Context
On September 19, 1994, the village came under attack and was hit with Israeli flechette-filled shells that killed 4 civilians, and wounded another four.
The attack was one of several incidents in mid April 1996 which occurred shortly after Israel announced the execution of Operation Grapes of Wrath on the 11th of that month. In these instances, Israeli helicopter missiles killed Lebanese civilians. On the 13th, an Israeli Apache helicopter, after hovering for several minutes over the Shiite village of Mansouri 8 kilometres from the Israeli border, fired a missile at an ambulance as it was passing a UN checkpoint. The vehicle was carrying 13 people, aware of Israeli requests that villages in the south evacuate their residents, who were fleeing. 4 children and two women were incinerated. It later stated that the village ambulance, [lower-alpha 1] either was a vehicle owned by a member of Hezbollah or was hiding one of its guerillas, a claim denied by Robert Fisk who interviewed eyewitnesses on the site soon afterwards. [lower-alpha 2] Hezbollah retaliated the following day by firing 81 Katyusha rockets into Israel, 28% of the total it launched during the Israeli operation.
On the 18th of April, Israeli artillery opened fire on the Shiite and Catholic Melkite village of Qana, killing 106 people in what became known as the Qana massacre. In other incidents that week, an Israeli helicopter pilot fired a missile at a car near the Jieh power station driven by a young woman who had just stopped to buy a sandwich. In West Beirut a two-year-old girl was decapitated by another missile.
Attack
The village of Nabatieh Fawka, 20 miles north of Qana, is located on a stretch of hills 3 km north of the Nabatieh city. The Al Abed had family moved there since it seemed a relatively safer location, out of the way of the IDF and the South Lebanon Army. The father, Hassan, was absent at the time, since he had departed to perform the Hajj in Mecca. [14]
Around 5 AM, IDF helicopters were flying over the area. At 6:30, they fired rockets at the two-story house where the family was sleeping, completely demolishing it. They also hit two other buildings, causing severe damage. Initial reports from the Lebanese Army stated that 11 civilians had been killed, including a four-day-old infant.
Aftermath
Shortly after the attack, the IDF released a statement claiming that it was a "response to a Hezbollah attack in the security zone". Investigations by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch found no evidence that Hezbollah was hiding in the building.
Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres blamed the civilians for staying in Nabatieh, saying that they should have left earlier.
The IDF attack on the UNIFIL compound in Qana, leaving 106 civilians dead, took place later on the same day.
Operation Grapes of Wrath concluded shortly after this last attack. In 16 days, Israel carried out 600 air strikes and fired some 25,000 shells into Southern Lebanon, resulting in the death of 154 civilians and a further 351 injured.
The incident has been cited in a recent study of media bias in reporting conflicts in the Middle East.
The Qana massacre took place on April 18, 1996, near Qana, a village in Southern Lebanon, when the Israel Defense Forces fired artillery shells at a United Nations compound. The artillery barrage had been launched to cover an Israeli special forces unit after it had come under mortar fire launched from the vicinity of the compound and radioed a request for support. Of 800 Lebanese civilians who had taken refuge in the compound, 106 were killed and around 116 injured. Four Fijian United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon soldiers were also seriously injured.
Operation Grapes of Wrath, known in Lebanon as the April Aggression, was a seventeen-day campaign of the Israeli Defense Forces against Hezbollah in 1996 which attempted to end rocket attacks on Northern Israel by the organisation. Israel conducted more than 1,100 air raids and extensive shelling. A UNIFIL compound at Qana was hit when Israeli artillery fired on Hezbollah forces operating nearby. 639 Hezbollah cross-border rocket attacks targeted northern Israel, particularly the town of Kiryat Shemona. Hezbollah forces also participated in numerous engagements with Israeli and South Lebanon Army forces. The conflict was de-escalated on 27 April by a ceasefire agreement banning attacks on civilians.
On July 25, 1993, Israeli forces launched a week-long attack against Lebanon named Operation Accountability in Israel and the Seven-Day War in Lebanon. Israel specified three purposes to the operation, to strike directly at Hezbollah, to make it difficult for Hezbollah to use southern Lebanon as a base for striking Israel, and to displace refugees in the hopes of pressuring the Lebanese government to intervene against Hezbollah. The affected civilian population included both Lebanese and Palestinian refugees.
This is a timeline of events related to the 2006 Lebanon War.
The Israeli–Lebanese conflict, or the South Lebanon conflict, is a series of military clashes involving Israel, Lebanon and Syria, the Palestine Liberation Organization, as well as various militias and militants acting from within Lebanon. The conflict peaked in the 1980s, during the Lebanese Civil War, and has abated since.
