On 2 March, Hizbollah returned to the battlefield for the first time in over a year, firing six rockets into northern Israel. With this act, the Lebanese Shiite party-cum-militia threw itself (and Lebanon) headlong into the war that began on 28 February, when Israel and the United States attacked Hizbollah’s patron, Iran. While Hizbollah’s opening salvo did no significant damage, it set in motion a devastating Israeli response, which continues at the time of writing. As the escalatory cycle proceeds, Hizbollah has upped the ante as well. On 11 March, it launched a huge volley of around 200 rockets at northern Israel in coordination with a barrage of missiles from Iran.

The parts of Lebanon bearing the brunt of the conflict are those with large concentrations of Shiites. Hizbollah has long drawn most of its political support from the Shiite community, and Israel alleges that the group conceals its military assets in the Shiite-majority districts where its backers reside. These include southern Lebanon, the capital Beirut’s southern suburbs and the Bekaa valley in the east. Israel has bombarded all three regions since 2 March, and it has also issued sweeping displacement orders for southern Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs, forcing more than one million people to flee their homes. Precise numbers are hard to come by, but as much as a fifth of the country’s population has been uprooted. The bombing has killed over 900 Lebanese since 2 March. Israeli ground troops are advancing into the south, facing armed resistance from Hizbollah fighters as they go.

This escalation is the latest chapter in the long-running struggle over Hizbollah’s stores of rockets, missiles and other military-grade weaponry. A UN Security Council resolution after the 2006 Hizbollah-Israel war called for “disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon”, entrusting the Lebanese government with this task. The November 2024 ceasefire agreement that was to have ended the 2023-2024 Israel-Hizbollah conflict did the same. But disarming Hizbollah has thus far proven to be beyond Beirut’s capabilities. The Lebanese government has tried to keep the national army out of the war altogether. When Israeli troops started pushing further into southern Lebanon, the army withdrew. Nevertheless, Israeli attacks have already killed several Lebanese soldiers.

Meanwhile, Hizbollah – which originated as an Iran-backed guerrilla force contesting Israel’s occupation of the Lebanese south from 1982 to 2000 – insists on retaining at least some of these armaments. It claims to need them to defend Lebanon from Israel’s expansionist designs. In practice, Hizbollah has used the weapons to threaten Israel as part of Iran’s regional proxy network, which also includes Hamas. Indeed, it attacked Israel in October 2023 with the stated aim of showing solidarity with Hamas and Palestinians more broadly after the 7 October attacks set off Israel’s military assault on Gaza. For the better part of a year, Israel and Hizbollah traded fire with gradually increasing intensity, generally abiding by what were called “rules of the game” intended to limit escalation, but in the autumn of 2024 Israel dispensed with that. It struck a series of hammer blows, killing Hizbollah’s top leadership and destroying much of its arsenal through aerial and ground operations. 

Given the pounding Lebanon took from 2023 to 2024, it came as a surprise to many Lebanese that Hizbollah had decided to enter the sprawling new Middle East conflict. Before 2 March, the group had signalled to Lebanese political leaders that it might sit out the hostilities, just as it did the twelve-day U.S.-Israeli war with Iran in June 2025. In fact, Hizbollah had held its fire ever since late 2024. It did so despite the fact that Israel had carried out near-daily air raids on sites in Lebanon where it alleged Hizbollah had secreted military assets, citing the right to self-defence that the ceasefire affirms for both Lebanon and Israel. These raids killed almost 400 people over fifteen months. Israeli soldiers also continued to occupy several positions in southern Lebanon which, as Israeli Defence Minister Yisrael Katz has admitted, fell outside the truce agreement’s terms.

Explanations vary for why Hizbollah stayed its hand during fifteen months of Israeli ceasefire violations. According to the group’s secretary-general, Naim Qassem, it exercised restraint to give the Lebanese government space to stop Israel’s truce infringements by diplomatic means. But more sceptical observers have suggested that Hizbollah, after incurring heavy damage in the 2023-2024 conflict, was simply too weak to tangle with its far more powerful adversary. Instead, they argue, the group was playing for time to rebuild its military capabilities. In any case, it seemed to many Lebanese that having been strategically gun-shy from late 2024 to early 2026, Hizbollah would not jump into a new war and put the country directly in the line of fire. The six rockets launched on 2 March, however, proved that optimism to be misplaced. 

