Good morning. “Nobody wants a war – not Israel, not Hezbollah, not Iran,” military historian Prof Danny Orbach told the Guardian last week. “But it’s very difficult to see how you can solve the situation without one.”
That is the frightening ratchet that has been operating on the border between Lebanon and Israel since the 7 October attacks, where Israel is engaged in tit-for-tat strikes with Hezbollah that have left hundreds of people dead and 150,000 displaced.
Last month, Israel approved plans for a possible ground offensive; Hezbollah, which is backed by Tehran, says that it will not withdraw its troops from the border area unless there is a ceasefire in Gaza. All-out war is still some way off, and some are optimistic that it can be avoided – but if the violence escalates, the prospect of a wider regional conflict drawing in Iran will become very real indeed.
Michael Safi recently travelled to from the Lebanese border villages of Odaisseh and Kfar Kila, abandoned by their residents and now in ruins – and you can listen to a new episode of Today in Focus about what he learned here. For today’s newsletter, I asked him what his rare reporting trip revealed about the impact of the conflict – and the risks of disastrous miscalculation on either side. Here are the headlines.
Five big stories
UK politics | Keir Starmer has suspended seven MPs from the Labour party in an unprecedented response to an early rebellion supporting an amendment to scrap the two-child benefit limit. The move to suspend MPs from the party’s left, including the former shadow chancellor John McDonnell, drew criticism from some MPs who voted with the government.
Health | The births of babies to black mothers are almost twice as likely to be investigated for potential NHS safety failings, Guardian research has found, in a shocking disparity that has been labelled a “national disgrace”. The head of the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) said the issue was “purely down to institutional racism”.
US news | The director of the US secret service has resigned over security lapses that enabled the assassination attempt against Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania. Kimberly Cheatle quit a day after a contentious House hearing where members of both parties said that she had failed to answer basic questions about a “stunning operational failure”.
Leeds | Roma children who were taken into care, sparking unrest in Leeds last week, have been returned to their extended family. Police and social services removed the four children from a house in Harehills on Thursday to prevent them being taken abroad in breach of a court order.
Monarchy | King Charles is set for a huge £45m pay rise with an increase of more than 50% in his official annual income, official accounts reveal. Profits of £1.1bn from the crown estate mean the sovereign grant, which supports the official duties of the royal family, will rise from £86m in 2024-25 to £132m in 2025-26.
In depth: ‘A violent and dangerous conversation’
Michael Safi reported in Lebanon for three years, and all his life has been visiting family who live there. He recently returned to cover the impact of the Hezbollah-Israel conflict.
While it gets less coverage than it might if Israel’s assault on Gaza were not happening at the same time, “it’s the most sustained conflict between the two sides since 2006”, he said. At the same time, “like always in Lebanon, you live in many worlds at once. You go to the border and see destroyed villages, and 45 minutes away is a beach where people are getting a tan. That tension is palpable.”
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What are the origins of the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel?
Since Hezbollah’s foundation in 1982 – the same year Israel invaded Lebanon in response to attacks carried out by Palestinian militants from its territory – it has been devoted to the expulsion of western powers from the Middle East, and rejects Israel’s right to exist. The militant Islamist organisation controls many Shia-majority areas of Lebanon, particularly in the south near the Israeli border.
Analysts say that its major strategic decisions are taken in consultation with Iran, which trains, funds and supplies its forces. Even against the backdrop of Hamas’s 7 October attack, it is still perceived as the greatest long-term threat to Israeli security.
The two sides have fought repeatedly over the last 40 years, and Hezbollah succeeded in forcing Israel to withdraw from Lebanon in 2000. Since then, an ongoing border dispute over Israeli-held territory that Hezbollah claims is part of Lebanon has been the source of continuing low-level conflict that last flared into all-out war in 2006.
On 6 October, “tensions were really high anyway”, Michael said. “The two sides are constantly testing each other’s resolve. Hezbollah is constantly trying to push the rules of engagement – in April last year they fired the biggest salvo of rockets since 2006. So things were tense, but there has been this feeling that neither side wants to go back to a full-scale war.”
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What’s happened since 7 October?
Initially, about 80,000 Israelis were evacuated from communities within 10km of the border in case of a Hezbollah incursion. While that did not materialise, there was an immediate increase in rocket attacks, prompting Israeli reprisals.
Both sides have broadly stuck to the undeclared rules of engagement. But Israel has killed hundreds of Hezbollah fighters including senior commanders, and Hezbollah’s attacks in response have reached deeper into Israel. The group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, said last week that it was ready to broaden its range of targets. “Hezbollah won’t say this, but seeing the vulnerability of very senior people has to be eye-opening,” Michael said. “And it is broadly true that while they initially intensified their attacks, they did not intend to still be exchanging fire nine months later.”
At the same time, he added, “they’ve been pretty skilled at keeping up. They launched a drone that managed to take very closeup footage of strategic points in the city of Haifa, and that was a real shock – that they were able to intrude on Israeli airspace with impunity”. This Foreign Policy piece explains some of Hezbollah’s other successes in challenging Israel’s formidable Iron Dome defence system, including the novel use of antitank missiles to target civilian and military sites along the border.
Despite the deaths of at least 100 Lebanese and 13 Israeli civilians, there is still a sense that the dynamic is “a conversation – a violent and dangerous conversation, but still a conversation”, Michael said. “One group does something, and the other responds in a calibrated way. We haven’t yet reached the point where it spirals out of control.”
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How have the frontlines of the conflict been affected?
Odaisseh and Kfar Kila are now all but deserted, with more UN peacekeepers on patrol than residents. In his reporting, Michael said, “one of the main things I came away feeling was that the scale of the destruction was oddly familiar. I couldn’t figure out why. It was only later that I realised it reminded me of footage from Gaza – destroyed buildings everywhere you look, whole neighbourhoods razed to the ground.”
