As the war in Gaza continues, fears are growing that another war could break out in the Middle East, with devastating consequences for the region and beyond.
Israel and the Iranian-backed Lebanese armed group Hezbollah have been trading fire across their shared border for the past nine months. If this conflict escalates into all-out war, it could dwarf the devastation in Gaza, draw Iranian-backed militias into Iraq and Yemen, send sparks flying across the Middle East and embroil the US. Iran itself could intervene directly.
The United Nations has warned of a “catastrophe beyond imagination”.
For now, a low-level war simmers in the summer heat along a 120-km (75-mile) border strip. A single spark here could set the Middle East ablaze.
Above the lapping of the waves and the thump of rowing boats on the beach, a sound is heard: a sudden, deep bang.
Soon, smoke rises from a distant hill after an Israeli attack.
Around the pool of a resort hotel, a few sunbathers stand and gaze at the horizon.
Others don’t move a single tanned limb.
Explosions are part of the sound of the summer of 2024 in the ancient Lebanese city of Tyre, as Hezbollah and Israel exchange fire across the border 25 kilometers (16 miles) away.
“Another day, another bomb,” says Roland, 49, shrugging as he relaxes on an air mattress. He lives abroad but is back home on vacation.
“We’ve gotten used to it somehow over the months,” says his friend Mustafa, 39, “although children are still a little scared.” He nods to his daughter Miral, 7, who is soaking wet from the pool.
“When she hears an explosion, she always wonders, ‘Is there a bomb coming now?’” he says.
Earlier this month, a huge explosion hit his neighborhood in Tyre while his family of four were eating dinner. Israel had killed a top Hezbollah commander, Mohammed Nimah Nasser.
“We heard the noise,” Mustafa says, “and we continued eating.”
But the sunbathers on the beach in Tyre may be living on borrowed time. This city would be in the firing line in the event of an all-out war, along with the rest of southern Lebanon, a stronghold of Hezbollah.
We now stand on the eve of a potentially devastating war that both sides say they do not want.
How did we get here?
The conflict flares up
On October 8 last year, a day after Hamas fighters stormed Gaza, killing some 1,200 Israelis and taking 251 others hostage, Hezbollah joined in, firing into Israel from Lebanon.
The Shiite Islamist armed group said it was acting in support of Gaza.
Israel soon began shooting back.
Hezbollah, which is also a political party, is the most powerful force in Lebanon.
Like Hamas, it is considered a terrorist organization by many countries, including the UK and the US.
But unlike Hamas, Hezbollah has the firepower to seriously threaten Israel.
It is believed to have an arsenal of more than 150,000 rockets and missiles, some of them precision-guided, capable of causing heavy damage across the country.
Simply put, Hezbollah – the English translation is Party of God – has more weapons than many countries.
Its ally Iran, which denies Israel’s right to exist, is only too happy to train and finance the enemies of the Jewish state.
The conflict flares up, resulting in thousands of cross-border strikes.
Some countries have already urged their citizens to leave Lebanon, including Germany, the Netherlands, Canada and Saudi Arabia. The UK has advised against all travel to the country and is urging Britons who are here to leave – while they still can.
So far, both sides have focused primarily on military targets close to the border, staying within the familiar red lines.
But here on the Lebanese side we have seen devastation in civilian areas, with scorched fields, destroyed homes and abandoned villages.
The current tit-for-tat has already driven tens of thousands of people from their homes – more than 90,000 in Lebanon and about 60,000 in Israel.
The Israeli military says Hezbollah has killed 21 of its soldiers. The civilian death toll is 12, government officials said.
The losses in Lebanon are much higher, at 466, according to the Health Ministry here. Hezbollah says most of the dead were fighters.
Sally Skaiki was not.
‘We cannot forgive them’
“I never called her Sally,” says her father, Hussein Abdul Hassan Skaiki. “I always called her ‘my life’ – she was everything to me.”
“She was the only girl in the house, and we spoiled her, me, and her three brothers.”
Sally, 25, was a volunteer paramedic who was killed by an Israeli strike after sunset on June 14 as she stood in the doorway of her building.
Her father wears the black mourning dress and green scarf of the Shiite Amal movement, which is affiliated with Hezbollah.
We meet in his village of Deir Qanoun En-Naher, 30km (18 miles) from the border. The main road is lined with sun-bleached posters of fighters killed fighting Israel – some in recent months, others in 2006 when the two sides last went to war.
In that conflict, Hezbollah fought Israel to a standstill, but at enormous cost to Lebanon and its people. There was massive destruction and over 1,000 Lebanese civilians were killed – according to official figures – along with an unconfirmed number of Hezbollah fighters.
According to the Israeli government, the death toll was 160, most of them soldiers.
