Hezbollah began launching rockets into northern Israel in solidarity with Palestinians shortly after the start of the war in Gaza. These attacks prompted skirmishes along the border that have escalated and spread further into the territory of both countries.
On July 10, for example, the Israeli military said it had hit a Hezbollah site just 49 miles from the capital, Beirut. The strike came two weeks after Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant threatened to take Lebanon “back to the stone age”. After an 18-year lull, a new war between Hezbollah and Israel seems inevitable.
Lebanese politics is based on a power-sharing system among the country’s different sectarian groups. Hezbollah, a Shia Muslim organisation that emerged in the 1980s, is one of these groups.
