The killing of veteran Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil last Wednesday represents among the worst elements of the renewed fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, particularly the dangers to civilians posed by Israel’s new “buffer zone.” And if Israeli military officials are to be believed, the goal may be to create a huge area under permanent Israeli control.
On March 1, Hezbollah launched a salvo of projectiles, after which Israel demanded all civilians leave all of southern Lebanon that lies south of the Litani River. Over a million people left their homes and flooded into Beirut. While working as a journalist within that zone, Khalil was killed by IDF troops (and a colleague of hers was severely injured).
Khalil’s employer, Lebanese government officials and rights groups said Khalil’s car was clearly marked and rescue workers were prevented from reaching her for hours as she slowly died under rubble. Israeli officials said they were in a car that left a Hezbollah-linked building driving toward the “yellow line” delineation of a new “buffer zone” in southern Lebanon.
The overwhelming backlash I witnessed created political space for a clear repudiation of Hezbollah’s militia status and authorization for the Lebanese Armed Forces to disarm the group.
Israel has cast Khalil as a Hezbollah operative and, thus, a legitimate target. She worked for Al Akhbar, a newspaper with pro-Hezbollah sympathies, but there is no evidence Khalil was anything other than a reporter. It cannot go unnoticed that Israel has a long history of killing troublesome journalists such as Shireen Abu Akhleh, a Palestinian American Al Jazeera reporter who was shot to death in 2022 while wearing a clearly marked blue vest labeled “PRESS” in the occupied West Bank.
The war in southern Lebanon has followed Israel’s Gaza playbook: near-total depopulation and destruction. The aim has been to deny Hezbollah any supportive environment by removing the entire society.
But the IDF’s new “yellow line” map suggests Israel wants to gobble up a large chunk of Lebanese territory south of the Litani that it has been coveting since the early 1950s, quite possibly to divert waters from that river and the Wazzani River (both of which flow down from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights) and cut Lebanon off from one of its two offshore gas fields. There is far more potentially at play here than just security or “buffer zone.”
And it’s all likely to backfire and strengthen Hezbollah. The Lebanese government, which has shown a greater willingness to confront and contain Hezbollah than it has in the past, has been compelled to strongly denounce Israel’s conduct. Protests by Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and President Joseph Aoun, echoing the Committee to Protect Journalists and other groups, indicate how badly Israel has misread the political equation.
Salam and Aoun led the cabinet in immediately denouncing Hezbollah for resuming hostilities and engineered a hitherto unthinkable unanimous cabinet decision identifying all of the organization’s paramilitary activities and arsenal illegal, unconstitutional and banned. Even Hezbollah’s Shiite allies in the cabinet from the Amal party endorsed the decision.
I was in Lebanon from late January to mid-March, and the overwhelming backlash I witnessed created political space for a clear repudiation of Hezbollah’s militia status and authorization for the Lebanese Armed Forces to disarm the group.
Lebanese Armed Forces Cmdr. Gen. Rodolphe Haykal, however, fears the military could split over a confrontation with Hezbollah, and he doesn’t want to be blamed for any resulting civil conflict. While Lebanese political leaders have tried to convince the military to move against the group in key southern areas, Israel has sabotaged them by overreaching.
The displacement of almost everyone in the south, combined with the new IDF map suggesting a major land grab plus potential diversion of water and Israeli control over Lebanese offshore gas, has alarmed even those most opposed to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
But a new Israeli occupation will not produce calm. Instead, it will take Hezbollah back to its 1982 founding mission: battling Israeli occupation troops in southern Lebanon. An Israeli land grab or occupation is an ideal scenario for Hezbollah’s paramilitary rebuilding and political rehabilitation, following the devastating 2023-2024 war that was triggered when Hezbollah launched attacks on Israel in solidarity with Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks.
Khalil was killed during a Trump administration-brokered ceasefire, which was recently extended by another three weeks. But Israel plainly only agreed to this pause, which neither side has fully respected, under U.S. pressure. The Lebanese and Israeli ambassadors to the U.S. have met twice in person at the State Department, demonstrating Israel has an unprecedented opportunity to deal with a Lebanese government that wants Hezbollah disarmed and contained, and it is willing to negotiate diplomatic normalization with Israel — unthinkable until now.
But Israel has not accepted that the only alternative to a Hezbollah-dominated Lebanon is a strengthened Lebanese state run with authority from Beirut through the LAF. And it has faced a Lebanese government that unanimously has endorsed that, but by trying to depopulate, devastate and occupy much of the south, while seemingly gobbling up Lebanese water and natural gas.
Israel has made it as difficult as possible for political leaders in Beirut to move against Hezbollah.
But a new Israeli occupation will not produce calm. Instead, it will take Hezbollah back to its 1982 founding mission: battling Israeli occupation troops in southern Lebanon.
Whatever Israel says, virtually no one in Lebanon believes Khalil was a fighter or operative for Hezbollah. The seemingly casual way in which she was dispatched, and especially the apparent blocking of rescue crews for many crucial hours while she was under the rubble, reinforces a belief in Lebanon that Israel is on an irrational rampage.
The political costs this has imposed on leaders such as Salam and Aoun, who want the same thing Israel says it does — a disarmed and contained Hezbollah — have been almost prohibitive. Yet they have persisted with negotiations, while explaining they are just trying to “save Lebanon.”
Yet the U.S.-imposed ceasefire is heavily dependent on Washington’s negotiations to end hostilities with Tehran. President Donald Trump has said Iran must end financial support for Hezbollah, but his administration’s war goals and demands have been constantly in flux since the war began. For now, Israel and Hezbollah have continued to blame each other for limited violations and portraying themselves as respecting the truce. Yet it will only last another three weeks.
If Israel returns to the fighting as soon as possible, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has given every impression of wanting to do, and continues imposing a new occupation in southern Lebanon, along with apparent efforts to seize Lebanese water and natural gas, the narrow and delicate political opportunity for the Lebanese state to take a hard line with Hezbollah will be squandered. Nothing could be better calculated to salvage Hezbollah from its own endless blunders and miscalculations, and provide the group a golden opportunity to rebuild militarily and politically.
We have seen this movie many times before, so we know how it ends: very badly for Lebanese and Israelis alike. The only winners will be in Tehran.
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