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Last monthmpunifilunununifilununununifilYour browser does not support the element., near the smouldering wreckage of a house in Aitou, a Christian village in Lebanon, an ancient cedar was festooned with money. A young man shuffled up its trunk, plucking bank notes from its branches. Hours earlier an official from Hizbullah, a Lebanese militia backed by Iran, had arrived at the house where people who had been displaced from southern Lebanon were sheltering. He had brought armfuls of cash in an effort to demonstrate that, despite the war, the group can still look after its followers.Instead, as the man entered the building, an Israeli airstrike hit, killing at least 21 people, almost all of them women and children. When a second missile struck the car carrying his bodyguards, thousands of dollars-worth of Lebanese lira flew into the sky. After the attack, the local , a Christian, said he did not want members or supporters of Hizbullah sheltering in his community, because their presence might bring further Israeli attacks.Then last week Israeli commandos landed on the beach of the northern Christian town of Batroun, where they captured a man alleged to be involved in Hizbullah’s naval activities. Israel is increasingly operating in parts of Lebanon which are not widely populated by Shias, who are most likely to support Hizbullah. This is stoking fears that Israel hopes to inflame Lebanon’s long-standing sectarian divisions and thus foment political change. “The biggest risk is that we start killing each other,” says Asaad Chaftari, a former militia commander during Lebanon’s civil war who is now a peace activist.Lebanese worry that Israel’s war aims in their country now go far beyond the immediate destruction of Hizbullah’s fighting capabilities near the border. Israel has begun targeting important parts of the group’s non-military leadership. It tried to kill Wafiq Safa, the enforcer through whom Hizbullah imposed its will on the Lebanese state. Israel has also declassified intelligence it claims shows the location of the group’s vast financial reserves.Across Lebanon’s various religious sects people speak of a creeping “Gazafication” of the war. They say that Israel’s campaign, which had been more targeted than in Gaza, is widening. They fear that the killing of civilians as “collateral damage” is becoming widespread and accepted. According to Lebanon’s health ministry, almost 3,000 people have died since October 2023 (it does not specify how many were civilians). Satellite imagery and video footage from the south show whole villages being destroyed by Israel’s forces.American and Israeli officials see an opportunity to take advantage of Hizbullah’s relative weakness to get a new president in place, who might push back against the Shia group and be more friendly to the West. Last month, Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, called on the Lebanese to take action against Hizbullah to avoid “the abyss of a long war”.Previous efforts to interfere in Lebanon’s politics have ended badly. An Israeli-backed Christian president was elected in 1982, only to be killed by an assassin with links to Syria before he took office. With the backing of the Syrian regime, Hizbullah is believed to have been responsible for the murder in 2005 of the prime minister, Rafik Hariri, which ultimately led to an uprising that forced the Syrians out of the country after decades of occupation.Meanwhile, the outsiders who are officially meant to help maintain Lebanon’s stability have little power to do so. Neither Israel nor Hizbullah has any respect for , a peacekeeping force. It has been ineffective in enforcing Resolution 1701, which prohibits the militia from keeping an armed presence south of the Litani River, around 30km from the Israeli border.And Israel has called on the to withdraw from the south. Its troops have fired on at least 15 times in the past two months. Israeli tanks rammed through the gates of a base near the border. The says that some of these incidents appear to have been deliberate; Israel claims troops serve as human shields for Hizbullah. “They want us out,” says a former senior officer.
