Important Takeaways:
- Israel’s foreign minister warned time’s running short to find a diplomatic solution to the presence of Hezbollah fighters along the country’s northern border with Lebanon.
- Hezbollah, a Shiite militant group backed by Iran, and Israeli forces have exchanged fire almost daily since the Israel-Hamas war erupted on Oct. 7. While those skirmishes have killed scores of people and forced almost 100,000 Israelis and thousands of Lebanese to evacuate their homes, neither side has escalated its operations.
- Israel has said, though, that it’s prepared to open another front with a military attack on southern Lebanon if Hezbollah doesn’t move back to about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the border, as per the terms of a long-standing United Nations resolution.
- Hezbollah has expressed solidarity with Hamas and fired missiles, mortars and rockets into Israel. The Israeli military has responded with artillery fire and also assassinated senior Hezbollah figures.
- Hezbollah is the most powerful militia in the Middle East. It has an arsenal of more than 100,000 rockets and missiles, according to Israeli intelligence estimates, far bigger than what Hamas could muster before Oct. 7.
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