Last Tuesday, Israel’s military approved a plan to invade Lebanon to fight its dominant militia, Hezbollah. Hezbollah’s leader issued his strongest threats against Israel in years the following day. And the U.S., Israel’s most powerful ally, has indicated that it will not block an Israeli offensive.
That’s just the past week. Over the nine months prior, more than 150,000 people on either side of the Israeli-Lebanese border have fled their homes as alternating rounds of Hezbollah rockets and Israeli airstrikes have steadily expanded. The attacks have extended beyond the two sides’ border combat facilities, killing nearly 100 Lebanese civilians and 10 Israeli civilians, rendering southern Lebanon “uninhabitable” and striking journalists, the U.S.-backed Lebanese military and even Lebanon’s capital of Beirut.