Hundred days of Israel’s latest war on Lebanon

Beirut, Lebanon – Tuesday marks 100 days since the beginning of Israel’s second military intensification against Lebanon in less than two years.

Over the last 100 days, Israeli forces have destroyed dozens of villages in southern Lebanon. Israel and Lebanon have engaged in rounds of direct diplomatic talks for the first time in decades, but multiple efforts to fully implement a ceasefire have fallen by the wayside.

As Israel’s latest war on Lebanon marks 100 days, efforts are still under way to end the fighting on multiple fronts. In addition to direct talks between Israel and Lebanon, Iran has pledged to link the conflict to any ceasefire deal it makes with the United States and Israel. On Sunday, Iran attacked Israel as retaliation for an attack on Beirut’s southern suburbs, which Tehran considers a red line.

Still, fighting continues in the south between Israeli troops and Hezbollah, the pro-Iran political and paramilitary group that is opposed to the Lebanese government’s direct talks with Israel. Hezbollah has recently started using fibre-optic drones in the fight, which has led to a new dynamic on the battlefield.

“They’ve gone back to their guerrilla roots,” Nicholas Blanford, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council and author of a book on Hezbollah, told Al Jazeera. “The intention now, like back in the 1990s, is to wear the Israelis down. They have to keep overcoming whatever defensive and offensive measures the Israelis bring to bear in the south so that they can keep killing and wounding Israeli soldiers.”

Israel has not slackened the intensity of its attacks in southern Lebanon. Even on the 100th day of the latest round of the war, it continued the pattern of forcibly displacing Lebanese, issuing a threat in the southern coastal city of Tyre, including its portside Christian quarter, which had not been threatened previously. At least eight people were killed in an air raid on a residential area in the city.

Israel also continued attacking areas across southern Lebanon.

Israel’s intensification of its war on Lebanon began on March 2, shortly after Hezbollah fired six rockets at Israel. It was Hezbollah’s first response to Israeli aggression in more than a year. The group said it had responded because of Israel’s continued ceasefire violations, with continued attacks on Lebanon despite the 2024 agreement, and because of the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei just two days earlier, at the start of the US-Israel war on Iran.