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<\/p>\nThe six missiles fired by an Israeli drone last week precisely perforated the walls of a Beirut apartment, blasting out two floors that rained car-crushing debris on the streets below and killing Hezbollah\u2019s top military commander, Haytham Ali Tabatabai.<\/p>\n
Vows of revenge echoed the next day through the cramped streets of Haret Hreik, the Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut\u2019s southern suburbs, as flag-waving Hezbollah supporters carried the coffins of Mr. Tabatabai and two other militia operatives to burial.<\/p>\n
One year after a ceasefire ended 14 months of Israel-Hezbollah fighting \u2013 which left the Iran-backed Shiite militia deeply shaken and weakened \u2013 the Israeli military continues an overshadowing presence across Lebanon. Almost daily, Israel strikes at targets ranging from Hezbollah\u2019s fighters, weapons depots, and suspected arms factories, to construction equipment.<\/p>\n
Why We Wrote This<\/p>\n
A year after an Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire, the Lebanese people are still caught in the middle. The ceasefire requires Hezbollah to disarm and Israel to withdraw. Neither has happened, even as Beirut works to fulfill its part of the bargain.<\/p>\n
The conflict took some 4,000 Lebanese lives, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health, which does not differentiate between fighters and civilians. Yet during the ceasefire, Israeli strikes have killed some 330 more, one-third of them civilians, according to the Lebanese Army.<\/p>\n
For Lebanese, the sense of an ever-present Israel is felt uneasily, from drone-patrolled Beirut all the way to the south of the country. There, residents have also grown used to the gnawing buzz of drones \u2013 and now live cheek-by-jowl with five hill-top Israeli positions on seized Lebanese territory.<\/p>\n
The result is the creation of a de facto Israeli buffer zone inside Lebanon, despite ceasefire conditions requiring Israel\u2019s full withdrawal. Indeed, it mirrors Israel\u2019s continued occupation of a border strip in southwest Syria, after the fall of Bashar al-Assad last December.<\/p>\n
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\t\t\tScott Peterson\/Getty Images\/The Christian Science Monitor\n<\/p>\n
Hezbollah members conduct a funeral for their assassinated military chief, Haytham Ali Tabatabai, commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan force, in Beirut, Nov. 24, 2025. Mr. Tabatabai was killed in an Israeli drone strike on an apartment building in Beirut the day before. <\/p>\n
But Israeli officials and media \u2013 frustrated by Hezbollah\u2019s refusal to disarm north of the Litani River, which is also required by the ceasefire \u2013 have in recent weeks stated that Israel plans renewed \u201cpreventive strikes\u201d against the militia.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe way Israel has interpreted this ceasefire seems consistent with what is shaping up as a wider regional policy towards imposing de facto buffer zones with its neighbors that it doesn\u2019t have comprehensive security agreements with,\u201d says David Wood, the Beirut-based senior Lebanon analyst for the International Crisis Group.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a ceasefire in place, but in name only, given that Israel has reduced but not ceased its fire,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Lebanese Army deploys south<\/p>\n
The Lebanese Army has deployed 10,000 troops south of the Litani, cut off 11 smuggling routes, and now formally controls the border area, completing the first stage of a Hezbollah disarmament plan, as per the ceasefire, and mandated by the government last August. According to the Associated Press, the army holds 200 posts south of the river, and since September found 74 tunnels once used by Hezbollah, 175 rocket launchers, and 58 missiles.<\/p>\n
Hezbollah maintains it is abiding by the ceasefire. But its top leaders also vow revenge for their losses, and will not discuss complete disarmament while Israel occupies Lebanese land.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Resistance stands firm, possessing what makes us as strong as mountains standing against fierce winds,\u201d Hezbollah leader Sheikh Naim Qassem said Friday, at a memorial for his slain military chief. \u201cWe are ready to discuss the [national] defense strategy \u2026 not to relinquish our strength under any formula, and not to evade the current agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
A Lebanese Army soldier shows a tunnel dug into a mountain that was used by Hezbollah militants as a clinic and storage facility near the Israeli border in the Zibqin Valley, southern Lebanon, Nov. 28, 2025.<\/p>\n
The United Nations in the past year has tabulated more than 10,000 cross-border violations into Lebanon \u2013 most from Israeli drone flights.<\/p>\n
