Israeli warplanes struck southern Lebanon again on Wednesday, days before Lebanese and Israeli negotiators are due to meet in Rome, and while Israeli forces still hold ground inside the country's south.
Lebanon's National News Agency said the first strike hit the Ali al-Taher woods on the edge of Nabatieh al-Fawqa, after a stretch of Israeli artillery shelling, and that warplanes then carried out three more strikes across the area between Beit Yahoun, Kunin and Baraachit in the Bint Jbeil district. The agency called the raids a fresh violation of the ceasefire.
The strikes cut against a US-sponsored framework that Lebanon and Israel signed on 26 June, which set out a phased Israeli withdrawal. They also landed a week before the next round of talks. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on Tuesday that the two sides would meet in Rome on 14 and 15 July.
The numbers behind the ceasefire are heavy. Lebanon's Health Ministry put the death toll from Israeli attacks since 2 March at 4,320, with 12,203 wounded and more than a million people displaced. Israel continues to occupy parts of the south, some ground seized decades ago and some taken during the 2023-2024 war. In its latest push, according to Lebanese reporting, Israeli forces advanced more than 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) inside the border.
A claim the villages threw back
The bombing runs alongside a quieter Israeli line of attack. In a televised interview on Sunday, Netanyahu claimed that some Christian villages in southern Lebanon had asked to be annexed by Israel for protection from Hezbollah.
The villages answered as one. In a joint statement, municipalities across the Christian-majority border belt called the claim "fabricated and completely detached from reality," and said residents regard the Lebanese state as the sole legitimate authority. Mayors, priests and community leaders told Anadolu the same thing in plainer words.
"The Lebanese flag cannot be replaced by any other flag," said Hanna Daher, mayor of al-Qlayaa. Father Antonios Eid Farah of St. George Parish put it this way: "Our identity is Lebanese. We are people of southern Lebanon who want to live peacefully in our homeland." Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri praised the unified response and warned against what he called Israeli efforts to split the country from within.
For the people saying it, the words carry a cost. The same border villages describe olive groves they cannot reach, livestock dead for lack of feed, and roads cut by occupation and bombardment. Fouad Abu Nader, who runs the Noursat network, called Netanyahu's claim part of a psychological campaign to hollow out the border, warning that emptying the Christian villages along the line would put "the Lebanese identity of the land" itself at risk.
Washington in the middle
The diplomacy runs through the United States, which brokered the June framework and is now hosting both sides in turn. Lebanese President Joseph Aoun has been invited to Washington on 21 July to meet Trump, a senior Lebanese source told Anadolu, with the agenda built around carrying out the withdrawal deal. Aoun is due to receive the invitation formally on Thursday.
Türkiye has watched the southern front with open alarm. In İstanbul last week, Erdoğan named Israel's strikes on Lebanon and Syria in the same breath as its war on Gaza, warning that a region kept in the "smell of gunpowder and blood" will not settle on paper alone. On the evidence from Nabatieh, the paper is not holding.
Update, 9 July 2026: The gap between Washington and its ally opened into public view. Asked at the Ankara summit whether Israel should pull back, Trump said that after speaking with Netanyahu he believed it wanted to. Israel's defense minister, Israel Katz, answered that Israel "does not need permission to stay in Lebanon" and would hold its "security zone" there "for as long as necessary, until Hezbollah is disarmed." A US military delegation is due in Beirut within days to set up the first "pilot zones" for a phased withdrawal, and President Aoun, invited to Washington on 21 July, pressed for pressure on Israel to halt its demolitions and comply with the framework. Türkiye moved to weigh in too: Erdoğan will host Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam in İstanbul on Friday, with Ankara signaling support for Lebanon's "territorial integrity and sovereignty."