Hizbollah has drawn criticism for the 2 March attack. At first, the group openly linked its decision to the wider Middle East conflict, sparking widespread outrage among Lebanese, who were incredulous that Hizbollah would drag them into a war that might otherwise have spared them. The group’s first official statement described the 2 March rocket fire as retaliation for the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, mentioning “defence of Lebanon” almost as an afterthought. Many Lebanese denounced Hizbollah’s decision as a “suicidal” provocation, made on Iran’s behalf. “Do not use the words ‘thinking’ and ‘Hizbollah’ in the same sentence”, scoffed an official from a political party that stridently opposes Hizbollah.

As Israel ramped up its assaults, Hizbollah’s leadership placed more emphasis on the Lebanese dimension of its strategic calculations. The party claimed that the 2 March salvo had pre-empted an imminent, massive military escalation that Israel was preparing in Lebanon, irrespective of Hizbollah’s actions. “This operation is in defence of Lebanon, not anyone else”, Qassem asserted on 13 March. A Hizbollah-aligned analyst told Crisis Group that – since the group considered another Israeli onslaught to be inevitable – it made sense for Hizbollah to initiate conflict while its ally Iran was also fighting Israel. Yet these justifications still do not satisfy many Lebanese, who would have preferred for their long-suffering country to sidestep the regional conflict.

Israeli leaders have said they wish to end Hizbollah’s capacity to threaten Israeli citizens, particularly those living in the north near the Lebanese border, with rocket and drone fire. Owing to Israel’s vast military superiority over Hizbollah, it has a broad spectrum of options available for pursuing this overall objective.

At a minimum, Israel appears set to further deplete Hizbollah’s arsenal and fighting strength. In this respect, Israeli leaders want to exploit the group’s current vulnerability. Hizbollah remains badly bruised by the 2023-2024 war, and it faces steep challenges in replenishing its arms stockpiles after its former ally, Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, fell in December 2024. That development has seriously impeded Hizbollah’s ability to resupply via lines that extend overland all the way to Iran. Israel will likely keep seeking to capitalise on this weakness – degrading Hizbollah with airstrikes on areas where it says the group has hidden military assets, as well as deploying ground troops to destroy what Israel deems “terrorist infrastructure” in southern Lebanon and perhaps even beyond. 

Some in Israel view capturing Lebanese land and displacing the residents en masse as a justifiable tactic for bolstering Israeli national security. They reason that occupying more territory in southern Lebanon could create a geographic buffer between them and Hizbollah, while putting pressure on the Lebanese government to take firm action of its own against the group. 

Defence Minister Katz, for one, has vowed that displaced Shiites will not return to the south until the safety of Israel’s northern residents is assured. He said Israel would punish Lebanese villages along the border “exactly as it was done against Hamas in Gaza, Rafah, Beit Hanoun and other large areas that were neutralised” – suggesting an intent to raze communities to the ground. As to how much land they intend to capture, Israeli officials have floated the idea of establishing a deep “security zone” in southern Lebanon. A prominent politician from the ruling Likud party called for turning the Litani River, 30km inside Lebanon, into a new “yellow line”, as the Israeli army calls the perimeter it has established around the patch of Gaza from which it has withdrawn. Farther along the spectrum of aims, Israeli hardliners envision fulfilling the claim made in 1918 by David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, that the Litani represents Israel’s “natural” northern boundary.

Having set its cap on this broad yet thinly articulated mission, Israel has amassed a major force to accomplish it. In recent weeks, it has called up some 100,000 reservists and massed four armoured divisions (about 60,000 troops) along the 79km border, with a fifth division expected to join. The Israeli army has already started probing on the ground, demolishing scores of buildings in border villages. Wary of Hizbollah anti-tank weapons, Israel has also continued to rely on tactical airpower as well as artillery and naval gunships. Several foreign allies have urged Israel to de-escalate and create space for diplomacy, but Israeli leaders have rebuffed these entreaties. 

