Israel wages war on Lebanon using its tactics from Gaza

Beirut, Lebanon – “Lebanon, as we know it, will not exist.”

That is what Yoav Kisch, Israel’s education minister, told a local news programme in early July.

His threat followed similar statements by far-right Israeli ministers that called for the destruction of Lebanese armed group Hezbollah.

A year ago, Israeli ministers supported Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ostensible war aim to “eradicate” Hamas in Gaza, after the Palestinian group’s armed wing led an attack on southern Israel in which 1,139 people were killed and about 250 were taken captive on October 7, 2023.

Under that pretext, Israel has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians in Gaza, uprooted nearly the entire population of 2.3 million people, destroyed all civilian infrastructure and generated conditions for mass famine.

Since stepping up its war against Lebanon in late September, ostensibly to defeat Hezbollah, Israel is now deploying similar tactics in south Lebanon, according to civilians, analysts and rights groups.

“We can’t compare the severity of [south Lebanon] with Gaza, because what Gaza is going through is historically unprecedented and it is a genocide,” said Amal Saad, an expert on Hezbollah who is originally from south Lebanon.

“But it does look like Israel is adapting tactics that it used in Gaza,” she told media. “[The campaign] is still less than Gaza because what’s happening in [Lebanon] is not ethnic cleansing, yet. It’s not genocidal, yet.

“But it could head there.”