The Israel-Lebanon border has been a battlefield since Oct. 7, when Hamas-led militants overran parts of southern Israel, triggering the war in Gaza and inspiring attacks by Iran-backed proxies from Iraq to Yemen.
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Israeli forces and fighters from Hezbollah, the Iranian-aligned group that is Lebanon’s most dominant military and political force, have traded carefully calibrated blows, exchanging rocket, mortar, and drone fire on a near-daily basis. Although the violence has displaced tens of thousands of civilians on both sides of the border, it has, up until now, remained relatively contained.
But the scope and pace of attacks have increased significantly in recent weeks, matched by sharper threats from Israeli and Hezbollah officials, who both say they are prepared for war — a nightmare scenario that officials in Europe, Washington, and across the region fear would devastate Lebanon, threaten major Israeli cities, and consume the Middle East.
“We have been pursuing a diplomatic resolution to try to make clear that there should be no further escalation, and that’s what we’ll continue to pursue,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters in a briefing last week, as US special envoy Amos Hochstein made another visit to the region to urge restraint.
Yet hope is waning that Washington’s diplomatic scramble can succeed. Western and Lebanese officials have expressed concern over the past months over the slow-moving pace of negotiations aimed at resolving the border dispute, held up by Hezbollah and Israeli intransigence.
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under growing domestic pressure to drive militants from the border and allow displaced Israelis to return to their homes in the north; Hezbollah has said it will keep fighting in the south until a cease-fire is reached in Gaza, a prospect that appears to grow more distant.
“One rash move — one miscalculation — could trigger a catastrophe that goes far beyond the border, and frankly, beyond imagination,” said United Nations Secretary General António Guterres on Friday. “The people of the region and the people of the world cannot afford Lebanon to become another Gaza.”
Lebanon is already a country on the brink, ruled by a weak caretaker government and ravaged by an economic crisis that has decimated the banking system and left much of the population in poverty.
On June 12, Hezbollah announced an Israeli strike had killed Taleb Sami Abdullah, the highest-ranking commander killed since Oct. 7. Senior Hezbollah official Hachem Saffieddine vowed Wednesday that the group would respond by intensifying its operations “in severity, strength, quantity, and quality.”
The Israel Defense Forces reported drone attacks from Lebanon on Sunday, targeting an IDF outpost and an army base in the north.
During his visit to Washington, Gallant is set to discuss developments in Gaza and Lebanon, as well as efforts to return the remaining Israeli hostages held by Hamas, his office said in a statement. Gallant will meet with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and other officials.
“The United States is our most important and central ally,” Gallant said before departing on Saturday night. “Our ties are crucial and perhaps more important than ever, at this time.”
His trip comes five days after Netanyahu accused Washington of delaying weapons shipments to Israel, comments that White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby called “perplexing.” Defending those remarks at a Cabinet meeting Sunday, Netanyahu said: “My job is to do everything to ensure that our heroic fighters receive the arms they need.”
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Opening a second major front in Lebanon would further strain the Israeli military, which is still engaged in heavy fighting with Hamas in north and central Gaza, even as it says it is close to achieving its objectives in the southern city of Rafah. Hezbollah has a more professional army and more advanced weaponry than Hamas, having battled Israel to a bloody stalemate in two previous wars, in 2006 and 2016.
The group caught Israel off guard last week when it published drone footage of an Israeli military base at the port of Haifa, exposing possible vulnerabilities in the country’s vaunted air defense system. The video listed multiple potential targets, including Israel’s main airport, Ben Gurion, power plants in Ashkelon and Hadera, a plutonium-based facility in Dimona, the Leviathan gas field, a large natural gas field in the Mediterranean Sea, and Ashdod, home to a cargo port.
A full-on conflict between Israel and Lebanon would probably spread quickly across the region, analysts say, triggering responses from Hezbollah’s allies in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Iran — described by Tehran as the “axis of resistance.” On Saturday, an article in the Hezbollah-aligned newspaper al-Akhbar quoted Kazem al-Fartus, an Iraqi militia leader, saying that if the “presence of fighters from Iraq in southern Lebanon is required, we will be on the first lines.”
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