The November 27, 2024, ceasefire agreement signed by Israel and Lebanon, negotiating on behalf of Hezbollah, finally broke down completely. In the early morning hours of March 2, 2026, Hezbollah’s forces launched a barrage of rockets at Israel, prompting a massive Israeli retaliation.
Lebanon’s reactions to the conflict
Lebanon has adopted two unprecedented decisions since the resumption of open war. On March 2, the Lebanese government proscribed Hezbollah’s “military and security” activities, and ordered it to “surrender its weapons to the Lebanese state.” On March 5, Beirut subsequently ordered the detention and deportation of any Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) personnel operating within Lebanon.
However, Lebanon has yet to follow through on these decrees. Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) Commander Rodolphe Haykal reportedly objected to the army confronting Hezbollah during the March 2 cabinet session, favoring continued deconfliction instead. Meanwhile, Justice Minister Adel Nassar called on Hezbollah to “take the initiative and surrender its arms.”
This situation has translated into sporadic and passive enforcement of the government’s orders by LAF and Lebanese security forces. In addition, reports of the departure of IRGC personnel from Lebanon attributed their flight to fear of being targeted for assassination by Israel, not detention by Lebanon.
Hezbollah justifies its attack
Hezbollah claimed that its opening barrage against Israel was in retaliation for the assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and a delayed response to Israel’s ongoing military operations in Lebanon during the ceasefire period. In subsequent statements, including Secretary-General Naim Qassem’s speech on March 4, 2026, the group sought to deemphasize launching the war to assist Iran.
Hezbollah may have calculated that sparking another war in Lebanon in under two-and-a-half years would create significant domestic backlash that could spread to its Shiite base and threaten its survival. The group, therefore, quickly reframed its March 2 attack as purely a nationalistic act of self-defense. Qassem also insisted that Hezbollah had only preempted a premeditated and inevitable Israeli war on Lebanon. Hezbollah used an identical narrative to justify its decision to attack Israel on October 8, 2023, to support its allies in the Gaza Strip.
Qassem also clarified that Hezbollah would not heed the Lebanese cabinet’s decision to cease hostilities or disarm. The group, he said, would fight on “until victory or martyrdom,” and he demanded that Beirut “defend the right of the resistance” to do so. Hezbollah has since reaffirmed this position in word and deed, continuing to launch and claim increasingly escalatory attacks against Israel.
In the early hours of March 6, Hezbollah also issued a 5-kilometer evacuation warning to northern Israel’s residents, mimicking the IDF’s evacuation orders in Lebanon. Rather than being a genuine warning, it appears geared towards demonstrating to Hezbollah’s base that the group still possesses the ability to impose terms upon Israel.
Many of Hezbollah’s attacks against Israel coincided with missile barrages launched by Iran. However, in its latest statement on the matter, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Spokesman Effie Deffrin said on March 5 that Israel possesses “no concrete intelligence indicating coordination/synchronization between Hezbollah and Iran,” and that the overlap in attacks only “looks like coordination.”
Hezbollah’s justifications for initiating hostilities based on self-defense are undermined by Israel’s continuous operations in Lebanon over the last 15 months. The group’s initial claim of avenging Khamenei is more plausible, especially given the group’s prior pronouncements that it would not remain neutral in a serious conflict threatening Iran. However, retaliation for Khamenei and Iran fails to fully explain Hezbollah’s willingness to invite an equally predictable, ferocious Israeli response, and the subsequent domestic backlash.
A more likely explanation for Hezbollah resuming hostilities is that it sensed the US-Israeli war was heading in a direction that threatened the Iranian regime’s survival. Therefore, it may have intervened to divide Israeli forces along two fronts, thus slowing progress on the Iranian front and hoping a delay would result in a premature ceasefire that allows the Islamic Republic to survive.
A less explainable act than the attacks on Israel, however, centers around Lebanese officials suggesting and Cypriot officials confirming that Hezbollah launched a drone attack on the Royal Air Force’s Akrotiri base in Cyprus. However, the IRGC’s Aerospace Force, which the Israelis allege possessed an operational headquarters in Beirut’s southern suburbs, may have been the party responsible for that attack.
Israel’s retaliation against Hezbollah
Israel’s response has been predictably intense. By March 6, the IDF claimed to have struck “over 500 Hezbollah targets” throughout Lebanon and conducted “twenty-six waves of airstrikes in Dahiyeh [Beirut]” alone. The IDF also claimed to have killed 70 Hezbollah operatives so far, including Hezbollah’s Intelligence HQ commander Hussain Mouqalled and its firepower management commander Zaid Ali Jumaa. The IDF also launched coordinated airstrikes targeting several branches of Al Qard al Hassan, one of Hezbollah’s main financial institutions that provides small loans.
