Days after the pager and radio explosions in Lebanon Which resulted in dozens of deaths and hundreds of injuries, the escalation between Lebanese Hezbollah andIsrael At its peak, Beirut was on a date with a series of air raids, and returned Its southern suburb To the Israeli targeting center.
The suburb witnessed a difficult week, as only a few days had passed since the assassination of the two Hezbollah leaders. Ibrahim Aqil andAhmed Wahbi Until Israel announced a new raid in an attempt to assassinate the leader. Ali KarakiBut the next day came with a raid in the Ghobeiry area that killed the commander Ibrahim Qabisi.
The targeting of the southern suburb of Beirut takes us back to the time of the operation. Al-Aqsa Flood On October 7, 2023, and especially the attack on the Ghobeiry area, to the war on Lebanon in 2006, which raises the question of what makes this area a target for Israeli bombing.
Hezbollah's incubator
The area, which is inhabited by about one million people, lies between the coast of Beirut The southern part and the beginning of Mount Lebanon, which is administratively affiliated to it, and was previously known as the “Southern Matn Coast.”
It houses the residences of a number of Shiite scholars and party leaders, and the buildings, riddled with bullet holes and graffiti reading “Death to America,” reflect the history of wars and tensions that the region has witnessed, making it a direct target for Israeli attacks.
Its strategic importance lies in the presence of Beirut International Airport within its scope, and its most important areas are: Shiyah Ghobeiry, Burj al-Barajneh, Haret Hreik, Bir al-Abd, Hay al-Salam, al-Laylaki, al-Ouzai, al-Marija, and Tahwitat al-Ghadeer.
The suburb witnessed stages of increased Iranian influence, the most prominent of which was the summer of… 1982The Israeli invasion played a major role in the formation and establishment of the Lebanese Hezbollah, which emerged as a major resistance force against the Israeli occupation.
Since then, the chapters of the strategic relationship between this organization and the southern suburb of Beirut, which has become a security, political and cultural stronghold for it, have begun to consolidate.
Suburb doctrine
Residents of Beirut's southern suburbs still carry horrific memories of the July 2006 war, when the area was repeatedly bombed and destroyed following the Israeli invasion.
On the 12th of that month, Hezbollah fighters launched a cross-border attack, killing 8 Israeli soldiers and capturing 2. The party demanded that they be exchanged for prisoners and detainees in Israeli prisons.
But Israel responded with a comprehensive war, starting with a naval blockade and intensive air strikes, then a ground invasion. The battles lasted for 33 days, during which between 300 and 800 Hezbollah members, 43 members of the Lebanese army and security forces, more than a thousand Lebanese civilians were killed, thousands were wounded on both sides, and 121 Israeli soldiers and 44 civilians were killed.
In contrast, the extent of the destruction inflicted by Israel on Lebanon was great, and from it emerged in 2008 what was known as the “Suburb doctrineAs a special strategy of killing and destruction invented by the occupation in response to its steadfastness.
The Suburb and the Flood
During the Al-Aqsa flood, eyes turned to it again, as it was the only resistance media platform outside Palestine, and from it the spokesman for the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) would go out every day to document the events.
During the time of the flood, the suburb was also under the eyes of the occupation, watching for its targets. It was waiting for spies and eyes to tell it what was hidden from it so that it could carry out its crimes. Its plane was ready, loaded with destructive missiles that would make the walls of its modest houses collapse, so it got what it wanted, and succeeded many times.
During the past few days, the suburb has once again returned to the forefront of the political and military scene in Lebanon, as it has become a target for Israeli raids in which leaders have been martyred.
Targeting Saleh al-Arouri
On January 2, 2024, Hamas announced the assassination of Saleh al-Arouri and two leaders of the Qassam Brigades, following an Israeli drone attack that targeted a building housing the movement’s office in the southern suburb of Beirut.
Al-Arouri was the second man in the movement. agitation Deputy Head of the Movement's Political Bureau since 2017, and contributed to the establishment of Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades The military wing of the movement.