Israeli officials hint that once a full go-ahead comes, they intend to capture at least the 30km-deep strip north of the border. In apparent preparation, Israel has issued repeated displacement orders for this region even as it has bombed bridges across the Litani’s southern reaches. The border’s contours mean that a buffer of this depth could include territory north of the river, too. Judging from the tone of both official and media talk in Israel, it is not fear of upsetting diplomatic efforts that is holding back an offensive, but rather reluctance to annoy the Trump administration, which would prefer Israel to help finish the joint U.S.-Israeli business in Iran before getting further entangled in Lebanon. 

Lebanon’s leaders are caught in a bind. Using coercion to curtail Hizbollah’s independent military activities may not be feasible and would come with major risks, and yet it has been held up by Israel as the only way out of the crisis. Israeli officials blame Beirut for not upholding its commitment under the November 2024 ceasefire deal to enforce a state monopoly over arms. On 13 March, Defence Minister Katz warned that Israel would increasingly target Lebanese civilian infrastructure as punishment for Beirut’s failure to disarm Hizbollah. Several Lebanese political parties have also called on Lebanon’s political leadership to rein in Hizbollah by force.

Lebanon has responded to these demands by adopting strong official positions, but without translating those stances into effective action. On 2 March, the Lebanese government took the unprecedented step of outlawing Hizbollah’s military activities, while also instructing the Lebanese army to accelerate disarmament by “all necessary means”. These resolutions seemingly indicate a newfound resolve to crack down on Hizbollah, yet the state has done virtually nothing to follow through. Hizbollah swiftly announced that it would not comply with the government’s edicts, and it has defiantly continued to attack Israel. In response, the army has made only cursory efforts to carry out the cabinet’s decisions. On 3 March, for instance, the army arrested several Hizbollah operatives carrying arms, only for a military court to release some of them soon afterward on nominal bail.

Beirut has compelling reasons to think twice about deploying the army against Hizbollah. The group was long considered to be the strongest force under arms in Lebanon and, even though it was weakened during the 2023-2024 war, it has demonstrated in recent weeks that it still has sharp teeth. Based on this evidence, Hizbollah would almost certainly prove a formidable adversary for the Lebanese army. For decades, the military has relied heavily on foreign donors to provide it with weapons and other gear, much of which is outdated. Since October 2019, the army has also suffered the effects of Lebanon’s deep economic crisis, which has seen its budget slashed and forced soldiers to rely on part-time jobs to supplement their meagre incomes. The Lebanese army might well be taking on more than it can handle by squaring off against Hizbollah. 

Lebanese leaders also fear that pitting the army against Hizbollah could trigger the military’s disintegration. Some officials warn that at least some Shiite soldiers, upon receiving orders to confront Hizbollah, might desert or even defect to fight with the group. The army might then fragment along sectarian lines, as it did several times during the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990). For decades since, the army has tried to keep itself at a safe distance from domestic feuds which, like Hizbollah’s refusal to disarm, often take on a sectarian flavour. A former army general, who advocates for deploying the military to disarm Hizbollah, conceded that the force faces a “very real” risk of splintering if it goes down that path.

Despite these potential pitfalls, some Lebanese argue that the army should no longer hesitate from trying to compel Hizbollah to stand down. “This situation is now existential for Lebanon”, argued the former general. “If we take half-measures, then we are just giving Israel the excuse to do whatever it wants”. He added that today’s desperate circumstances likely demand a forceful, unambiguous form of confrontation, as opposed to the gradual, cautious steps that Beirut has historically preferred. Advocates for tackling Hizbollah head on also predict that, when push comes to shove, most Shiite soldiers would remain loyal to an institution that can promise them a future – as opposed to Hizbollah, a besieged militia that appears to be on its way out. Some also claim that, in the end, Hizbollah would decide not to stand against the army, which enjoys broad popular legitimacy. 

Other observers disagree with these assessments. A Hizbollah-leaning analyst contended that any move by the army against the group – even a gradual one – would unleash sectarian mayhem. The analyst pointed out that such an operation, controversial even in normal times, would be especially foolhardy to pursue at a moment when Israel has displaced hundreds of thousands of Shiites and is advancing to occupy more Lebanese territory. “The conflict has once more galvanised the Shiite community behind Hizbollah”, he asserted. “The Lebanese army commander knows that, and he would rather resign than give such an order.” Mahmoud Qomati, a senior Hizbollah official, did little to soothe jangled nerves when he declared that the group is capable of “overturning the country and the government”. (Qomati’s office later claimed that his comments had been taken out of context.) An independent Lebanese parliamentarian argued that the state has probably missed its moment to force disarmament without provoking a violent reaction. “Hizbollah has entered a different mindset”, he observed. “They have decided to go all in.”

