Israel vs Hezbollah: What’s going on? Will Jewish nation invade Lebanon?

Are Israel and Hezbollah heading towards all-out war?

On Sunday, the Lebanon-based terror group launched over 100 rockets at northern Israel while Israel hit Lebanon with hundreds of strikes.

This came after Israel launched a series of strikes on Hezbollah that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as ‘unprecedented.’

Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire regularly since Hamas’ Oct. 7 assault on southern Israel ignited the Israeli military’s devastating offensive in Gaza.

On Monday, fresh strikes by Israel on southern Lebanon saw at least 182 people killed and 727 wounded, including women, children and medics, the country’s health ministry said in a statement.

Thousands of people fled southern Lebanon, jamming the main highway to Beirut. More than 400 other people were injured in the strikes, the ministry added.

But what’s going on? And what happens next?

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Let’s take a closer look:

What happened?

BBC quoted Israel’s IDF as saying it had attacked over 300 Hezbollah locations in Lebanon on Monday.

Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant has said the attacks will continue “until we achieve our goals” of returning thousands of displaced Israelis to the north.

People in southern Lebanon have received text messages telling them to leave the area.

“We ask residents of Lebanese villages to pay attention to the messages and warning published by the IDF and heed them,” Israeli military spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari was quoted as saying by CNN.

A military official told CNN this is a first for Israel.

“We are doing an advanced warning with accurate means saying, ‘if you’re in a house where there is a missile or a cruise missile, get out immediately,’” the official added.

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Lebanon’s minister of information denounced the move as “psychological warfare.”

Hezbollah on Friday had fired 140 rockets into northern Israel, saying it was targeting military sites in retaliation for overnight Israeli strikes into southern Lebanon.

Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system intercepted most of the Katyusha rockets. The few that got through sparked small fires but caused little damage and no Israeli casualties.

Hezbollah described its latest wave of rocket salvos as a response to past Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon — not as revenge for the mass explosions of Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies on Tuesday and Wednesday that killed at least 37 people including two children and wounded 2,900 others in attacks widely attributed to Israel.

Israel responded by conducting an airstrike in Beirut which brought down a high-rise building in the city’s southern suburbs, a Shiite-majority area known as Dahiyeh where Hezbollah has a strong presence.

At least 45 people were killed including Ibrahim Aqil, one of Hezbollah’s top leaders, several other fighters, and women and children.

Aqil, 61, was the second top commander of Hezbollah to be killed in an Israeli airstrike in the southern suburb of Beirut in as many months, dealing a severe blow to the group’s command structure.

He was a member of Hezbollah’s highest military body, the Jihad Council since 2008, and head of the elite Radwan Forces.

Then, on Sunday, the cross-border attacks ramped up.

Hezbollah launched more than 100 rockets deeper into northern Israel, with some landing near the city of Haifa.

“We will safely return the residents to their homes, and if they [Hezbollah] haven’t understood that yet, they will receive another blow and another one until the organization understands,” Halevi said in a news conference Sunday.

It also fired rockets at the Ramat David airbase near the Israeli city of Haifa.

Hezbollah’s deputy leader Naim Kassem said the rocket attack was just the beginning of what’s now an ″open-ended battle” with Israel.

“We admit that we are pained. We are humans. But as we are pained — you will also be pained,” Kassem said at the funeral of top Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Akil.

“We are prepared to confront all military possibilities,” he added, as per Washington Post.

Israel, meanwhile, launched hundreds of strikes on Lebanon.

IDF chief of staff Herzi Halevi vowed that the strikes would intensify until it is safe for residents in northern Israel to return to their homes.

“We will safely return the residents to their homes, and if they [Hezbollah] haven’t understood that yet, they will receive another blow and another one until the organization understands,” Halevi said, as per Washington Post.

Halevi also referenced the attack on Akil.

“The attack on Hezbollah’s command is a clear message to the organisation and the entire Middle East — we will know how to reach anyone who threatens Israeli citizens,” Halevi added.

Sunday also witnessed Israel raid Al Jazeera’s Ramallah office in the occupied West Bank.

Staff were ordered to exit and the office was ordered closed for 45 days.

DW quotes footage as showing an Israeli soldier informing West Bank bureau chief Walid al-Omari about a court ruling for “closing down Al Jazeera for 45 days.”

“I ask you to take all the cameras and leave the office at this moment,” the soldier said.

