by Will Jones, Daily Sceptic:
Israel invaded Lebanon this morning, its troops entering the hostile country to its north for the first time since the war of 2006. The Telegraph‘s Adrian Blomfield is in Beirut and says it’s starting to feel like all-out war.
As Israeli troops entered Lebanon for the first time since the war of 2006, artillery struck Hezbollah positions in the south and launched repeated air strikes on Beirut, the Lebanese capital.
Despite this latest escalation, Hezbollah fighters appear, at least for now, to have avoided any direct confrontation with Israeli troops on Lebanese soil.
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The group has made no public mention of Israel’s incursion at all this morning, although it did say it had targeted artillery fire at Israeli troops on the other side of the border.
The Israeli ground raids came exactly a fortnight after the simultaneous detonation of thousands of pagers carried by mid-ranking Hezbollah fighters – an operation which Israel has not officially acknowledged but which clearly marked the start of this campaign.
Israel, of course, will say it did not fire the first shots of a confrontation that is starting to look like a war in all but name.
Instead, it insists, the responsibility lies with Hezbollah, which launched rockets into northern Israel almost immediately after Hamas slaughtered more than 1,000 people when it attacked Israel’s territory on October 7th last year.
Although the first fortnight of Israel’s operation against the Iran-backed group has been conducted with metronomic precision, a ground operation is a gamble with a different complexion.
During the Second Lebanon War in 2006, Israel encountered much stiffer resistance from Hezbollah than it expected.
The two sides fought to a bloody standstill and Ehud Olmert, then the Israeli Prime Minister, bowed to international pressure and agreed to a ceasefire – much to the anger of many Israeli troops in southern Lebanon.
Since that conflict, Hezbollah has fortified its positions in southern Lebanon, digging tunnels deep under the rocks of the region’s mountains and, thanks to Iran, steadily accumulating a much vaster and more precise rocket capability.
Hezbollah’s arsenal of rockets, guided missiles and drones was estimated to be 150,000 strong last year – 10 times greater than in 2006.
Likewise, Hezbollah’s fighters are much more battle-hardened than they were 18 years ago after more than a decade of battle experience in Syria, where the group intervened, often viciously, in support of the Assad regime.
On the other hand, Israel has also spent the intervening years planning for this moment and has a battle plan that has proved stunningly effective so far.
Its preliminary attacks have been far more devastating than in 2006.