Next to Hussein hangs a large poster of Sally, in her headscarf and paramedic uniform. He speaks of his daughter with pride and fear.
“She loved helping people,” he says. “Whenever a problem arose, she would rush to it. She was loved in the village. She always had a smile on her face.”
As we say this, a loud bang is heard that makes the windows vibrate.
Hussein says it’s a normal, everyday occurrence.
“Israel has been killing our people here for a long time,” he says.
“We cannot forgive them. There is no hope for peace with them.”
This time there is no death or destruction. Instead, Israeli warplanes break the sound barrier to spread fear.
And since October, Israel has been spreading something else in southern Lebanon: suffocating, burning lumps of white phosphorus contained in munitions.
The chemical ignites immediately upon contact with oxygen, sticks to skin and clothing and can burn through bone, according to the World Health Organization.
Moussa al-Moussa, a 77-year-old farmer, knows this all too well.
He says Israel has been firing white phosphorus shells at his land in the village of al-Bustan every day for more than a month, leaving him breathless and without income.
“I had my scarf on and I wrapped it around my mouth and nose until I was taken to the hospital,” he tells me, pointing to the red and white keffiyeh – the traditional Arab scarf – on his head.
“We had no masks. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see two feet in front of me. And if you touch a fragment a week later, it will ignite and burn again.”
The international activist group Human Rights Watch has verified the use of white phosphorus in several densely populated areas in southern Lebanon, including al-Bustan.
It says Israel’s use of white phosphorus is “unlawful and indiscriminate in populated areas.”
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) disputes this, saying the use of white phosphorus grenades to create a smokescreen “is legal under international law.” It says these grenades are not used in densely populated areas “with certain exceptions.”
Like many farmers along the border, Moussa fears that Israel has poisoned his tobacco crops and olive groves.
“White phosphorus burns the ground, it burns people, it burns the crops, it burns the buildings,” he says.
Even though he can return home, he is afraid to harvest the crop because he fears it will harm his family or buyers.
He lives in limbo – in classroom 4B of a vocational school in Tyre. About 30 families who fled the border area are sheltering in the building. Laundry is strewn across the schoolyard. A lone boy runs up and down the empty corridors on a bicycle.
When I ask Moussa how many wars he has experienced, he starts laughing.
“We have spent our lives in wars,” he says. “Only God knows if there will be another one.”
‘We are not afraid’
As one of Hezbollah’s top commanders, Mohammed Nimah Nasser was a wanted man. He fought against Israel in 2006 and before, and then fought in Syria and Iraq. In recent months, he “planned, led and supervised many military operations against the Israeli enemy,” Hezbollah said.
Israel tracked him down in Tyre on July 3. Death came from the sky in broad daylight, with an airstrike that turned his car into a fireball.
In the Hezbollah stronghold of southern Beirut, he was given a hero’s funeral, or rather a “martyr’s funeral.”
The event was carefully choreographed and strictly segregated: men in one section, women in another, including the press.
His coffin, draped in the yellow flag of Hezbollah, was carried by pallbearers in camouflage uniforms and red berets. Many more fighters stood at attention, rows deep. There was a brass band in spotless white uniforms, though not in perfect harmony.
It felt like a state funeral, in a country where the state does not function.
Lebanon has no president, an interim government and a broken economy. Divided by sects and hollowed out by corruption, its citizens are left to fend for themselves. Many Lebanese are fed up. The last thing they want is another war.
Hezbollah sees things differently.
As the funeral prayers drew to a close, there was talk among the mourners of “martyrdom” rather than death, and of being prepared to wage war if it came.
Hassan Hamieh, a 35-year-old nurse, told us he would fight. “We are not afraid,” he said.
“In fact, we desire total war. Martyrdom is the shortest path to God. Young or old, we will all participate in this war, if it is forced upon us.”
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has stressed that the armed group is ready for war but not eager to do so. He says that if a ceasefire is agreed in Gaza, Hezbollah will also cease immediately.
Will that satisfy Israel? Maybe not.
It sees Hezbollah as a permanent threat that is too close for comfort. At the very least, it wants its heavily armed enemy to withdraw from the border.
There have been plenty of belligerent threats. Israeli Education Minister Yoav Kish said Lebanon would be “destroyed.” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant joined the conversation, saying the country would “return to the Stone Age.”
The IDF approved “operational plans for an offensive in Lebanon” a month ago.
There are no tanks crossing the border yet. There has been no political decision to attack. Israel is still at war in Gaza and fighting on two fronts could put too much strain on the army.
But without a diplomatic solution between Israel and Hezbollah – two old enemies – all-out war could break out, perhaps not now, but later.
Additional reporting by Goktay Koraltan and Ghassan Ibraheem
