For nearly a year, more than 10 months to be precise, the two sides, Israel and Hezbollah, have been carefully choosing their mutual attacks to avoid a larger conflict, but the almost daily exchange of fire has increased and covered larger areas.
Satellite images show the extent of the losses on both sides of the border, and the Lebanese town of Aita al-Shaab is a stark example of the damage and destruction caused by the mutual attacks between Israeli forces and Lebanese Hezbollah militants, according to a report published by the American newspaper, The New York Times.
Although Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants, backed by Iran, have been exchanging sporadic shelling for years, the conflict intensified last October after Hamas launched an attack on Gaza-area settlements and Israel responded with a large-scale ground operation that has been ongoing for more than 10 months.
In the cross-border fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, structural damage has been most widespread in Lebanon, where thousands of buildings have been damaged or destroyed. The thousands of Israeli attacks since October have surpassed the number of Hezbollah attacks on Israel, according to data compiled by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a nonprofit that studies global conflicts.
About a quarter of the buildings in some villages were damaged, according to a satellite data analysis by Corey Sher of the Graduate Center at the City University of New York.
Israeli airstrikes and shelling in Lebanon have killed nearly 500 people, at least 100 of them civilians, according to the United Nations and the Lebanese Health Ministry.
Hezbollah has fired 7,500 rockets, mortars and drones since October 2023, according to the Israeli prime minister’s office, killing 43 people in Israel, more than half of them civilians, and setting swaths of farmland ablaze. Northern Israel has seen more than 700 forest fires, according to the prime minister’s office, which Israel has blamed on Hezbollah attacks.
These satellite images show what happened to the vast areas of dry forest surrounding Kibbutz Malkiyeh after it caught fire.
It is not only Israel that is burning, as the exchange of shelling has caused large fires on both sides of the border, and many fear that it could cause long-term damage to lands that play an important role in food production.
Many villages near the border on both sides have become ghost towns, with nearly 60,000 people in northern Israel and 100,000 in southern Lebanon displaced by fighting along the border since last October, with no clear timetable for their return home.
Now, there is a fear that the conflict itself could spread like wildfire. In the past three weeks, attacks have escalated, threatening a larger regional war.
In July, a rocket fired from Lebanon killed 12 civilians in a town in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, the deadliest attack on Israeli-held territory since the October 7 Hamas-led attacks.
Israel responded with a strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs, killing a Hezbollah leader and five civilians, according to Lebanese authorities. Hours later, Hamas’s political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, was assassinated in the Iranian capital. Both Hezbollah and Iran vowed revenge.
Lebanon’s border towns with Israel, which are mainly Shiite Muslims, are a stronghold of Hezbollah support, but there are also Christian and Sunni Muslim pockets.
Some of those border towns that have borne much of the brunt of the destruction in the current attacks were the scene of heavy ground fighting in 2006, when Israel and Lebanon fought their last war.
Now, with hostilities escalating, some Israelis want their country to launch another full-scale invasion, but others fear that a full-scale response by Hezbollah would be devastating.
The militants’ arsenal of advanced precision-guided missiles is capable of hitting cities across Israel, as well as vital infrastructure such as power plants and ports.
Israeli military leaders have their own concerns. They are still fighting one major war, against Hamas in Gaza, and they do not relish the prospect of another.
With ammunition stocks dwindling, it is unclear how intense a battle the Israeli military can wage in Lebanon.
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