Lebanon: What is the Israeli army aiming for through the strikes carried out on the country?

“We will continue to strike Hezbollah. And I say to the Lebanese people: our war is not against you, but against Hezbollah.” These words, signed by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, reflect the Israeli army’s determination to continue its operations targeting the Lebanese terrorist movement.

The announced death toll in Lebanon is 558 and at least a thousand people are fleeing the targeted areas. For Israel, the objectives of these airstrikes are multiple. First, there is what the army presents as its new war aim: to push Hezbollah back from Israel’s northern border, while the latter has been striking the area for 11 months and nearly 60,000 residents have been forced to evacuate.

Targeted military infrastructure

And if it is not a question of destroying the Shiite movement, Israel intends to weaken it considerably. With the explosion of pagers and walkie-talkies last week in Lebanon, Tsahal was targeting members of Hezbollah, but with its strikes in recent days, it is its military infrastructures that are targeted, weapons caches or even logistical and material centers.

“It is estimated that nearly half of Hezbollah’s launch pads were destroyed during the latest strikes. What is important is not always the number of projectiles, it is the number of launch pads and where they can be launched. If we do not have the means to launch them, these projectiles are no longer of any use. So there was a blow to that, but also to the commanders who are in charge of this arsenal of missiles,” explains Raphaël Jérusalmy, a former Israeli intelligence officer.

The Israeli army claims to have eliminated one of the commanders of Hezbollah’s missile network this afternoon in a bombing raid in the southern suburbs of Beirut, in the heart of a residential area. In total, more than 1,600 targets have been struck since Monday noon.