iraq was, so the guerrilla resistance would be fierce and effective. Iran has, by now, a long history of opposing Western imperialism, and it’s been put in a very difficult position by Netanyahu’s aggressive actions. Iran supports the Palestinians and their demand for citizenship in a state. It seems to favor a one-state solution in which there are just Palestinians and Israelis would jointly elect a government. That’s the kind of thing that they say, which the Israelis view as a call for the liquidation of Israel, because it’s an ethno-nationalist state. If it’s not a Jewish state, then it’s not Israel. But the Iranians are not saying that the Jews should be killed or that anything should be liquidated. Some of them are antisemites, and do speak horribly about about the Jews of Israel, but the main figures of the government have had this one state solution sort of rhetoric. But they support the Palestinians. They have supported the Hezbollah, the Shiite party militia of southern Lebanon. And yes, I think that you have to see Iran and and Hezbollah as reactive to Israeli expansionism. The Israelis occupied 10% of Lebanese soil, southern Lebanon, for 18 years. And the Lebanese, wanted them right back out of their country. They didn’t want to be occupied. And the Shiites of southern Lebanon, who nobody ever heard of them in the wider world, before Israel occupied that area, threw up these resistance movements like Hezbollah. It was Israel that radicalized the Shiites of southern Lebanon.

Robert Scheer

This is an important point, if I could just stop you. Could you tell us a little bit about that history is this where Hezbollah comes from?

Juan Cole

Yeah, Hezbollah was formed in 1984 two years after the Israelis invaded southern Lebanon. The Lebanon is a multicultural country. It has Christians. It has Sunni Muslims. That has Shiite Muslims. It has Druze, which are an offshoot, ultimately, of the Shiites. It has Eastern Orthodox Christians. It used to have Jews and its constituent parts are very finely balanced in the national elections and institutions. But the Israelis in 1947 and ’48 expelled large numbers of Palestinians north to Lebanon and the Lebanese couldn’t accept them as immigrants. They couldn’t give them citizenship because they were mostly Sunni Muslims. And it would have given extra numbers to the Sunnis, it would have unbalanced the whole system. So the Palestinians in Lebanon have lived without citizenship, without property rights, without the right to work in refugee camps in squalid conditions ever since 1948, and I’ve spoken to some of them in camps, they all want to go back to their homes in what is now Israel, and they formed the Palestine Liberation Organization. They joined it in some numbers, and started striking at Israel in the ’70s, and the Israelis hit back at Lebanon. They didn’t just hit back at the Palestinians in Lebanon, but they hit back at Lebanon proper. And the Christians in Lebanon really minded that the Palestinians were using Lebanon as a base to hit Israel. And a civil war broke out in ’75 between the right-wing Christians and the Palestinians and their allies. And that war went on until 1989. And in the midst of the war, in 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon with the hope of destroying the PLO, destroying the Palestine Liberation Organization and propping up the right-wing Christians and reshaping Lebanese politics, the candidates…

Robert Scheer

The right-wing Christians, as I recall, created a massacre of Palestinians.

Juan Cole

At Sabra and Shatila, the Israelis gave the task of guarding this Palestinian camp to the right-wing Christians, and the right wing Christians committed a massacre there. The Israelis have recently been bombing in that area, and people are fleeing Sabra and Shatila as we speak, bad memories are coming back up.

So, Hezbollah formed because of the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, because of this invasion, and the Israelis just stayed. They stayed, and Hezbollah formed and began hitting them with guerrilla tactics. They would snipe at them. They would set off bombs. They would engage in suicide bombing, which they picked up from the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, and they succeeded in 2000 in forcing the Israelis back out. And the right wing in Israel has always minded that, that Ehud Barak, the then Prime Minister, gave up this territory in Lebanon and let Hezbollah push them out. That’s one of the reasons they’re determined now to destroy Hezbollah, to throw Lebanon, from their point of view, they have hopes of throwing it back into civil war, maybe enlisting some of the Lebanese to help destroy Hezbollah, and then putting in a government that they like. It’s 1982 all over again. 1982 was an enormous failure, and it produced more radicalization and more headaches in the long term for Israel. And it caused the Shiites in southern Lebanon to ally with Iran, which wasn’t, you know, many of them were not with Khomeini initially. So this will just be more trouble. This kind of “big think” of Netanyahu that he can just reshape the countries around him, militarily. It’s all going to end very badly.

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ScheerPost: “Juan Cole: Where is the Middle East Heading?”

Israel’s invasion of Lebanon is disrupting the Biden attempt to prevent a regional war.

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – The Biden administration’s approach to the Middle East crisis that erupted in the wake of October 7, 2023 is on the brink of collapse. Israel’s aggressive maneuvers, coupled with Iran’s growing involvement, are pushing the region toward a full-scale war, one that the Biden administration ostensibly hoped to avoid.