Among Israeli targets have been cement factories as well as bulldozers and heavy construction equipment \u2013 including 300 pieces destroyed in a single set of strikes in October. Israel claimed the vehicles were Hezbollah \u201cengineering equipment used to rebuild.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIsrael has very deliberately targeted efforts to rebuild,\u201d says Mr. Wood. \u201cIsrael will point, always, to the fact that the ceasefire agreement acknowledges both Lebanon and Israel\u2019s inherent right to self-defense, but Israel has deliberately adopted a very broad definition.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the early days of the ceasefire, we heard a lot about Israel responding to an \u2018imminent threat,\u2019 [but] Hezbollah hasn\u2019t fired a shot at Israel for a year now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the assassinated Mr. Tabatabai had led efforts to rearm, and that \u201cIsrael will not allow Hezbollah to rebuild its power and we will not allow it to pose a threat \u2026 again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Defense Minister Israel Katz said Israel is \u201cdetermined to continue the policy of maximum enforcement in Lebanon and elsewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
People inspect damaged bulldozers, excavators, and other vehicles in the aftermath of overnight Israeli airstrikes on an industrial complex servicing heavy construction machinery in the coastal town of Ansariyah in southern Lebanon, Sept. 4, 2025. <\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tStrikes haven\u2019t stopped<\/p>\n
At the Beirut funeral, a grim reminder of the heavy toll already taken against Hezbollah could be seen in the wounds of one drummer in the marching band. He was injured when thousands of Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies, secretly rigged with explosives by Israel, were detonated in September 2024.<\/p>\n
Those blasts killed or immobilized many of the militia\u2019s members, and marked the start of an Israeli onslaught that killed nearly all its top leaders \u2013 including the widely revered Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah \u2013 and ravaged its arsenal of more than 150,000 missiles and rockets.<\/p>\n
Such a devastating assault was not what Hezbollah expected when it began limited rocket strikes into Israel in October 2023, in solidarity with its ally Hamas\u2019 lethal cross-border attack on Israel from Gaza.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere has never been a true cease-in-fire,\u201d says Kandice Ardiel, spokeswoman for the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), which has monitored southern Lebanon since 1978. \u201cWe are not seeing Hezbollah military activity south of the Litani. … We have not seen anything militarily that has been rebuilt. We have not observed that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, tens of thousands of Lebanese civilians have not been able to return home. And while Israel has demonstrated a granular degree of intelligence regarding Hezbollah, some Israeli explanations of its actions confuse Lebanese.<\/p>\n
The Israeli army\u2019s Arabic spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Avichay Adraee, for example, recently warned on social media that Israel had detected \u201cdozens of terrorist infrastructures\u201d built by Hezbollah in the southern village of Beit Lif. Alarmed locals summoned the Lebanese Army and UNIFIL to demonstrate that they should not be targeted.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
\t\t\tScott Peterson\/Getty Images\/The Christian Science Monitor\n<\/p>\n
Lebanese houses lie in ruins in a Christian village near the border with Israel, one year after a ceasefire ended a 14-month-conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, in Alma el-Shaab, Lebanon, Nov. 22, 2025. Some buildings were destroyed by Israeli strikes, others during four months of Israeli occupation before the ceasefire.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Beit Lif it caused a panic, because people were saying it is not true. People called the army and said, \u2018Come to our houses and check, and you will see,\u2019\u201d says Ms. Ardiel.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople have come back to Naqoura and Alma el-Shaab,\u201d she says, referring to two villages on the hill above UNIFIL headquarters, \u201cand some villages, but right along the Blue Line [U.N.-demarcated Lebanon-Israel border] people are afraid. And with these five Israeli positions and the inflammatory rhetoric from both sides, it doesn\u2019t give people a sense of security.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Shiite village of Naqoura survived the war largely intact, but now barely a house remains standing and the mosque is destroyed \u2013 with most damage done by occupying Israeli troops after the ceasefire.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrying to stay on the sidelines\u201d<\/p>\n
Further up the hill but only partially wrecked is the Christian village of Alma el-Shaab. Residents say that, after they fled last autumn, Hezbollah fighters moved in to battle Israel, and Israeli forces then occupied the town for four months.<\/p>\n
Those Israeli troops have withdrawn south to an outpost visible from the village, not far from a new Lebanese Army position. But Christians who have returned, like Sami Btaich, whose house was used by both Israelis and Hezbollah, feel Israel\u2019s proximity.<\/p>\n
He returned to a home filled with trash, filth, and wartime stains. A Star of David was spray-painted on the nearby church.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
\t\t\tScott Peterson\/Getty Images\/The Christian Science Monitor\n<\/p>\n
Sami Btaich stands outside his house in the Christian village of Alma el-Shaab, Lebanon, Nov. 22, 2025, one year after an Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire. Residents say they have been caught in the middle. \u201cWe are living extra careful,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n
Mr. Btaich says Hezbollah later came to retrieve bodies and left mines and detonation wire in sacks in his home.<\/p>\n