Faced with this daunting uncertainty, Lebanese leaders have preferred conciliation over confrontation in dealing with Hizbollah. To date, they have maintained this policy since 2 March, even as Israel’s assaults continue to intensify. Yet with Israel apparently determined to stamp out Hizbollah once and for all, Beirut may no longer be able to forestall a reckoning with the group, disastrous as it may be.

Unwilling to risk confronting Hizbollah, Lebanon’s leaders have instead tried to establish diplomatic channels. Amid the escalation, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun has declared Lebanon’s openness to entering face-to-face negotiations with Israel to reach a new security arrangement, after refusing direct bilateral talks for decades. From Beirut’s perspective, this statement amounts to a hefty political concession – one that both Israel and the U.S. have long sought.

France has thrown its weight behind Lebanon’s efforts to bring Israel to the negotiating table. Soon after the latest escalation began, Paris began testing the parties’ appetite for reaching a diplomatic solution that could avert a protracted war. On 14 March, President Emmanuel Macron announced France’s readiness to mediate and host direct bilateral talks, with a view to reaching a new ceasefire. Behind the scenes, France has apparently suggested that Lebanon could offer Israel some form of official recognition – a political incentive that Beirut has long refused to entertain. Other reported proposals include Lebanon entering a non-aggression pact with Israel (which would clearly – and implausibly – need to cover Hizbollah) and renewed negotiations over the countries’ disputed land border.

At this point, it remains unclear if Israel is interested in any of these incentives or even wishes to talk at all. On 15 March, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar denied media reports that the Israeli and Lebanese governments would soon enter negotiations. For its part, Beirut appears unable to get Hizbollah on board with forging a diplomatic path, let alone complying with Israel’s demands. Hizbollah leader Qassem has stressed that his group is gearing up for a “long confrontation” in which it “will go all the way”. Against this backdrop, Hizbollah fighters continue to attack Israel by air and to resist the ground invasion, notwithstanding Beirut’s official ban on the organisation’s military activities. On 15 March, senior Hizbollah official Qomati dismissed the French diplomatic initiative as “doomed before it even begins”. He explained that Hizbollah maintains its enduring opposition to any political settlement that would require either the group’s total disarmament or normalisation of Lebanon’s relations with Israel.

Meanwhile, Israel looks set to keep pursuing military solutions in Lebanon, and it appears unwilling to accept a ceasefire along the same lines as the agreements that ended the 2006 and 2023-2024 wars. In arguing that the Lebanese government failed to honour its 2024 pledge to assert a monopoly on military-grade weaponry, Israeli officials have claimed that Hizbollah was “rearming faster than disarming” during the ceasefire period. The militia’s performance during this latest confrontation suggests that those allegations were probably largely accurate.

If the conflict continues along its current path, or worsens even further, Lebanon will pay a big price for many years to come. Even before the 2 March escalation, the cash-strapped Lebanese government could not secure anywhere near enough financial support for the enormous cost of reconstruction after the 2023-2024 war. In March 2025, the World Bank estimated that rebuilding would cost around $11 billion. Today, Israeli bombing of urban areas has destroyed many more Lebanese homes and businesses. At the current level of intensity, further weeks or months of Israeli assaults will leave communities across Lebanon unable to recover any time soon.

Israel’s campaign also threatens to deepen Lebanon’s mass displacement crisis. Many of the more than one million people affected by Israel’s displacement orders have nowhere to go. The government has converted public schools into makeshift shelters, but they are typically overcrowded and poorly equipped. Even people with the means to rent accommodations increasingly struggle to find Lebanese willing to lease them apartments in safer places. While Israel has focused its assaults on Shiite-majority areas, it has also gone after alleged Hizbollah operatives outside those regions. These attacks have struck fear into many non-Shiite Lebanese that hosting the displaced may draw Israeli fire on their own villages and urban neighbourhoods. Facing a lack of options, thousands of Shiites have decided to stay put in their homes, living under constant threat of Israeli bombardment.

