Relatives visit the graves of killed Hezbollah fighters during Eid al-Adha, or the Feast of Sacrifice in the southern Lebanese town of Naqoura near the border with Israel on June 17, 2024. (Credit: Mahmoud Zayyat/AFP)
The two days of the Muslim feast of Adha were marked by relative calm in southern Lebanon. But the Israeli army carried out several strikes on Sunday and Monday, including a targeted drone strike that killed Mohammad Ayoub, a Hezbollah member born in 1979 and originally from Salaa, a village in the Sour district.
The man was killed while driving near Shehabieh, a town near Salaa, at around midday on Monday. Hezbollah announced his death a few hours later, bringing to 345 the total number of party members killed in Lebanon and Syria since Oct. 8, 2023, according to L'Orient-Le Jour's count.
Israeli strikes, sound barrier breached
After a relatively quiet day on Sunday, Israeli strikes were carried out overnight near Rab al-Talatine, Markaba, Odaisseh and Taybeh (Marjayoun) as well as in Aitaroun (Bint Jbeil), according to information from L'Orient-Le Jour's correspondent. The border villages of Ramieh, Beit Lif and Naqoura were also targeted.
On Monday, Israel carried out numerous other strikes besides the one that killed Ayoub in Shehabieh: Two rockets targeted a house in Mais al-Jabal (Marjayoun) at around 11:30 a.m., according to residents quoted by L'Orient-Le Jour's correspondent. The Israeli army then shelled the road linking Kfar Kila to Deir Mimas, as well as the Khiam plain and the outskirts of Aitaroun, again according to local residents.
The villages of Jibbain and Yarine (Sour), Khiam and Kfar Kila (Marjayoun) were also targeted by Israel, whose fighter jets broke the sound barrier and fired flares over several regions of Lebanon. Areas affected include Sour, Nabatieh, Zahrani, Iqlim al-Tuffah and the western Bekaa, according to L'Orient-Le Jour's Bekaa correspondent. Hezbollah claimed no attacks either on Sunday or Monday.
Amos Hochstein expected in Beirut
In parallel with these developments, talks are continuing in an attempt to calm things down. U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein, a senior advisor to U.S. President Joe Biden, met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his office in Jerusalem on Monday, Haaretz reports.
According to several Israeli media, Hochstein is due to take part in talks aimed at defusing tensions with Hezbollah and is scheduled to meet Israel's top political leaders and officials, as well as Benny Gantz, the minister who resigned recently, and opposition leader Yair Lapid. Hochstein, who previously facilitated the maritime demarcation agreement between Israel and Lebanon in 2022, is scheduled to visit Lebanon on Tuesday and hold talks with Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri at 10:45 a.m., according to Lebanese broadcaster MTV.
Neither diplomacy nor terrain
Despite the absence of any claimed Hezbollah attacks, some of the party's leading figures spoke out on the occasion of the Adha holiday. MP Hassan Fadlallah, a member of Hezbollah's parliamentary, said on Monday that Israel "will not obtain through diplomacy what it has not been able to obtain on the ground."
"If the U.S. administration wants to get Netanyahu out of his mess, it has no other way but to stop the war [in Gaza], because the resistance in Lebanon and Palestine is not going to offer the enemy any gifts," he added. The MP concluded that Israel "will have to evacuate the occupied lands of the Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese peoples," stressing that the resistance in Lebanon "has succeeded in imposing a balance of terror."
This article originally appeared in French in L'Orient-Le Jour.
