Netanyahu Orders Strikes on Beirut Southern Suburbs as Hezbollah-Israel Ceasefire Crumbles
Israel’s government ordered strikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut on Monday, a day after Israeli ground forces reached their deepest position inside Lebanon in 26 years. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered Beirut strikes as the Hezbollah-Israel ceasefire crumbles. IDF troops have taken over the Beaufort Ridge outpost and Wadi al-Saluki areas beyond the Litani River. Hezbollah showered the north with drones and rockets in response. Israeli forces captured the strategically important Beaufort Castle on Sunday after heavy clashes with Hezbollah.
The Beirut southern suburbs — Dahieh — are Hezbollah’s political-administrative heartland and house the movement’s leadership infrastructure. Israeli strikes on Dahieh in 2024 killed Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah and effectively decapitated the movement’s political wing; Monday’s strikes are the first direct Israeli targeting of Dahieh since the post-Nasrallah ceasefire framework was supposed to lock in. The Beaufort Ridge + Wadi al-Saluki + Litani River line represents the operational completion of the ground-control objective Israeli Northern Command set after the September 2024 Hezbollah leadership decapitation operation. The Israeli ground push is now beyond the line that the Pentagon Israel-Lebanon talks on Friday were trying to formalise. The combination of the renewed US-Iran strikes and the Israeli Beirut strikes materially raises the probability that the regional war restarts in full force.