Israel launched a fresh series of attacks on southern Lebanon on Monday, striking multiple towns with airstrikes, artillery, and phosphorus shells just hours before scheduled negotiations between Israel and Lebanon are due to begin in Washington on Tuesday — killing at least five people and sending a sharp signal about the conditions under which Tel Aviv intends to enter those talks.
The Lebanese National News Agency reported that the attacks hit the towns of Bazouriyeh, Nabatiyeh El Faouqa, Sir El Gharbiyeh, and Choukine. Five people were killed in the strikes. The IDF separately confirmed it destroyed a Hezbollah tunnel in southern Lebanon, describing the underground infrastructure as having been used by the group to organise for terrorist activity against Israeli forces.
The use of phosphorus shells is the detail in this attack that will draw the sharpest international attention. White phosphorus is a incendiary weapon that burns at extremely high temperatures and causes severe injuries. Its use in populated areas is prohibited under Protocol III of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, and its deployment in civilian-adjacent zones has consistently drawn condemnation from human rights organisations and international bodies. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have previously documented Israeli use of white phosphorus in Lebanon and Gaza, and Monday’s NNA report of phosphorus shells in southern Lebanese towns will accelerate calls for accountability that were already building given the scale of Israeli strikes since the conflict began.
The timing of the attacks — less than 24 hours before Israel and Lebanon are scheduled to sit across a table in Washington — reflects a deliberate Israeli posture that Netanyahu has maintained throughout the ceasefire period. The Israeli Prime Minister declared that Israel would strike Hezbollah wherever necessary, the Defense Minister stated Israel would not withdraw from southern Lebanon without security guarantees for northern Israeli residents, and the IDF has continued operations at what it describes as a reduced intensity following US pressure — but reduced intensity, as Monday’s strikes and five fatalities demonstrate, still means live fire, civilian casualties, and phosphorus weapons in Lebanese towns.
Lebanon had demanded a ceasefire before any talks with Israel could begin. The Washington negotiations were arranged despite rather than because of that precondition being met — the international community, led by the United States, pressed both sides to the table on the calculation that talks under fire were better than no talks at all. Monday’s strikes test that calculation directly. Arriving in Washington having just struck four Lebanese towns with phosphorus shells and killed five people is not a posture designed to create goodwill in a negotiating room, and Lebanese officials will face significant domestic political pressure to respond to those optics before the talks begin.
For the ceasefire, Monday’s Israeli strikes add to the accumulated list of provocations that Iran has used to justify maintaining its grip on the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian Armed Forces spokesperson declared earlier on Monday that Iran would implement a permanent Hormuz control mechanism and warned that no port in the Gulf or the Gulf of Oman would remain secure if Iranian ports were endangered. Israel striking Lebanese towns with phosphorus weapons on the eve of Washington talks gives Tehran exactly the kind of justification it needs to maintain that maximalist posture and, if it chooses, to claim that the ceasefire’s conditions have been violated before the Islamabad talks have produced any agreement.
Over 1,500 people have been killed in Lebanon since the conflict escalated, and more than one million Lebanese nationals — roughly a sixth of the country’s population — have been displaced. Monday’s five deaths bring the human toll of a conflict that was supposed to be paused by a ceasefire into the negotiating rooms of Washington before the first handshake has been exchanged.
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