Israel has informed the United States it intends to seize all territory south of the Litani River — the largest planned ground operation in Lebanon since 20061. A senior Israeli official told Axios: "We are going to do what we did in Gaza"2. The evacuation zone Israel has imposed already covers 1,470 square kilometres — 14% of Lebanon's total territory, extending beyond the boundary set by UNSC Resolution 1701 and every previous Israeli buffer demand.
The objective is the same one Israel set and failed to achieve in the 2006 war: clear Hezbollah from the strip between the border and the Litani. That war lasted 34 days, killed over 1,100 Lebanese — predominantly civilians per UN counts — and ended with Resolution 1701 requiring only the Lebanese Armed Forces and UNIFIL to operate south of the river. Hezbollah rearmed within months. Before that, Israel occupied southern Lebanon from 1982 to 2000 — 18 years that did not eliminate Hezbollah but instead forged its founding narrative and recruitment engine.
The force now defending southern Lebanon is not the Katyusha-armed militia of the 1980s. Secretary-General Naim Qassem has committed 30,000 fighters including elite Radwan units and described the conflict as existential. Israeli ground forces have already entered Kfar Kila, Houla, Kfar Shouba, Yaroun, and Khiam — the same towns Israel occupied for 18 years. Approximately 5,000 US Marines and sailors are transiting from Japan with expected arrival around 27 March3, three weeks before Trump's stated four-week war timetable expires.
Israel frames the operation as necessary to halt Hezbollah rocket fire that has made communities across northern Israel uninhabitable — a stated aim that neither the 2006 war nor the 18-year occupation achieved by force. The explicit comparison to Gaza defines what the civilian population of southern Lebanon can expect. 826 people have been killed including 106 children; 830,000 are displaced — matching the total displacement of the entire 33-day 2006 war in under a fortnight. The Trump administration asked Israel to spare Beirut's airport; Israel agreed to that single request and nothing more4.