The displacement crisis could ignite volatile domestic tensions. If Israel continues to pummel Shiite-majority areas, increasingly desperate residents might try to enter safer districts by any means possible. Confrontations could ensue. Already, some non-Shiite districts have tightened neighbourhood security. For instance, a parliamentarian confirmed that his influential Christian party, the Lebanese Forces, is running a hotline for residents to report suspicious activity in Achrafieh, a Christian-majority area of Beirut. The politician added that residents are instituting “increased neighbourhood watch-type vigilance and round-the-clock coordination with the security forces”. On 17 March, several influential Sunni families in Khaldeh, just south of the capital, reportedly ordered all displaced people to leave the area immediately. Elsewhere, a shadowy online initiative invited “concerned” men in Keserwan, a Christian-majority district north of Beirut, to stand guard in the area. Lebanon managed to avoid violence related to mass displacement in the 2023-2024 war. It may not be so lucky this time round, especially if the war drags on with the present ferocity.

Israel would sow even further chaos, some of which might backfire, if it expands its occupation of Lebanese territory. While many Lebanese criticised Hizbollah’s decision to re-enter the battle, reported Israeli plans to send troops deep into Lebanon have met with near-universal condemnation. On 16 March, Katz proposed that Israel would retain a sizeable part of southern Lebanon and bar the displaced from returning until Hizbollah completely disarms. Israel will almost certainly face armed resistance if it establishes such an occupation, perhaps not just from Hizbollah. “If Israel stays and occupies our land, we will also join the resistance”, an official from the Amal Movement told Crisis Group. (Amal, a Shiite party, usually supports Hizbollah, but on 2 March it backed the cabinet’s ban on the group’s military wing.) Though such militant activity would further destabilise Lebanon, it could also generate new security threats to Israel.

Foreign nations and institutions have limited options for curtailing the war under the current circumstances. Hizbollah, which views the conflict as existential, both for itself and Iran, is rejecting all calls for restraint. Analysts sympathetic toward the group offer bullish accounts of the militia’s fighting prowess, suggesting in particular that Israel would be unable to sustain the cost of an extended occupation. Israel, in turn, highlights Hizbollah’s resurgence on the battlefield as evidence that the previous security arrangement, as reflected in the November 2024 ceasefire deal, completely failed. At least until Hizbollah stops firing, and possibly even if it does so, Israel’s international allies will find it a struggle to convince Israeli leaders to de-escalate militarily in favour of diplomacy. 

Nevertheless, how Israel prosecutes the war will matter a great deal to the Lebanese people, who find themselves caught in the crossfire. Israel could undertake a campaign that works much harder at minimising its impact on ordinary Lebanese and civilian infrastructure. Levelling apartment blocks and permanently displacing hundreds of thousands – as Israel is now doing – appears punitive and consistent with Israel’s reported intention to apply “the Gaza model” to Lebanon. Such tactics will only vindicate Hizbollah’s claims that Israel’s ambitions in Lebanon are cruel and destructive. They may also discredit those arguing that peaceful resolution of the conflict is both desirable and possible. In the same vein, Israel should stop attacking Lebanese soldiers. The army has made explicitly clear that it does not seek a confrontation with Lebanon’s southern neighbour. Looking further ahead, Israel will not help its own objectives by killing the very soldiers that it wants to counter Hizbollah.

Governments with influence over Israel, starting with the U.S. but also including major European states, should press Israel not to follow through on its threats to expand strikes on Lebanese civil infrastructure. Lebanon’s leaders need no further reminder of the urgency of the current situation. Beirut has cogent reasons for hesitating to confront Hizbollah, and destroying still more of Lebanon will not address those concerns. If Israel does demolish key public assets such as the Beirut airport and Lebanese seaports, then it will certainly make another kind of difference: deepening Lebanon’s mounting humanitarian crisis, as the country struggles to import bare essentials for its increasingly needy population.

Finally, an immediate way foreign donors can help is by contributing urgent humanitarian aid. With nowhere else to go, many displaced Lebanese have resorted to sleeping in their cars or camping out on the streets. Even those who have found spots in government-backed shelters often need to get by on inadequate food rations, without proper bathroom facilities and other basic services. The pressing humanitarian need may well linger in Lebanon, with the distinct possibility that this round of deadly conflict will continue well into the future. But the long-suffering Lebanese public deserves all the help it can get, as it grapples with yet another war entirely beyond its control.