Al Jazeera said it “vehemently condemns and denounces this criminal act”  and called the raid “not only an attack on Al Jazeera but an affront to press freedom and the very principles of journalism.”

The broadcaster also rejected what it called “unfounded allegations presented by Israeli authorities to justify these illegal raids.”

Netanyahu on Monday claimed that Israel had inflicted “a series of blows” on Hezbollah – which is already on the backfoot from a sophisticated attack that caused thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies to explode just days earlier – in recent days that the group “could not have anticipated.”

“If Hezbollah hasn’t gotten the message yet, I assure you, they will.”

“We are committed to ensuring the safe return of our northern residents … and we will take whatever steps necessary to restore peace.”

Netanyahu said Israel would take whatever action was necessary to restore security in the north and allow people to return to their homes.

“No country can accept the wanton rocketing of its cities. We can’t accept it either,” he said.

What next?

Many fear the events are the prelude to an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite group that is Lebanon’s most powerful armed force.

A war threatens to bring devastation in Lebanon, heavy missile fire into Israeli cities, and further destabilise a region already shaken by the war in Gaza.

Previous cross-border attacks have largely struck areas in northern Israel that had been evacuated and less-populated parts of southern Lebanon.

Experts say we could be entering a new phase of the conflict.

Brigadier General Amir Avivi, who previously served in the Israel Defense Forces, told Channel 4 News that Israel had a two-fold strategy – playing offence in Gaza and defence everywhere else.

“We are dealing with seven different fronts, all of them managed by Iran. Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas, West Bank, where we have a lot of challenges. We reached the point where Israel can shift the centre of gravity to the north and really focus on bringing back our citizens to the north. And we cannot do that without pushing Hezbollah of south Lebanon and without really hitting Hezbollah hard,” Avivi said.

“I believe war is imminent in the north. We’ll have to deal with Hezbollah before the winter, we don’t have a lot of time. So I think that the most probable scenario is a war.”

BBC international editor Jeremy Bowen told the outlet a ground offensive could be in the offing.

Bowen noted that Israel has now made returning 60,000 Israelis to the northern border

“There’s almost double that many people on the Lebanese side who have also had to leave their homes, as Israeli air forces are targeting the area. That aerial push will continue, said the spokesman, but he also talked about destroying the Hezbollah infrastructure in the border area and pushing them back. I don’t think that’s something military can easily do from aircraft,” Bowen said.

He also noted how Israel’s past invasions of Lebanon have gone wrong.

“They have not gone the way that they expected and despite predictions about how they would change things strategically for Israel, this has, in the past, left them in a bigger mess in terms of their security in the north than predicted,”

The UN has warned that the region is on the brink of catastrophe.

“With the region on the brink of an imminent catastrophe, it cannot be overstated enough: there is NO military solution that will make either side safer,” Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the U.N. envoy for Lebanon, said in an X post.

Elijah Magnier, a Brussels-based military and counterterrorism analyst with knowledge of the group, and Mohannad Hage Ali, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center think tank who researches Hezbollah, said the Friday strike signals a new phase of the war with Israel.

“What is significant is the location and the beginning of a new (phase of the) war,” involving an aerial campaign and the targeted assassination of military leaders, Magnier said.

Israel seemed set on exerting pressure on Hezbollah’s leadership, Magnier said, particularly in the southern suburb of Beirut, where the group has many of its offices and supporters, seeking to target commanders and drive civilians out of the area. Israel is saying: “If our people (in the north) can’t return, your people (in the suburb) will be displaced.”

In the United States, White House national security spokesman John Kirby remained hopeful for a peaceful resolution, telling “Fox News Sunday” the US has been “involved in extensive and quite assertive diplomacy.”

“We are watching all these escalating tensions that have been occurring over the last week or so, with great concern, and we want to make sure that we can continue to do everything we can to try to prevent this from becoming an all-out war there with Hezbollah across that Lebanese border,” he said.

But not everyone is so sanguine.

“Right now, there’s the most expensive game of chicken in the world taking place across the region,” political analyst Ori Goldberg said from Tel Aviv told Al Jazeera.

“It’s always framed as a kind of inevitability, one that the Israeli leadership can’t be held responsible for. They’re creating their own self-fulfilling prophecy. There’s no strategy, no vision, nothing. They’re just working it out day by day and assuming war will follow.”

With inputs from agencies