The New Yorker: Since the U.S. and Iran agreed to a temporary ceasefire, on Tuesday night, Israel has continued pummelling Lebanon with air strikes, killing more than three hundred people on Wednesday and wounding over a thousand more.

 Israel’s War in Lebanon Has Not Stopped

While America and Iran negotiate a ceasefire, Beirut remains under siege.

 

Photograph by Adnan Abidi / Reuters

Since the U.S. and Iran agreed to a temporary ceasefire, on Tuesday night, Israel has continued pummelling Lebanon with air strikes, killing more than three hundred people on Wednesday and wounding over a thousand more. After the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran, in February, Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shia paramilitary group in Lebanon, fired missiles at Israel; this was followed by a heavy Israeli response across the country, and a ground invasion of southern Lebanon. Israel has forced out over a million people from their homes, and killed more than a thousand, in a country of some five million, vowing to hold many of these areas as buffer zones. (The Israeli defense minister, Israel Katz, has compared the strategy to the one his country used in Gaza.) And the New York Times reported that Israel has recently made allowances for religious groups other than Shia Muslims to remain in the “evacuation zone.” Meanwhile, Israel and Lebanon are set to hold talks next week, but Iran and the United States have not yet reached an agreement on whether the ceasefire covers Israeli operations in Lebanon.

I recently spoke by phone with Maha Yahya, the director of the Carnegie Endowment’s Middle East Center, who lives in Lebanon and was in Beirut when we talked. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed what Israel is really trying to accomplish in Lebanon, the changing political fortunes of Hezbollah, and how Lebanese civilians are dealing with the war.

It seems that Israel has attacked areas across Lebanon, including Beirut, with huge civilian populations. Can you talk about what the past few days have been like?

Devastating. It’s not just about the bombs dropping around us but, also, about the anxiety, the frantic calling of friends and family to make sure they’re fine. The areas that were hit were considered relatively safe, to the extent that you can be safe in a war, but they were considered relatively safe. There’s no predominant military presence in these areas.

By military presence, you mean Hezbollah presence?

Hezbollah, yes. And I’m not describing the lack of a military presence to justify that this means it’s O.K. to hit certain areas, but not these areas. But, still, there is no predominant military presence of Hezbollah or any other political/military/non-state actor in these areas. So it was quite a shock to have entire residential buildings flattened in the space of minutes, a hundred air strikes or so in the space of ten minutes across Lebanon. It was really shocking. And then ... READ MORE  https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/israels-war-in-lebanon-has-not-stopped

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‘Everything is gone’: Israel destroys entire villages in Lebanon ... Rights groups fear tactic of ‘domicide’ trialled in Gaza, where entire areas are made uninhabitable, is being used again

Smoke rises from explosions induced by Israeli military activities on the outskirts of the southern Lebanese village of Al Taybeh.  Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Sun 12 Apr 2026

Rights groups fear tactic of ‘domicide’ trialled in Gaza, where entire areas are made uninhabitable, is being used again

By William Christou and Abbas Abdel Karim in Beirut and Lucy Swan

The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations.

The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims.

The demolitions came after Israel’s minister of defence, Israel Katz, called for the destruction of “all houses” in border villages “in accordance with the model used in Rafah and Beit Hanoun in Gaza” to stop threats to communities in northern Israel. The Israeli military destroyed 90% of homes in Rafah, in south Gaza.

The tactic of mass destruction of homes in Gaza, where Israel has been accused of committing genocide, was described as domicide by academics, a strategy that is used to systematically destroy and damage civilian housing to render entire areas uninhabitable... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/12/how-israeli-offensive-destroyed-entire-villages-in-lebanon?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

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