Beirut, Lebanon – Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and pressure on the Lebanese government to disarm the pro-Iran Shia movement Hezbollah by force are stoking internal tensions, analysts have told Al Jazeera.
Israel is leaning on this division as a strategy to try to pit communities against one another, they say. The strategy is working, they add, pointing to a recent series of sectarian and political provocations.
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“It’s not a byproduct [of the war]. They know very well what they’re doing,” Michael Young, a Lebanon expert at the Carnegie Middle East Center, told Al Jazeera. “When they were emptying the southern suburbs, they knew very well that most of these people would head into inner Beirut and into areas which are not areas of Shia majority. And certainly, I think this was their effort to create sectarian tensions and, in a way, put more pressure on the Lebanese state.”
Destroying villages to pressure Lebanon
On March 2, Israel intensified its war on Lebanon. It was the second intensification in the last two years and came after a November 2024 ceasefire agreement that Israel violated more than 10,000 times, according to United Nations peacekeepers.
While Israel had repeatedly bombed southern Lebanon during that supposed ceasefire, it expanded its attacks to Beirut and other areas after Hezbollah responded to the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, on February 28.
Israel has killed more than 5,000 people in Lebanon since October 2023. In March, Israeli forces invaded Lebanon for the second time since 2024, where they are now systematically destroying southern towns and villages. Israel has forcibly displaced 1.2 million people, ordering people from their homes in southern Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs.
When the ceasefire between the United States and Iran started on April 8, many Lebanese wondered if they would be included. Israel definitively answered that question by killing more than 350 people in a day, with 100 Israeli attacks in under ten minutes across Lebanon.
The ceasefire was extended by Donald Trump, but Israel has continued attacks in southern Lebanon, and Hezbollah has responded in turn by battling Israeli troops. Lebanon has agreed to direct negotiations with Israel in attempts to end the war and occupation of southern Lebanon.
Internally, however, Lebanon’s population and politicians are deeply divided on the issue of negotiations with Israel. Hezbollah and its supporters oppose direct negotiations, preferring indirect talks, while the Lebanese government is under US and Israeli pressure to engage in direct talks, possibly even a meeting between the Israeli and Lebanese leaders.
“The Israelis are trying to put pressure on the Lebanese state,” Young said. “They’re destroying villages, pushing the Shia community into areas where there aren’t Shia majorities, and it is definitely designed to heighten sectarian tensions.”
Angry birds
Israel’s stated goal has been to disarm Hezbollah, but analysts said the Israelis are aware that it cannot be done through force alone.
“The objective remains a bit of a mystery because the Israelis know very well that the Lebanese Army cannot disarm Hezbollah and [the Israeli military] themselves admitted that they couldn’t do this job because it would involve taking all of Lebanon, which they have no intention of doing,” Young said.
This is why analysts say Israel’s aim is to press Lebanon’s communities into confrontation, in order to pressure the Lebanese state to concede. And the strategy appears to have worked to fuel some internal tensions.
Provocative statements from both pro- and anti-Hezbollah political officials have circulated in the media in the last two months. Hezbollah’s Wafiq Safa and Mahmoud Qamati have both warned the Lebanese government that its decisions to ban the group’s military activities will be overturned.
Some right-wing Christian members of parliament have made provocative statements praising the Israeli military.
LBCI, a Lebanese television channel founded by the anti-Hezbollah Lebanese Forces in the 1980s but now operating as an independent station, caused a stir by posting a cartoon of Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem and some Hezbollah members disparagingly depicted as characters in the ‘Angry Birds’ mobile game.
Some Hezbollah supporters responded by posting provocative images of the Maronite Patriarch Bechara Rai on social media.
“These media provocations are unfortunately part of a plan to distort the image of the resistance [Hezbollah] and to serve the Israeli enemy and America through this media campaign that targeted the resistance and targeted Sheikh Naim Qassem,” Qassem Kassir, a journalist close to Hezbollah, told Al Jazeera.
“Of course, there have been reactions from supporters of the resistance that concerned Patriarch Rai, though, the leadership of Hezbollah, the Supreme Shia Islamic Council and Dar al-Ifta al-Jaafari issued statements condemning this,” Kassir added, referring to Shia religious bodies in Lebanon.
Impossible position
The internal squabbles are a byproduct of Israel’s war, which has, to some extent, effectively prodded the parties and Lebanese society’s divisions over the war. Hezbollah in particular is trying to regain the leverage it lost in November 2024 – after a campaign in which Israel caused severe damage and killed iconic leader Hassan Nasrallah – Young said.
But there is a genuine disconnect and divide over the war, and that is reflected in many public comments in Lebanon.
“No one can control people or their reactions,” Kassir said. “Of course, this raises fears of an atmosphere of strife, but no one today has an interest in inciting strife.”
As long as the war carries on though, the more such statements and incidents will come to the forefront. Analysts say Israel is counting on that to force the Lebanese government into accepting its terms for peace.
“What the Israelis are really doing is just trying to build up their political credit and to be able to impose what they want on Lebanon and justify this with the Americans,” Young said. “They want to create impossible situations for the Lebanese state. And when the Lebanese state cannot react to them, Israel can begin imposing their own solutions.”