Exclusive: Inside Hezbollah’s battle for Bint Jbeil and Khiam
For weeks, Israel bombarded Bint Jbeil and Khiam, repeatedly attempting to encircle the southern Lebanese towns. Yet neither fully fell to Israel’s invading military.
The survival of these Hezbollah redoubts, which have long carried symbolic and strategic weight, exposed the limits of what Israeli firepower is able to achieve in south Lebanon, and the strategic power the terrain holds for its defenders.
Three sources close to Hezbollah, including one intimately familiar with the battles in the south, described to Middle East Eye how Israel was unable to dislodge the Lebanese armed movement.
They say the Israeli military advance did not just run aground in the face of fierce armed resistance.
Israeli troops were foiled by the terrain itself, the realities of urban warfare and the political and military significance of the targets that their leaders set themselves.
Read more: Exclusive: Inside Hezbollah’s battle for Bint Jbeil and Khiam
Destroyed buildings in Bint Jbeil, southern Lebanon, as seen from the Israeli side of the border in northern Israel, 13 April 2026 (Reuters/Florion Goga)