Israel said Monday night that it had begun “targeted ground raids” in southern Lebanon, escalating a campaign to root out Hezbollah despite international appeals for restraint.
The Israel Defense Forces said its forces are striking targets “located in villages close to the border” that “pose an immediate threat to Israeli communities in northern Israel.”
The attacks further expanded the campaign against the Iran-backed organization following Israel’s killing of its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, on Friday, even as the U.S., the European Union and Arab powers call for a cease-fire. Israel has shifted its focus to Lebanon with its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip at a standstill.
An IDF statement on X said the ground operations were carried out based on “precise intelligence against Hezbollah terrorist targets and infrastructure in southern Lebanon.” The Syrian news agency SANA reported Syria’s air defense system blocked three attacks, and that blasts were heard in the vicinity of the capital Damascus.
Israeli airstrikes continued on Monday, with IDF reporting earlier that one had destroyed a “surface-to-air missile launcher storage facility” near Beirut’s international airport.
Washington had expected Israel to launch a limited ground incursion into Lebanon but has cautioned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government against a larger and longer-term operation that risks a direct confrontation with Tehran, according to a U.S. official with knowledge of the situation, who asked not to be identified discussing strategy.
Douglas London, a retired senior CIA operations officer and a nonresident scholar at the Middle East Institute, said that with a limited incursion, Netanyahu “reduces the risk of Hezbollah raids but without ramping up the risk of casualties to Israeli troops.”
London added that “a more extensive ground invasion up to the Litani River, by contrast, would play to Hezbollah’s strengths by creating targets for ambushes and guerrilla operations.”
But in an interview on Bloomberg Television, Randa Slim, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, pointed out that Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 “started out being limited.”
“It lasted a few months and then ended up into an occupation of a part of southern Lebanon and lasted until 2000,” she said.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told tank crews deployed along the border earlier Monday that the killing of Nasrallah wasn’t the final step in the fight against Hezbollah and that “we will employ all the capabilities at our disposal.”
Netanyahu has said the goal of crushing Hezbollah is to end rocket attacks by the Iran-backed group that forced tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes in northern Israel. A similar exodus has been seen in southern Lebanon amid Israel’s retaliation.
While most of Hezbollah’s senior leadership has been killed and much of its arsenal destroyed, Israeli officials say it retains substantial capability to inflict losses on Israeli forces and fire missiles across the border.
Nasrallah’s deputy, Naim Qassem, said earlier Monday that the group remains ready to fight on the ground.
Moshe Davidovich, a representative of Israeli communities on the western end of the border region with Lebanon, said he had attended a meeting where Gallant vowed to remove any threat from Hezbollah six miles (10 kilometers) from the border.
The U.S. official, who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations, said the Biden administration is worried the Israeli military may overreach.
Asked Monday morning whether the White House was aware of a possible Israeli incursion, President Joe Biden called again for a halt to the fighting.
“I’m more aware than you might know and I’m comfortable with them stopping,” Biden said. “We should have a cease-fire now.”
The Biden administration has failed several times to limit and shape Israel’s military response since Oct. 7, when Hamas in Gaza killed about 1,200 people and kidnapped more than 200 in southern Israel. Hezbollah began its rocket attacks the next day and has vowed to continue until Israel ends the campaign in Gaza, which has left more than 40,000 people dead, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry.
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