The Third Lebanon War was a war fought between the state of Israel and the Lebanese Shia Islamist paramilitary group Hezbollah, beginning on 23 September 2024 with the Israel's inauguration of an air campaign against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon. On 30 September 2024, after nearly a year of deadly cross-border exchanges between Israel and Hezbollah, and after nearly two weeks of preparatory airstrikes on Lebanon, the Israel Defense Forces launched a ground invasion of Lebanon that escalated the brewing conflict into all-out war.
Background[]
Hezbollah began a campaign of rocket attacks on northern Israeli communities on 8 October 2023, aiming to create a "support front" for the Hamas-led Palestinian militant groups in the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the al-Aqsa Flood terror offensive. At several points between October 2023 and September 2024, it seemed likely that the clashes would escalate into all-out war, although both combatants largely limited their operations to artillery strikes. Tens of thousands of Israeli and Lebanese civilians were displaced from their homes as the result of these exchanges, and, in the late summer of 2024 - as Israel's war in Gaza left Hamas a stateless guerrilla movement - Israel's security cabinet began to shift its attention to the northern border. On 16 September 2024, the Security Cabinet of Israel approved a new war aim of returning evacuated residents to the north of Israel. From 17 to 18 September, Israel detonated thousands of rigged pagers used by Hezbollah members, killing 42 and injuring at least 3,500, throwing Hezbollah's communications infrastructure into chaos. On 19 September, Israel began a series of airstrikes in South Lebanon with the objective of destroying its rocket-launching capabilities, and an Israeli strike on Beirut's Dahieh suburb on 20 September killed Redwan Force commander Ibrahim Aqil and several other leaders of the group. On 21 September, Israel claimed to have almost completely dismantled Hezbollah's military chain of command, and it destroyed thousands of rocket launchers.
War[]
On 23 September, Israel announced the commencement of Operation Arrows of the North, an even more intense wave of airstrikes that proved the deadliest in Lebanon since the end of the Lebanese Civil War in 1990. Outlets like the Atlantic Council, Radio Free Europe, and Breitbart News suggested that a "Third Lebanon War" had begun with those airstrikes. Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah was assassinated when Israel dropped bunker-buster bombs on the terror group's subterranean headquarters in Beirut on 27 September 2024, delivering a crippling blow to the organization.
On 30 September 2024, Israel informed the United States about its intentions to launch a ground offensive into South Lebanon with the objective of destroying Hezbollah's Redwan Force. Concurrently, Israel began limited raids into South Lebanon, focusing on destroying Hezbollah-built tunnels on the Israel-Lebanon border. On the night of 30 September-1 October, the Lebanese Army began to withdraw from its forward positions on the border as Israel stepped up artillery strikes against Hezbollah border outposts and prepared for a border crossing. Israel also declared three border communities to be located within a "closed military zone."
Shortly after midnight on 1 October, Hezbollah claimed to have targeted Israeli troop movements across from Lebanese border towns. Iran responded to the Israeli raids by launching missile strikes on Israel in Operation True Promise II, threatening to spark an all-out war between Israel and Iran. On 2 October, Israel dispatched another division to South Lebanon despite initially planning for their ground invasion to be a limited series of raids. On 4 October, Israel targeted Hezbollah Executive Council chief Hashem Safieddine with bunker-buster bombs as he met with other Hezbollah leaders in Beirut, reportedly killing him.
By November, the IDF's military operation had degraded Hezbollah's ability to conduct large, coordinated indirect fire attacks and ground attacks in Israel. On 26 November, Israel's cabinet approved a ceasefire with Hezbollah that would achieve its stated war aims: the Lebanese Army and UNIFIL peacekeepers would become the only armed actors operating south of the Litani River, while the Lebanese government was granted the sole authority to purchase or produce weapons in Lebanon, any non-government or UNIFIL armed group infrastructure south of the Litani was dismantled, and all Israeli forces would withdraw from Lebanon.