The War of Attrition on Lebanon

Sheri Laizer | Exclusive to iKurd.net

“When your enemy is a criminal, don’t be foolish” (Arab Proverb)

Compiled during a fact-finding visit to Lebanon by Sheri Laizer, May 2, 2025

INTRODUCTION

Rafiq Hariri International Airport perches on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea in Beirut’s southern suburbs known as the Dahiya. Since the civil war that erupted fifty years ago and petered out slowly by October 13, 1990, the location has witnessed many dramatic events; hijackings including TWA flight 847 by Shi’a militants demanding the release of Shi’a prisoners held by Israel in June 1985, hostage taking, gun battles and attacks by various forces including Israeli commandos, the Syrian Army, but more recently, Israeli drones and jet fighters.

RECENT EVENTS

On September 23, 2024, Israeli Prime Minister, Benyamin Netanyahu 1 commenced air strikes against Lebanon in an operation dubbed ‘Northern Arrows’, as a component of its long running conflict with Lebanese Hezbollah.

The military onslaught was launched just five days after Israel’s exploding pager attacks. It followed. an attack on a residential complex that killed Ibrahim Aqil, the commander in chief of Hezbollah’s Special Operations Unit, known as the al-Hajj Radwan Force. Aqil was also a member of Hezbollah’s Jihad Council. The death toll swiftly spiked to 558 fatalities among them 94 women and 50 children with some 1835 others wounded. The figures were given in a UNICEF press release delivered by the Deputy Representative to Lebanon, Ettie Higgins, postulating the event as Lebanon’s worst day in 18 years.2

Israel opened a second front in its war against Hamas in Gaza, targeting Lebanese Hezbollah, with a ground invasion on the night of September 30, 2024 – its sixth invasion of Lebanon.

The close ties between Hezbollah and Iran are ties of blood as well as of doctrine

Hashem Safieddine, presumed to become Nasrallah’s successor, ahis cousin and head of Hezbollah’s Executive council was assassinated on 8 October 2024 before he had stepped into the role. Adjacent to the airport in the Dahieh, Israel had conducted multiple strikes on October 4, 2024, targeting Safieddine during which time he’d had been lost from view.

His death and that of the commander of Hezbollah’s Intelligence HQ, Ali Hussein Hazima, was confirmed three weeks later on 23 October. An interesting aside is that Safieddine’s son is married to the late Qasem Soleimani’s daughter, the IRGC Qud’s Force commander assassinated in Baghdad in an American drone strike on January 4, 2020.

Heavy bombardment using US-made 2000-pound bombs targeted Beirut central’s Bachoura district on October 10, 2024. The target was Wafiq Safa, the brother-in-law of Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, who was not present in the residential locations targeted in the Nuwayri and Basta districts. A family of eight that had fled their home in southern Lebanon was killed in their apartment along with 22 other Lebanese killed with 117 wounded.3

Wafiq Safa was responsible as the security official heading Hezbollah’s Liaison and Coordination Unit with the Lebanese security services. Just four days later, on September 27, 2024, Hezbollah General Secretary, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, and others present in an underground basement 18 m deep, were crushed to death in an air strike using bunker buster bombs. Their bodies could not be identified such that for several hours doubts about the death of the Hezbollah leader had lingered. Once confirmed by his non-reappearance a shock wave reverberated across the country and throughout the Shi’a and allied community.

Of all Hezbollah’s officials, religious and military, Hassan Nasrallah was the most revered. His assassination site has since become a place of pilgrimage, the crater filled in and levelled flat and hung with vertical banners of the ‘martyr Sayed Hassan Nasrallah’ on all four sides. 4 It sits near the large, new, white and shining Iranian Embassy in Bir Hassan district close to the Palestinian refugee camp of Burj al-Barajneh.

The former Embassy was bombed in a double suicide attack on November 19, 2013, by Al Qaeda affiliate, the Abdullah Azzam Brigades. 5 Iran’s close ties with Lebanon’s Shi’a and particularly its proxy, Hezbollah, are ties of blood as well as of doctrine.

In January 2025 despite the loss of several of its leading clerics and commanders, Safa proclaimed Hezbollah was stronger than ever. 6

Laylaki district (west of Burj al-Barajneh and the Palestinian refugee camp)

Laylaki district was struck by Israel forces on 23 October 2024 with at least six buildings levelled in bombings overnight.

The centre of the southern city of Tyre was also bombed the same night leaving widespread devastation still largely uncleared five months on.