Initially, the administration calculated that U.S. interests could survive the Gaza conflict on its own, but the risk of being drawn into a broader war with untold consequences has loomed larger. Biden’s calculated ploy to restrain Israel, especially regarding Lebanon, by offering support for its Gaza actions, now seems like a failed effort to prevent an even larger conflict. Washington’s attempts to rein in Israel, including diplomatic missions to Egypt and Qatar, have failed to shift Israeli policy. Despite repeatedly sending key figures like the CIA director and Secretary of State Antony Blinken to broker peace, the United States has been left looking complicit, supplying weapons even as Israel continues its incursions. Biden, for all his efforts to distance America from the widening chaos, can no longer escape the charge that his administration bears responsibility for enabling Israel’s unchecked escalation.

Washington is now viewed as an accomplice in the region’s unfolding chaos. Biden’s reluctance to push for a ceasefire in Gaza became more untenable by the day. By June, the so-called Biden-backed peace plan emerged, supported by Hamas and begrudgingly accepted by Israel, only for Netanyahu to shift the goalposts, ignoring U.S. requests to steer clear of Egypt’s Rafah border. Instead, Israel occupied the Philadelphi corridor, violating the Camp David Accords. The U.S. response? More military aid to Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, seems to have secured Washington’s tacit approval to target Hezbollah in Lebanon, escalating a conflict that is spiraling out of control. The results have been devastating. Booby-trapped devices detonated in everyday locations such as homes and hospitals, killing civilians, including children and medical staff. The assault displaced thousands from their homes along the Lebanon border, yet Israel’s appetite for aggression appears far from sated.

While nominally approving only a “limited” strike on Lebanon, the United States has repeated a troubling historical pattern. In 1982, Ariel Sharon promised limited Israeli operations in southern Lebanon, only for Israeli forces to advance to Beirut, laying siege to the city. Israel remained an occupying force until it was driven out in 1989 by Hezbollah.

Despite months of diplomatic wrangling, President Biden has been unable to compel Netanyahu to honor the comprehensive ceasefire agreement it accepted back in June. That plan, a phased approach to ending the Gaza conflict, remains in limbo as the war grinds on. Biden’s inability to assert control over the situation only deepens the crisis, casting doubt on U.S. influence in the region.

“Invading Lebanon,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3, 2024

Ironically, the greatest threat to U.S. strategy in the Middle East hasn’t come from Iran, but from its closest ally, Israel. In the chaotic days following the October 7 attacks, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant pushed for a large-scale offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon. President Biden intervened, urging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to shelve those plans and concentrate on Hamas. This scenario played out repeatedly, with Biden’s administration trying to restrain Israel from escalating the conflict beyond Gaza. But for Israel, Gaza was not the strategic prize it desired. Finding himself in a tricky position, Netanyahu now needs a decisive “win” to rebuild the credibility of the country’s national security apparatus, shattered by the failures of October 7. Facing potential investigations over those failures, he is desperately looking for a way to salvage his political standing.

The United States has found itself caught in the middle, struggling to manage an ally determined to shift the focus of the conflict. Netanyahu’s push for a military victory beyond Gaza threatens to drag Washington into a broader regional war, complicating Biden’s Middle East strategy and challenging America’s long-term interests in the region. Israel claims that Hezbollah is making life unbearable for its citizens, forcing many to abandon their homes for hotels. Even the late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, despite his anger over Israeli attacks, had one consistent message: a ceasefire in Lebanon could only happen if there was a deal on Gaza. It’s a sentiment that even many Israelis agree with, with some finding Hezbollah’s former leader more reliable than their own prime minister.

But there’s a catch: Netanyahu is determined to separate any resolution in Lebanon from Gaza. On the surface, this latest military escalation seems focused on securing Israel’s northern border. But beneath it lies something far more calculated: Netanyahu’s long-standing ambition for a broader conflict.

This isn’t the first time he’s maneuvered global powers toward war. He convinced the Bush administration to topple Saddam Hussein on flimsy grounds and later persuaded Donald Trump to tear up the Iran nuclear deal. Now, Netanyahu wants a war with Iran, knowing that the United States would be obligated to defend Israel.

When Israel assassinated an Iranian official with whom they’d been negotiating, it crossed a dangerous line. Though Iran didn’t respond directly, Hezbollah did. Netanyahu’s gamble is clear: provoke enough conflict, and Washington will have no choice but to step in. It’s a risky game, one with global consequences. Israel appears unlikely to show restraint in the current conflict, and the Biden administration is caught in a difficult bind. Yet President Biden seems hesitant to use the leverage the United States holds to keep Israel from escalating further. His administration now hopes that Hezbollah and Iran might seek an understanding to de-escalate the tensions along Israel’s northern border. But with the Israeli government unlikely to compromise, that hope feels increasingly fragile.

Imran Khalid is a geostrategic analyst and columnist on international affairs. His work has been widely published by prestigious international news organizations and publications.

Via Foreign Policy in Focus