Mei W.
On November 26, Israel accepted a ceasefire agreement with Hezbollah after the Lebanese anti-imperialist resistance movement thwarted the IDF’s two-month-long attempt to invade South Lebanon. Through direct combat and air strikes, Hezbollah repelled the Israeli army’s invasion and weakened Israel’s military and economic capabilities. The IDF was unable to hold a single village in Southern Lebanon and suffered ambush after ambush, defaulting instead to genocidal air campaigns similarly to Gaza.
According to Hezbollah’s Operations Room, the anti-imperialist group carried out a total of 4,637 military operations since October 2023, averaging 11 per day. 1,666 operations were carried out since the start of Israel’s escalations against Lebanon in mid-September.
The IDF launched its ground invasion in early October with the aim of controlling the southern tip of Lebanon up to the Litany River, located around 16 miles from the border, and returning the over 70,000 displaced Israelis in the northern region of Israel who left due to Hezbollah’s strikes on Israeli settlements since October 2023. They also aimed to break the Lebanese resistance’s support for Gaza and the Palestinian people. According to El País, Israel deployed elite IDF units which were specifically created and trained to attack Hezbollah, and the deployment consisted of 50,000 soldiers, three times the size of the force deployed in the 2006 invasion of Lebanon. The Tehran Times reported that the IDF utilized illegal munitions and their most advanced weapons in their attempted land invasions of Lebanese border villages.
According to an Electronic Intifada report on November 17, the furthest that IDF soldiers penetrated into Lebanon since October was 1-2 miles from the border. On November 2, the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronot reported that the IDF had not conquered a single village in Lebanon. On November 27, Hezbollah announced that they had killed more than 130 Israeli soldiers and injured over 1,250 others in direct combat and air strikes since Israel’s attempted ground invasion, marking October as the deadliest month for the IDF since the start of the war in October 2023. These figures do not include IDF casualties in Israel from indirect fire. Hezbollah also announced the destruction of 59 Merkava tanks, 11 military bulldozers, and 8 Hermes drones of the IDF since early October, with 6 Merkavas destroyed on November 24 alone.
Hezbollah’s air strikes triggered 14,000 warning sirens in Israel in October alone. These operations regularly hit IDF military targets including administrative headquarters, technical bases, surveillance and maritime monitoring bases, intelligence-gathering centers, air and naval bases, and gas stations serving the IDF. Hezbollah expanded attacks further south in the last two months, where on November 19, Hezbollah’s missile strikes led to the destruction of a shopping mall, damaging a power plant, and outbreaks of fire in Tel Aviv and Haifa. The Ben Guiron airport was closed and power outages were reported in parts of Tel Aviv and Haifa. More recently, on November 24, Hezbollah fired over 340 rockets into the Israeli cities of Tel Aviv, Haifa, Safad, and Akka, triggering over 540 sirens across the region, forcing 4 million Israelis into shelters and damaging IDF military bases, tanks, and gathering points.
On October 31st, the Times of Israel reported that 77,000 companies in Haifa have suffered economic damage since late September. 57% of companies in the Galilee and Golan regions, where 15% of all companies in Israel are located, have recorded decreases in business volume since October. An Israeli mayor announced that 40% of residents of the Upper Galilee region are unemployed, small businesses have begun to collapse, and the revenues of 70% of them have dropped. The closure and relocation of military bases in the northern Israeli region led to the layoff of almost a third of their workers. Yedioth Ahronoth reported that one Hezbollah missile strike on Tel Aviv caused damage costing over $13 million. According to the Israeli Tax Authority, the damage in northern Israel due to Hezbollah’s attacks amount to more than $1.35 billion.
As Hezbollah MP Hassan Fadlallah affirmed on Tuesday, “steadfastness forced the Israeli enemy to seek a ceasefire,” stating how the ceasefire indicates the victory of the resistance. Having secured zero territory in Lebanon since the attempted invasion while Hezbollah’s air strikes have only increased, Israel “seek[ed] to achieve in negotiations what it failed to achieve on the battleground,” as Hamas and other resistance groups have stated. According to Al-Mahatta journalist Hassan Illaik, the ceasefire agreement does not include the disarmament of Hezbollah, unlike the 2006 ceasefire agreement and unlike what Israel demanded in their ceasefire proposal in late October. Addressing the ceasefire, Hezbollah has stated that its fighters will keep their hands on their gun’s triggers, and released a statement to the Lebanese people that they will “continue the path of resistance…and keep standing by the oppressed, the weak, and the fighters in Palestine.”
Photo: Displaced Lebanese celebrate Hezbollah’s victory.