The other vivid detail: just how close Israeli settlements on the other side of the border are. “People living in these villages could look over to the Israeli side of the valley and watch people going about their day. These are intimate neighbours. So that explains the suggestion that Israel is trying to turn these places into no man’s land. It literally gives you a buffer zone – so that if Hezbollah was to try to launch a 7 October-style attack, they would have to cover more ground.”
But if Israel does persist with that plan, Hezbollah can make the return of residents to Israeli villages on the other side impossible, too. Jason Burke reported from the kibbutz of Rosh HaNikra last week, where all but half a dozen of 1,000 residents have been scattered across northern Israel. One of the few to return, 73-year-old Janet Tass, told him: “Most people from the kibbutz, even those without children, say they just don’t feel secure enough to come back.”
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Where does this leave the Lebanese public?
“It’s hard to get reliable estimates of Lebanese opinion,” Michael said. “If you drive around Beirut, there are billboards that say the Lebanese people do not want war, and calling for Hezbollah to back down. There are people who think that Hezbollah is dragging Lebanon into a war it literally cannot afford because it’s bankrupt. But Hezbollah are the most powerful force in the country. Nobody can stop them.”
There are also those who support Hezbollah even outside their traditional power base. “There is such outrage over Gaza, and I get a sense from a lot of young people that they see Hezbollah as standing up to Israel,” Michael said. “I met a woman on the beach in Tyre who gestured at the scene around her and said – Hezbollah don’t vibe with me, I don’t vibe with them, but I trust what they’re doing.”
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What are the risks of escalation?
Most experts think that they are considerable, and getting worse. The New York Times recently reported that the US is passing messages to Hezbollah warning that if Israel commits to an all-out war, Washington does not have the leverage to stop them. Meanwhile, as Michael writes:
Both sides would prefer to end the fighting so that civilians can return home, but are entangled in a cycle of mutual escalation. ‘What’s going on now is an attrition war,’ says Khalil Helou, a retired Lebanese general. ‘One that we are losing, as Lebanon. And Hezbollah is losing. And Israel is losing.’
“Hezbollah fighters and commanders are very disciplined,” Michael said. “But the missiles they’re launching are not perfectly targeted. All it would take is for one to land in the wrong place. A mass civilian casualty event on the Lebanese side of the border would have the same effect. The dynamic is just inherently dangerous.”
One source for relative optimism is the view among most western diplomats that Iran does not want a major conflict, even if it says publicly that it would respond to an Israeli offensive in Lebanon with an “obliterating war”. Meanwhile, Michael said, “talking to people in the Lebanese security establishment, their sense was that Israel is not about to launch a full-scale invasion like we’ve seen in the past”.
But neither side’s reluctance is a guarantee. The most likely path to de-escalation is a ceasefire, or something that can be presented as a ceasefire, in Gaza. But the longer the wait for that goes on, the more the ratchet turns. “The risk is always there,” Michael said. “The feeling in Lebanon is that another war may eventually be inevitable.”
What else we’ve been reading
Sport
Olympics 2024 | One of Team GB’s biggest stars, Charlotte Dujardin, has been banned from the Paris Olympics over allegations that she whipped a horse “24 times … like an elephant in a circus”. The 39-year-old, who won six dressage Olympic medals in London, Rio and Tokyo, said that she was “deeply ashamed” of her behaviour in a video of the incident from several years ago.
Football | Premier League clubs have been accused of signing “desperate deals for a few extra quid”, after Bournemouth took to 11 the contingent with a gambling company as their front-of-shirt sponsor for the coming season. With a ban due to kick in for the 2026-27 campaign, Bournemouth’s deal is understood to be worth almost double the sum offered by non-betting companies.
Cricket | The defending men’s Hundred champions Oval Invincibles won by eight wickets after the Invincibles women’s side had earned a 45-run victory at the Oval.
The front pages
“We will win this election, Harris tells Democrats” is the Guardian’s splash this morning. US election fever fades from front pages elsewhere for the moment. The Financial Times has “HS2 cutback heads litany of national woes in spending watchdog’s reports”. “UK has three years to get ready for war, new army chief warns” says the i. “GPs’ threat to see fewer patients in pay row” – that’s the Daily Telegraph, while the Times leads with “Long-term sick ‘should be forced to seek work’”. “BBC chief: I’m sorry for Strictly abuse row” says the Daily Mirror while the Daily Express runs that apology as well: “BBC chief ‘very sorry’ for Strictly bullying scandal”. The Metro’s version is “Axe Strictly? No cha-cha chance”. “Why was jihad preacher freed to spout hate?” asks the Daily Mail.
Today in Focus
In southern Lebanon on the brink of war – podcast
Michael Safi travels to southern Lebanon where Hezbollah is trading strikes with Israeli forces and one misstep could result in all-out conflict.
Cartoon of the day | Martin Rowson
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
Lenacapavir, which is sold as Sunlenca by US pharmaceutical company Gilead, has been described as “the closest we have ever been to an HIV vaccine” – and it costs a whopping $42,250 for the first year. The drug could cost a thousand times less than its current price, at just $40 a year for each patient, if Gilead allowed generic licensing through the UN-backed Medicines Patent Pool.
Given by injection every six months, lenacapavir can prevent infection and also suppress HIV in people who are already infected – a huge innovation when you consider that people currently rely on daily pills and barrier measures such as condoms. During a trial, the drug offered 100% protection to more than 5,000 women in South Africa and Uganda. Campaigners want generic licensing in all low- and middle-income countries, which account for 95% of HIV infections. UNAids said it could “herald a breakthrough for HIV prevention” if the drug becomes available “rapidly and affordably”.
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Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.