The South Lebanon conflict, designated by Israel as the Security Zone in Lebanon Campaign, was a protracted armed conflict that took place in southern Lebanon from 1985 to 2000. It saw fighting between Israel and the Catholic Christian-dominated South Lebanon Army (SLA) against Hezbollah-led Shia Muslim and left-wing guerillas within the Israeli-occupied "Security Zone"; the SLA had military and logistical support from the Israel Defense Forces over the course of the conflict and operated under the jurisdiction of the Israeli-backed South Lebanon provisional administration, which succeeded the earlier Israeli-backed State of Free Lebanon. It can also refer to the continuation of the earlier conflict in this region involving the growing Palestinian insurgency in South Lebanon against Israel following the expulsion of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from Jordan after Black September. Historical tensions between Palestinian refugees and Lebanese factions contributed another layer to the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990), which saw the Maronite-led Lebanese Front and the Shia Amal Movement at war with the PLO. Hence, the South Lebanon conflict can partly be seen as an extension of the civil war that ended in 1990.
The 2006 Qana airstrike was an airstrike carried out by the Israeli Air Force (IAF) on a three-story building in the small community of al-Khuraybah near the South Lebanese village of Qana on July 30, 2006, during the 2006 Lebanon War. The strike killed 28 civilians, 16 of whom were children. Israel halted airstrikes for 48 hours following the attack, amid increasing calls for a ceasefire in the conflict between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas.
The 2006 Lebanon War, also called the 2006 Israel–Hezbollah War and known in Lebanon as the July War and in Israel as the Second Lebanon War, was a 34-day military conflict in Lebanon, northern Israel and the Golan Heights. The principal parties were Hezbollah paramilitary forces and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The conflict started on 12 July 2006, and continued until a United Nations-brokered ceasefire went into effect in the morning on 14 August 2006, though it formally ended on 8 September 2006 when Israel lifted its naval blockade of Lebanon. Due to unprecedented Iranian military support to Hezbollah before and during the war, some consider it the first round of the Iran–Israel proxy conflict, rather than a continuation of the Arab–Israeli conflict.
The 2006 Ghaziyeh airstrikes also referred to as the 2006 Ghaziyeh massacre were two sequential attacks by the Israel Air Force (IAF) on the city of Ghaziyeh in Lebanon on August 7, and August 8, 2006. The attacks took place during the 2006 Lebanon War. In the first attack on August 7, the IAF bombed a building killing 16 people. In the second attack on August 8, the IAF fired five missiles into three buildings killing a total of 8 to 14 civilians and wounding 33. A total of 26 to 30 civilians died in the attacks.
Hezbollah has a military branch and is the sponsor of a number of lesser-known groups, some of which may be little more than fronts for Hezbollah itself. These groups include the Organization of the Oppressed, the Revolutionary Justice Organization, the Organization of Right Against Wrong, and Followers of the Prophet Muhammad.
The 2000–2006 Shebaa Farms conflict was a low-level border conflict between Israel and Hezbollah for control of Shebaa Farms, a disputed territory located on the Golan Heights–Lebanon border. Fighting between the two sides primarily consisted of Hezbollah rocket and mortar attacks on Israel and Israeli artillery barrages and airstrikes on Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Clashes began a few months after the 2000 Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, which Hezbollah viewed as incomplete due to the presence of the Israel Defense Forces in Shebaa Farms. The conflict culminated in the 2006 Lebanon War; Israel retains control over the territory.
During the 2006 Lebanon War, allegations of war crimes were made by various groups and individuals, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and United Nations officials, who accused both Hezbollah and Israel of violating international humanitarian law. These have included allegations of intentional attacks on civilian populations or infrastructure, disproportionate or indiscriminate attacks, the use of human shields, and the use of prohibited weapons.
Force Mobile Reserve (FMR) was a multi-national, mechanized, high-readiness military reserve force, established in 1987, and able to react to incidents anywhere in the United Nations Interim Force in the Lebanon (UNIFIL) area of operations.
Events in the year 1996 in Israel.
The Iran–Israel conflict during the Syrian civil war refers to the Iranian–Israeli standoff in and around Syria during the Syrian conflict. With increasing Iranian involvement in Syria from 2011 onwards, the conflict shifted from a proxy war into a direct confrontation by early 2018.
The Mansouri attack occurred on 13 April 1996, when an Israel Defence Forces helicopter attacked an ambulance in Mansouri, a village in Southern Lebanon, killing two women and four children.
On 8 October 2023, the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, taking advantage of the Israel–Hamas war, fired guided rockets and artillery shells at Israeli positions in the disputed Shebaa Farms. Israel retaliated by launching drone strikes and artillery shells at Hezbollah positions near Lebanon's boundary with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The outbreak of the conflict had followed Hezbollah's declaration of support and praise for the Hamas attack on Israel, which took place on 7 October. Clashes subsequently escalated to reach other parts of the Israel-Lebanon border and onto Syria and the occupied Golan Heights. It is currently the largest escalation of the Hezbollah–Israel conflict to have occurred since the 2006 Lebanon War.
This is a chronological timeline of the Israel–Hezbollah conflict since October 2023.
