On March 2, two days after Israel and the U.S. launched attacks on Iran, igniting a war in the Middle East, Hezbollah fired missiles and drones into Israel for the first time in more than a year.
Hundreds of thousands of residents of southern Lebanon, the eastern Bekaa valley and Beirut’s southern suburbs have fled their homes after Israeli warnings that their neighborhoods, towns and villages would be targeted.
The new round of fighting comes as Shiite communities that suffered the brunt of the last conflict are still reeling from it. The last Israel-Hezbollah war killed more than 4,000 people in Lebanon and caused $11 billion in damage, according to the World Bank.
Unlike in the past, when many people were afraid to publicly criticize Hezbollah, some Lebanese Shiites are openly blaming the terrorist group for their current misery as they find themselves living in the street, on public squares, or with relatives or friends amid cold weather and fasting during Ramadan.
After the end of Lebanon's civil war in 1990, militias were required to disarm, but Hezbollah was exempted because it was fighting Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon at the time.
Now the Lebanese government has sought to crack down on the group’s armed wing and end its status as a parallel armed force outside of state control.
The shift was clear when, on March 2, the Lebanese government moved to declare Hezbollah’s military activities illegal, with all but two of the 24 Cabinet ministers voting in favor; only the two Hezbollah ministers voted no. Even ministers from Hezbollah’s strongest ally, the Amal group of Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, voted to approve the measure.