6-24 November 2024

The second bombing raids hit near the area around ​​Beirut airport, in the Ouzai district.

Haret Baajour locality in Mt. Lebanon

Located near Haret Hreik, Haret Bajouur was attacked on November 8, 2024, destroying buildings and roads.

Tahwitat al-Ghadir

A building located about 163m from one of the Rafiq Hariri International airport’s runways was targeted in the thin residential strip of the neighbourhood named Tahwita al-Ghadir, that runs between two of the airport’s runways.

Haret Hreik

Institutions, apartments, and Hezbollah’s Qard al Hassan Bank branches were hit repeatedly including in Haret Hreik. Other branches of the bank were targeted elsewhere in the country, including the Bekaa valley as another of Hezbollah’s strongholds.

Choueifate el-Amroussiyeh and Ghobeireh

These two densely populated south Beirut districts were hit in the course of multiple strikes on November 14, 2024.

Truce in name and internal divisions in Israel

A truce was agreed between Israel and Hezbollah on November 26, 2024, but the IDF and ground forces constantly bombed and detonated villages along the Blue Line and struck Beirut afresh on 28 March 2025.13 Two further strikes on the Dahiyeh were carried out targeting Hezbollah officials on April 1st and the Sunday evening of April 27th, on a building in residential Hadath. Warning was only given one hour before as locals went about their Sunday leisure customs. Drone strikes and a raid by three fighter jets levelled another building in an already heavily damaged area. Israel continues to justify the raids as preventing Hezbollah from posing any further threat or growing stronger.14

UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon, a Dutch national, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert 15 (the former Special Representative of the UN General Secretary to Iraq for five years, UNAMI, between and 2020 and 28 May 2024) said the attack had “generated panic and fear of renewed violence” calling on all parties not to undermine the ceasefire, underpinned by guarantors, France and the United States. She had recently visited Russia on April 23, 2025 to discuss the developments in Lebanon with senior officials there.16 She has also met opposition MPs from the anti-Hezbollah bloc including Kataeb.

Israel Independence Day, 30 April-May 1 2025 (Yom Ha’atzmaut) marked by further vows of war

On the anniversary of Israel’s Independence Day, Netanyahu has stated that he prioritises the war and ‘victory over our enemies’ and whilst the return of the remaining 59 hostages remains ‘important’ but is a lesser objective. According to CNN, in recent weeks Israel has publicly said that it believes up to 24 of the 59 remaining hostages are still alive. Sara Netanyahu’s claim appears to be an indication that the government may have information that some of the 24 hostages have died.”

“Prime minister, the return of the hostages is not ‘less’ important – it is the supreme goal that should guide the government of Israel,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement.”19

Israel’s internal divisions were also mounting. Large protests have taken place against the failure of the Netanyahu government’s ceasefire with Hamas resulting in the delay in return of the remaining hostages still being held in Gaza. Protests are held every Saturday in Tel Aviv. French agency, Le Monde, reported how Israelis are taking to the streets in their tens of thousands in “a multifaceted protest with a common thread of animosity toward the prime minister. The dissent is amplified by the resumption of bombings in Gaza.” Protests began two years ago before the conflict erupted with Hamas on October 7, 2023, over Netanyahu’s judicial reforms aimed at his remaining in power.

On May Day, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum claimed Netanyahu’s stance is against that of most Israelis. Druze protestors have also joined in as members of their community face sectarian violence in Syria under the HTS Sunni fundamentalist regime.20 Druze reservists stated on Israeli media site Ynet: “We’re receiving increasing reports from our brothers that Sheikhs are going out to defend their villages themselves and are being slaughtered, while Israel stands by and doesn’t do anything to stop these atrocities as they promised they would.”21

Netanyahu threatens to expand the war further despite opposition

Former Israeli military officials, and more than 1000 air force veterans and reservists opposing the war have criticised Netanyahu and the far-right alliance claiming that the war serves their personal interests and not the security of the country. Several such letters have been published recently. The IDF has threatened to fire those in the air force who signed an open letter after Netanyahu decided to resume the war on March 18, 2025.22 Netanyahu has intensified the blockade of aid including vital medical, food and water supplies to Gaza while intensifying strikes. More than 71,000 people have been killed in Gaza. The resumption of strikes has stopped the return of Jewish hostages and Palestinians held by Israel. PBS noted: “Tens of thousands of academics, doctors, former ambassadors, students and high-tech workers have signed similar letters of solidarity in recent days, also demanding an end to the war.”23

Many critics say Hamas is just an excuse. Hamas already faced internal division and opposition in Gaza before October 7. Hamas itself is divided over the October 7 attack, including the surviving Sinwar brothers of Yahya Sinwar, Hamas Bureau chief killed in Rafah on October 16, 2024, in Gaza. He was involved in signing the order for the October 7 attack launched by some 3000 Hamas fighters. 24 1200 people were killed in the attack with some 251 people taken hostage.