Between March 2 and March 6, the IDF also issued extensive evacuation warnings to Lebanese civilians. The first warning, issued on March 2 at approximately 10:12 am, requested the evacuation of residents of 53 locales in south Lebanon and the Beqaa. A following warning was issued at 10:46 pm to evacuate 22 additional locales, all adjacent to the Blue Line. The IDF’s third warning came on March 13 at 12:11 pm, expanding the evacuation zone to an additional 37 locales, many north of the Litani River. The fourth warning, on March 4 at 12:01 pm, demanded a general northward evacuation of all Lebanese locales south of the Litani River. This order was repeated on March 5 at 8:03 am, with a special emphasis on the cities of Tyre and Bint Jbeil.
At 2:38 pm, the IDF issued an unprecedented warning to evacuate several neighborhoods of Dahiyeh in south Beirut, which has an estimated population of 500,000–700,000 people. Burj al Barajneh and Hadath neighborhood residents were asked to move eastward toward Mount Lebanon along the Beirut-Damascus Highway, while Haret Hreik and Shiyyah’s residents were told to move northward on the Beirut-Tripoli Highway and eastward to Mount Lebanon along the Metn Expressway. The final IDF warning called for the residents of Beqaa, and specifically the villages of Douris, Majdaloun, and Brital, to evacuate westward along the Zahle-Baalbek Road. To date, ongoing combat and the evacuation warnings have displaced 100,000–300,000 Lebanese.
All of the IDF’s evacuation orders referenced heavily Shiite areas where Israel alleges that Hezbollah operates and stores weapons.
Despite these extensive warnings, as of the time of this writing, Lebanese media outlets report that the Israel Air Force has only conducted 12 airstrikes in Dahiyeh. Per Lebanese reporting, most Israeli airstrikes were concentrated in southern and eastern Lebanon. This dovetails with the IDF’s 7:01 am statement from March 6, claiming to have struck “one headquarters and ten multistory buildings housing Hezbollah military infrastructure.” In its follow-up statement at 7:55pm, the IDF said its airstrikes in Dahiyeh had targeted:
However, overall, Israel’s attacks in Lebanon appear to have leveled out for now, perhaps reflecting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s directives to the IDF to remain focused on Iran. Nevertheless, the Israeli military’s goals against Hezbollah appear to be far-reaching, with Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir saying on March 5 that the IDF “will not desist until Hezbollah is disarmed.” Meanwhile, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, who threatened Secretary-General Qassem with assassination at the outset of the fighting, has also said the IDF intends to stay in “security zones” in Lebanon indefinitely.
The international response and a French proposal
Most of the international community’s attention, including that of the United States, has been focused on Iran. However, France, as Lebanon’s historical patron, has stepped into the breach with proposals to end the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.
French President Emmanuel Macron called on Hezbollah to cease its attacks against Israel, “renounce its weapons, respect the national interest, [and] show that it is not a militia taking orders from abroad.” Al Arabiya reported that the French proposal would have Hezbollah surrender its weapons within two weeks to the Lebanese state, which would, in turn, enter into direct peace negotiations with Israel.
Macron, who had earlier tried to pressure Netanyahu to end the campaign in Lebanon, also called on the Israelis to refrain from “expand[ing] the war to Lebanon” with a “ground offensive” or “large-scale operation[s] on Lebanese territory.” Underscoring the “commitment” given to him by Lebanese authorities “to take control of the positions held by Hezbollah and to fully assume responsibility for security across the entire national territory,” Macron said that France would strengthen its cooperation with the LAF, providing it with armored personnel carriers and operational and logistical support to carry out its mission.
Unnamed Hezbollah “sources” told Al Hadath that the group rejected the French proposal. “Talk of mediation is premature,” the sources stated. Instead, they said that “the battlefield is now speaking.” They also threatened to confront any attempt, presumably by Lebanese authorities, to seize their weapons “as if it were any other Israeli aggression.”
David Daoud is Senior Fellow at at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies where he focuses on Israel, Hezbollah, and Lebanon affairs.
Tags: Hezbollah, IDF, Israel, Israel-Hezbollah, LAF, Lebanese government, Lebanon
