BeirutSaturday: 18 Lebanese killed, 124 wounded in Nabatieh in Israeli strikes.
Israel resumed attacks on south Lebanon on March 2, months after the November 2024 ceasefire.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry counts 2,969 killed and 9,112 wounded since escalation began; Israeli strikes continue across Nabatieh and Saida.
Sources: TASS
THE BORDER THAT NEVER SETTLED
The Israel-Lebanon border was drawn in 1923 by Britain and France carving up Ottoman Syria. Israel occupied southern Lebanon from 1982 to 2000, withdrew to the UN-demarcated Blue Line, fought a 34-day war with Hezbollah in 2006, and has cycled through escalations every few years since. The November 2024 ceasefire was the latest in a long series of pauses, not a settlement.
WHY HEZBOLLAH EXISTS
Hezbollah was founded in 1982 in response to the Israeli invasion, with Iranian Revolutionary Guard backing. It grew out of the Shi'a south — historically Lebanon's poorest region, neglected by Beirut's confessional power-sharing. Its self-justification rests on a single claim: it is the only force that ever made Israel withdraw from Arab land without a treaty.
THE CONFESSIONAL TRAP
Lebanon's 1943 National Pact assigns the presidency to a Maronite Christian, the premiership to a Sunni Muslim, and the speakership to a Shi'a Muslim — based on a 1932 census never updated. Demographic shifts made the formula increasingly unrepresentative; the civil war (1975-1990) was fought partly over it. The state that emerged is too weak to disarm Hezbollah and too fractured to negotiate as one voice.
THE LITANI LINE
UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war, required Hezbollah to withdraw north of the Litani River — roughly 30km from the Israeli border — leaving only the Lebanese Army and UNIFIL peacekeepers south of it. The 2024 ceasefire repeated this demand. Both times, enforcement was the unresolved question.
THE IRANIAN AXIS
Hezbollah is the most capable node of what Tehran calls the 'Axis of Resistance' — a network including Hamas, the Houthis, Iraqi militias, and (until December 2024) the Assad government in Syria. The fall of Assad cut Hezbollah's overland supply route from Iran through Syria, weakening the group's position in any ceasefire enforcement dispute.
THE CASUALTY ASYMMETRY
Modern Israeli air campaigns produce casualty ratios that have been roughly consistent since 2006 — high Lebanese civilian deaths, far lower Israeli losses. The asymmetry is structural: precision airpower against a guerrilla force embedded in villages produces this distribution regardless of intent, which is why the laws-of-war debate keeps returning to proportionality rather than targeting.