Israel's 91st "Galilee" Division entered eastern southern Lebanon on Saturday night, the IDF's deepest ground penetration since hostilities began on 2 March. The military described the operation as "targeted" and defensive — a forward buffer to protect border communities. Troops killed several Hezbollah fighters during the initial advance1.
The incursion follows a week of escalating ground commitment. Israeli forces had already pushed more than a kilometre into towns including Kfar Kila, Houla, and Khiam, where Hezbollah reported direct clashes with RPGs and light weapons on Saturday night. The 91st Division's deployment formalises what had been incremental advances into a named divisional operation — a distinction that carries weight in IDF doctrine, where division-level deployments imply sustained commitment rather than raiding.
Haaretz's assessment is blunt: the ground operation is designed to defend the border rather than halt Hezbollah rocket fire2. Israeli forces will push launch sites northward without stopping the barrages. The conclusion is consistent with the 2006 war, where Israel's 33-day ground campaign across this same terrain failed to suppress Hezbollah's short-range rocket capability. Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem has committed 30,000 fighters to southern Lebanon, including elite Radwan Force units. The terrain — rocky hills, dense vegetation, fortified tunnel networks built over two decades — favours defenders.
Israel occupied this ground from 1982 to 2000 and withdrew after an 18-year guerrilla war that killed more than 900 Israeli soldiers. A senior Israeli official told Axios the current plan is to seize all territory south of the Litani River, invoking the Gaza campaign as a model. The IDF has already destroyed the Zrarieh Bridge over the Litani and issued evacuation orders covering 1,470 square kilometres — 14 per cent of Lebanon's territory.
The gap between "targeted ground operation" and territorial seizure south of the Litani is the gap between a buffer zone and a full-scale invasion. Lebanon's Health Ministry reports 886 killed and more than one million displaced in a fortnight — a rate of destruction that has already exceeded the entirety of the 2006 war.
