Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon kill three despite US-Iran deal

Israeli attacks in southern Lebanon continue in spite of a US-Iran deal that would mean ceasing military operations.

Israeli air attacks on southern Lebanon have killed at least three people, Lebanese state media has reported, a day after the United States and Iran signed an interim agreement that called for an end to their war on all fronts, including Lebanon.

Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) reported on Thursday that an Israeli drone attack hit a car near the town of Kfar Tebnit, killing two people.

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At least one person was killed in a separate Israeli strike in Zabadin, the news agency reported.

NNA also reported that a strike carried out by an Israeli drone in the town of Beit Yahoun in the Nabatieh governorate wounded two people.

The strikes occurred as Israel faces pressure to halt its attacks on Lebanon and pull out all occupying forces as part of the agreement with the US-Iran agreement to extend their ceasefire.

However, Israel’s military released a map on Thursday showing what it says are the current positions of its forces inside southern Lebanon, extending about 10km (6.2 miles) into Lebanese territory, along its “Yellow Line”, a framework similar to the Israeli military measure in the besieged Gaza Strip.

This map not only extends into Lebanon’s land, but also its maritime territory, which would violate the Lebanon-Israel 2022 maritime agreement if Israel occupies it, according to maritime legal experts. This part of the sea also contains Lebanon’s Qana gas project, whose exploration rights were explicitly guaranteed to Lebanon under the 2022 US-brokered maritime border agreement with Israel.

Domestically, Netanyahu is reportedly facing pressure from party members to take a harder line with the US over Lebanon. “Prime Minister Netanyahu needs to tell Trump ‘enough’,” Moshe Saada, a politician from Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party, told Reuters.

“I am bound to defend Israelis, and withdrawing from Lebanon right now poses an existential threat to Israel. Duty demands that we strike Lebanon everywhere, around the clock, with maximum force and with no proportionality.”

Reporting from Beirut, Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr said that over recent days, “there’s been a reduction in violence, in the sense that we are no longer seeing an intense Israel bombing campaign across southern Lebanon, but there have still been Israeli drone strikes over the past few days causing casualties”.

Khodr said that “Hezbollah feels very empowered by this deal [between the US and Iran], believing that Iran has given it leverage [to strike back at Israel].”

“Hezbollah has been responding to those strikes, sending a clear message that it is not going to accept a one-sided ceasefire. In fact, the Israeli army has acknowledged that one of its soldiers has been killed and others injured in two Hezbollah attacks in southern Lebanon,” Khodr said. “Hezbollah is telling the Lebanese government it’s not going to accept disarmament.”