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26 October 2024

Is Southern Lebanon the Next Gaza?

Anchal Vohra

Flattened villages, burned fields, homes pockmarked with bullet fire, and smoke billowing out of freshly bombed infrastructure: Southern Lebanon is beginning to look like war-torn Gaza.

In Lebanon, as in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military has been unleashed without any coherent strategic vision or clear war aim. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu first said that the goal was to push out Hezbollah beyond the Litani River in the hopes of enabling more than 80,000 Israelis to return to northern Israel. But in the following weeks, he unveiled a more sweeping goal, as he threatened the Lebanese people to either oust Hezbollah or face levels of “destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza.”

It’s not clear whether Israel will make good on that threat of rendering southern Lebanon a second Gaza. But to some extent, Netanyahu has already shown that he is willing to try—or at least, to make it seem as if he is.

According to Emily Tripp, the director of Airwars—a United Kingdom-based conflict monitor—southern Lebanon has undergone the world’s “most intense” aerial bombing campaign of the past 20 years, aside from Gaza. On Sept. 23 alone, to cite just one date, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it used 2,000 munitions on 1,500 targets.

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