To date, an estimated 850 Israeli soldiers have also lost their lives in the war of attrition. Leading the early ceasefire negotiations Hamas political leader was assassinated on July 31, 2024 ,in an IRGC guesthouse in the Neshat compound where a bomb had been planted two months before. Haniyeh had travelled to Tehran for the inauguration of the new Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian.

Post ceasefire strikes on Beirut ongoing

16 February 2025

UNIFIL forces were targeted near Beirut airport. The attack was condemned by Wafiq Safa and the new Lebanese government headed by Joseph Aoun.25

March 28- 27 April 2025

Renewed strikes broke the ceasefire after unknown perpetrators fired rockets from the southern border that caused no damage in the northern Galilee. The IDF’S strikes were again disproportionate. Hamas loyalists and some Lebanese supporters were finally accused in April 2025. Hezbollah and the Lebanese government had both denied any involvement by Hezbollah.

Hadath district, Friday 28 March, April 1 and Sunday 27 April 2025

Hadath, Haret Hreik, Kafaat neighbourhoods were struck by air strikes carried out by Israeli jet fighters on the Dahya afresh.These districts of south Beirut had already been heavily damaged during the active period of combat during the war against Hezbollah and were undergoing renovation at the time they were hit afresh in the second and third strikes that had also first targeted the Kafaat neighbourhood at 3.30 am on the first day of Eid al-Fitr following the end of Ramadan.26

Hayi al Madi district

In the second strike carried out without evacuation warnings, Hezbollah’s Unit 39 leader, Hassan Ali Mahmoud Bdeir 28 – who was also active with the IRGC-QF – was killed amongst at least four others including two of his adult children.

Hassan Bdeir, his son, Ali Bdeir, and his daughter were among those killed in the strike of 1 April, 2025 in Hay al-Madi district. They were mourned officially in a new press release by Hezbollah. Their funeral was held a day later.29

These are mostly the same districts as were heavily hit initially on October 6, 2024, in dozens of strikes that included apartments, a gas station, businesses and a humanitarian supplies warehouse in the area between Al-Laylaki and Al-Mreijeh.30

The war unleashed on Lebanon, that is being perpetuated despite the ceasefire of November 7, 2024, has served to further consolidate support for Hezbollah and international veneration among the Shi’a community for its dead leader.31

More than 6,000 people have been killed in Israeli strikes, drone attacks and close range gunfire in Lebanon to date.32 The attacks are once more almost occurring on a daily basis as reported on the hour by L’Orient Today, which observed on 23 April that since the ‘ceasefire’ a preponderance of attacks have been carried out by drone and the targets include Hamas and ‘other groups that fought alongside the party in its support front for Gaza. Israel claims its attacks seek to quell Hezbollah’s military resurgence and that the Lebanese government is unable to do so itself…” It cited UN estimates that from March that half the victims were civilians among the 140 people killed post-truce.

22 April 2025: Assassination of Dr. Hussein Atwi

On April 22, Sheikh Dr. Hussein Ezzat Atwi33, an Al-Jamaa al-Islamiya commander prominent in the Al Fajir wing, and a Lebanese university professor, was killed in Baaouerta in the Aley district of Mt. Lebanon en route to his position in the Faculty of Arts at the university 20 km south of Beirut. An earlier assassination attempt against him by Israeli drones in Marjayoun in January 2024 had been unsuccessful after he leapt clear of the car.

A drone killed another person in Tyre’s Haniyeh district.35

Hamas meanwhile sent a delegation to Cairo to refresh talks on ending the conflagration in Gaza. Netanyahu instead has upped the war footing as detailed above.

The ripple effect has extended to the Houthis in Yemen, encompassing Iran, Israel’s attacks on HTS run Syria and the deadlock in the war between Russia and Ukraine, further enflamed by bellicose US President Trump.

Sheri Laizer, a Middle East and North African expert specialist and well known commentator on the Kurdish issue. She is a senior contributing writer for iKurd.net. More about Sheri Laizer see below.

The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of iKurd.net or its editors.

Copyright © 2025 Sheri Laizer, iKurd.net. All rights reserved

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