Israeli ground forces have crossed the Litani River and are pushing toward strategic points in southern Lebanon, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday during a visit to the northern border. He named the Israel Defense Forces' 36th Division as the spearhead of the advance and said Israeli forces were "operating in Beirut as well, in the Beqaa as well, across the entire front," striking Hezbollah "hard."
The crossing marks a significant escalation of a campaign that began as cross-border strikes and has steadily expanded north. The IDF said it had carried out more than 120 airstrikes overnight, hitting in excess of 100 targets it associated with Hezbollah across southern Lebanon and the eastern Beqaa Valley, including weapons-storage sites, command posts and observation positions. On Friday it issued evacuation orders covering seven towns and villages ahead of further strikes.
The military pressure is unfolding in parallel with an unusual diplomatic track. Israeli and Lebanese military delegations met at the Pentagon on Friday to discuss measures aimed at containing Hezbollah, a rare direct channel between the two states' armed forces. Lebanese President Joseph Aoun told US Secretary of State Marco Rubio that a ceasefire with Israel was essential, framing the talks as the country's most urgent priority.
An April ceasefire that briefly halted the fighting has all but collapsed. Israel says repeated Hezbollah attacks on its forces operating in the south and on northern Israeli communities forced it to resume and widen operations; Lebanese authorities and aid agencies describe a population displaced in waves and infrastructure progressively dismantled. The advance across the Litani breaches what had long been treated, under previous UN-brokered arrangements, as a line beyond which Hezbollah's armed presence was to be excluded.
For Hezbollah, the calibration of its response has become a strategic dilemma. The group has continued limited rocket fire but has not returned to the sustained barrages of earlier rounds, a restraint analysts attribute to a degraded command structure and to pressure from Tehran, which is simultaneously negotiating a framework with Washington that envisions an end to the war "on all fronts, including Lebanon." A wider Hezbollah escalation now would complicate Iran's diplomacy at its most delicate point.
The humanitarian picture continues to deteriorate. The expansion of evacuation orders pushes more civilians north at a time when the destruction of crossings over the Litani earlier in the campaign has complicated movement. Aid organisations have warned that the combination of displacement, damaged infrastructure and an active front is overwhelming the capacity of shelters in the parts of Lebanon still considered safe.