He spent 18 years in the occupation prisons. Israel accused him of being behind many operations carried out by the resistance in West Bank.
Al-Arouri was placed on the US list of “global terrorists” in 2015, and the US State Department offered up to $5 million in 2018 for information about him through its “Rewards for Justice” program.
Harik attack..and the assassination of Fouad Shukr
On July 30, 2024, the Israeli army announced the assassination of military commander Fouad Shukr in a raid on the Haret Hreik building in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
Regarding this assassination, the Israeli Minister of Defense said: Yoav Galant The Israeli army “eliminated” what it described as Hezbollah's Chief of Staff, Fouad Shukr, in a “deadly and precise” operation in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
Galant added in a post on the X platform that by assassinating Shukr, “we confirmed today that we are able to reach every place in order to make those who harm Israel pay the price,” as he put it.
Shukr is a senior advisor to Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, and the party's first central military official since its founding.
The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth described Shukr as “the actual supervisor of the party's confrontation with Israel since Operation Flood.”
Al-Qaim attack.. Ibrahim Aqeel and Ahmed Wahbi
Last Friday, September 20, Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari announced that the air force had carried out a precision strike in Beirut targeting a Hezbollah military meeting, assassinating Ibrahim Aqil, head of Hezbollah’s operations division, and a number of leaders of the operations division. Radwan Unit.
Hezbollah announced the killing of Ahmed Wahbi, Ibrahim Aqil and 14 fighters by two Israeli missiles launched by a drone. F-35 On an apartment in the buffalo area in Southern Suburb to Beirut
Aqil was the commander of the Radwan Force, Hezbollah's elite unit, and a leader in Hezbollah's Jihad Council, its highest military body.
The US Treasury Department classified him on the US list of terrorist suspects in 2005, and as a global terrorist in 2019, and offered a reward of $7 million for anyone who provides information about him.
As for Ahmad Wahbi, the leader in Hezbollah, he joined the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon Since its establishment, it has participated in a number of military operations in the south of the country.
He was entrusted with the responsibility of training the Radwan Force from 2012 until 2024, and led the force’s military operations on the Lebanese support front with the announcement of the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Flood, and following the martyrdom of the party’s leader Wissam Al-Tawil, he assumed responsibility for the Central Training Unit until his assassination.
Madi neighborhood attack and attempted assassination of Ali Karki
Yesterday evening, Monday, the Israeli occupation army announced that it had targeted the leader Ali Karki in an air strike on the “Madi neighborhood” in the Beirut suburb, but Hezbollah announced that Karki was fine and had been transferred to a “safe place.”
Israeli raids also targeted Bir al-Abd in the Beirut suburb, killing and wounding dozens.
Israeli media sources say that Karaki, the commander of Hezbollah's southern front, is the third military commander in Hezbollah after Fouad Shukr.
The Israeli Army Radio described Karki as the most prominent military figure in Hezbollah after the assassination of Fouad Shukr and Ibrahim Aqil.
Israel had attempted to assassinate Karkie in February 2024 in the town of Nabatieh, but the car it targeted was camouflaged and he was not in it.
Ibrahim Al Qubaisi
Yesterday afternoon, Tuesday, in a manner similar to the assassination of Fouad Shukr with F-35 aircraft, the occupation army targeted a building in a residential neighborhood in the Ghobeiry area in the heart of the densely populated southern suburb of Beirut.
Hours later, Hezbollah mourned the commander of the missile system, Ibrahim Qubaisi, following this attack, in which 6 people were killed and 15 others were injured.
The party said in a statement that the leader Ibrahim Muhammad Qubaisi, nicknamed “Hajj Abu Musa,” who was born in 1962, “ascended as a martyr on the road to Jerusalem,” a phrase the party uses to refer to its fighters who fall to Israeli army fire.
Thus, the suburb is shaking off the rubble of nearly two decades to appear as it was in 2006, a command center and a haven for resistance, and it also appears as an inexhaustible target bank for the occupation army, in which it makes no distinction between civilians and fighters, as everyone is equal under bombardment.