Name: Why Israel’s war on Hezbollah keeps returning | The Take
Uploaded: 2026-03-09T21:36:45.000Z
Duration: 18 min 42 s
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Al Jazeera podcasts Today, a week of Israeli attacks on Lebanon.

The Israeli army has been issuing repeated forced evacuation orders for parts of the capital.

More than 330 people have been killed by Israeli attacks in Lebanon alone in the last week.

As bombardment, displacement and ground fighting intensify, a familiar question is back after all these years, what is Israel really trying to do in Lebanon?

Before we continue with today's show, leave us a comment telling us what you think about this episode and how you're following the latest developments in Lebanon.

And on your podcast app, leave us a review telling us where you're listening from and give us a five star rating while you're there.

I worked for many years with the Sunny Times.

I'm a six time award winning correspondent.

Thank you for joining us under what I know are deep, difficult circumstances.

Israel has been relentlessly bombing Lebanon all across the country for a week now.

Half a million people have been displaced.

In a country of fewer than 6 million people, rights groups are openly saying Israel is extending its Gaza playbook to Lebanon, meaning collective punishment, mass force displacement and widespread fear among civilians.

What are you seeing where you are and how seminal a moment is this in the history of Lebanon?

So this will not be the first time that Israel has launched war on Lebanon.

That's the numbers that have been registered for shelters.

The actual number of displacements is much higher.

Remember, many people come, they rent flats or they have families and friends that they stay with.

As far as the bombings are concerned, Israel is actually at the moment, it seems to be on a course of dungeons because much of the bombing is indiscriminate.

And most of these, as we've seen from images and footage, these are buildings, civilians that are being demolished into dust.

And the Israelis are trying to penalize the population or the Shiite community.

They're trying to pressure it and force it to turn.

They're trying to pressure it so that it indirectly turns against Hezbollah, which it supports.

This is what Israel is trying to do by doing mass bombings, mass destructions, mass demolitions of entire neighborhoods.

It is trying to force the people to finally get fed up and say enough, you know, enough, you know, to enough good Hezbollah.

So as for Beirut itself, I mean there is masses of displaced people.

You know, Beirut is a small, the infrastructure is not great.

So there's, at the moment, you know, the weight of it all is on the capital itself.

There were people still that haven't been sheltered.

So you have a lot of people still out on the streets, along the seafront or in certain roads or neighborhoods waiting.

It is actually quite miserable, depressing and sad to see this is happening.

And that question about the Israeli strategy of trying to turn people against Hezbollah, where, where is, is that effective?

Is that a fundamental misunderstanding on their part of the dynamics?

Look, there's always going to be a number of people that are disenfranchised or angry and immediate human reaction to their situation.

But the idea that they can turn a community against, against Hezbollah, a community that is sort of, if you want, entwined ideologically, socially, marital wise, everyday within this organization, it is an impossibility.

They have tried before, they have failed and they will fail again.

On the contrary, generally speaking, in situations like this, you find that actually the community rallies around the group because they feel that the group is being, you know, there's an attempt to annihilate it, to decapitate it, to finish it off.

On the contrary, they rally around it and they support it.

So Hezbollah is not going to lose support as a result of this.

And it's important to also clarify one thing.

Hezbollah did not start this war last week, on Monday.

This war was started 15 months ago by Israel, which refused to abide by the ceasefire, which has continuously bombed Lebanon and south Lebanon and the Biqa and Hezbollah community, killing over 400 and carrying out over 11,000 violations.

Breach of a ceasefire, destroying villages in its entirety.

When the war happened last year and Israel was trying to invade Lebanon, there are some villages they couldn't get or occupy or control.

Now that the ceasefire happened and Hezbollah carried out and withdrew from that part of South Lebanon, we find the Israelis coming in and destroying these villages.

Everything they couldn't achieve last year in the war, they have done now.

So, no, people are not going to sort of abandon Hezbollah because people are very aware that this war was just a matter of time, that Hezbollah will have to respond.

You cannot just sit back and take it and allow Israel to continue doing this.

They allowed it for 15 months, hoping that the diplomatic solution would come, hoping that the international world will pressure Israel to stop doing this and giving the Lebanese government time to fix it.

So Hezbollah acted and acted rightly because according to international law, it has the right to defend itself.

The Lebanese government has formally moved from a position where it approves of resistance toward Israel to criminalizing Hezbollah's activities.

The Prime Minister, Nawaf Salaam, announced that it would no longer be considered legal for Hezbollah to resist.

The Lebanese government calls for the immediate banning of all of Hezbollah's security and military activities as it is considered against the law to give up its weapons to the Lebanon state.

In practice, we've seen in the past few days exactly what you're talking about.

Fierce ground battles between Hezbollah and the Israeli military as they attempt to advance.

What do you think the significance of the government's announcement is?

And what is the likelihood that it will be followed by any sort of real action?

Look, for 15 months this government has done very little to bring about a solution or to force Israel through the committee that was set up in South Lebanon to monitor the situation, cause a ceasefire agreement.

They demanded that Hezbollah, according to the ceasefire that Lebanon signed onto that Hezbollah withdraws from those areas.

To allow the Lebanese army to take over control of that area.

To hand over the tunnels and the warehouses along those areas.

As far as Hezbollah is concerned, they fulfilled each and every requirement of that ceasefire agreement.

The agreement also said, also stipulated that both sides should not carry out attacks on each other, but

both sides have the right to defend in case of that.

Hezbollah has not actually, it stood down, it stood back.

It gave the government a chance to do something because the government and the government hardly sometimes, you know, there were attacks and there were people killed.

They didn't even make a statement of denunciation.

Like I said, over 11,000 violations, over 400 people killed within that period, 15 months of that period.

And the government continuously argued that the Lebanese army is capable.

The Lebanese army will be the sole body or institution responsible for protecting the country sovereignty and the country's territory.

So accordingly, the Lebanese army should be in charge currently of fighting back or defending Lebanon.

Instead, the government withdrew the Lebanese army.

When you have an enemy invading and occupying your country and your government turns around and tells the military, step down, do nothing, and

basically be observers and remove them from the entire area that Hezbollah had withdrawn from, leaving it vulnerable to every Israeli wish, and

then have the audacity to say to Hezbollah, you do not have the right to go and defend that territory.

And that territory actually belongs to the People of Hezbollah to the families they hail from them, these are their territories, these are their villages, these other towns.

And you're being told by the government you're not allowed to.

So yes, the government issued statement criminalized its involvement.