Israeli forces advance, blow up homes in south Lebanon
The Cradle | January 21, 2025
The Israeli army continues to advance in southern Lebanon and destroy infrastructure less than a week before the end of a 60-day ceasefire implementation period, which Tel Aviv is continuously violating.
“The enemy targeted a house on the outskirts of Bint Jbeil with a direct shell, after a number of tanks penetrated Maroun al-Ras towards the outskirts of the city,” Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) reported on 21 January.
Israeli forces also pushed into Wadi al-Suluki in the Marjayoun District and carried out “massive” detonations of homes and buildings, according to NNA. Violent explosions also rocked the Marj neighborhood in Houla the previous night as a result of detonations carried out by the Israeli army.
Israel has laid waste to tens of thousands of housing units across the south, and stepped up its destruction after the start of the ceasefire period on 27 November in violation of the agreement.
The deal, based on UN Resolution 1701, is meant to see the Lebanese army dismantle Hezbollah’s presence and infrastructure south of the Litani River, while Israeli forces are required to withdraw from the country. This is supposed to take place within the 60-day period that began in late November and is set to end in six days.
Reports have conflicted, with some stating Israel is not planning to fully withdraw by the end of the 60 days, and others saying that Washington has guaranteed a full pullout by the end of the implementation period.
Tel Aviv has accused Hezbollah of failing to abide by the agreement and remaining south of the Litani. Defense Minister Israel Katz threatened earlier this month that “there will be no agreement” if the “condition is not met.”
Israel has violated the agreement more than 1,000 times since it took effect.
“We in Hezbollah are waiting for the date of January 26, which is the day on which the ceasefire requires a complete Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory,” said Hezbollah MP Ali Fayyad on Monday.
“If the Israeli occupation does not abide by this, it will mean the collapse of the executive procedures paper, the destruction of the mechanism it included, and the undermining of the international sponsorship role of this agreement,” he added.
Fayyad went on to say that a failure by Israel to withdraw “puts all Lebanese, without exception, before a new stage, and what it imposes in terms of new calculations, the title of which is confronting the Israeli occupation with all possible means and methods to expel it from our land.”
Israeli army Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi has ordered “the formulation of plans for the continuation of the fighting … in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon,” according to a statement by a military spokesman on Monday.
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