00:02Just behind us is southern Lebanon, just beyond where that concrete barrier is.
00:07You can see the outskirts of a Lebanese village there in the very far south of the country.
00:12That is Kefar Kila, although you'll see that a lot of that village, certainly on this side
00:17of it, has already been destroyed.
00:20That is remnants of previous conflicts in this part of the world in the last short while.
00:25This is the view from Matula in the very far north of Israel, a stretch of land that is
00:32surrounded by Lebanon on three sides, to the north, the east and the west.
00:37While we are here, you might be able to hear it at the moment, there is some pretty intense
00:40gunfire coming from over the other side of that ridgeline.
00:45It's just died off a little bit there.
00:46But we've also heard in the last short while explosions from airstrikes that are clearly
00:52happening over in the Lebanese side of this border.
00:56And that coincides with a warning that the IDF put out a couple of hours ago, demanding
01:02that everyone in southern Lebanon, a vast swathe of Lebanon, evacuate the area and move north
01:09of the Latani River.
01:10This is a natural line that has regularly been used in this conflict between Israel and Hezbollah
01:17as the sort of marker for Hezbollah's territory in the south.
01:22That is going to affect hundreds of thousands of people if they adhere to it.
01:26And we have spoken to people in some of the Lebanese villages inside that zone.
01:32And they are certainly saying that they are not going to be abiding by that message.
01:36They are holding firm and that this is their land.
01:39They are not going to be moving even with this threat of Israeli strikes.
01:43More gunfire just going off behind us at the moment.
01:47Pretty significant there.
01:48We know that this is an area that Israel has tried to operate in before.
01:53You can see the scars of previous conflicts there as well.
01:57Matula itself is very, very quiet at the moment.
02:00There hasn't been an evacuation order from Israeli authorities.
02:04But clearly people have left fearing what is to come and what they have seen throughout
02:08the course of the day so far with multiple alarms going off, multiple drones going off,
02:13sending people into shelters there.
02:16We did come across one local who explained what the situation was.
02:19I am sure that also the Lebanese do not want Hezbollah.
02:26They don't want them, just as the Gazans do not want Hamas.
02:29They just cause harm.
02:31Like the Houthis and in Yemen.
02:33Nobody understands why Iran arms them.
02:35Ammunition and money.
02:36And the people of Iran are poor.
02:38Poor people.
02:40Some critics of Israel would be arguing that it has used this situation with Hezbollah weighing
02:46into this broader regional conflict between the US, Israel and Iran.
02:51There's quite a large explosion there from some shelling or some strikes that are happening
02:56in that direction at the moment.
02:58But yes, critics potentially arguing that Israel has been waiting for an excuse to again push
03:04back into Lebanon given that for the last year and a bit there has been a ceasefire technically
03:10enforced between Israel and Hezbollah since late 2024.
03:14But there have been repeated strikes by Israel into Lebanese territory against claimed Hezbollah
03:20targets.
03:20Things like weapons stockpiles, tunnel networks and even attempts to kill senior officials there.
03:27That's not to excuse anything that Hezbollah has done here in firing rockets at Israel over
03:32the last couple of days.
03:33But it does provide some context as to how we've gotten to this point.
03:37And there is speculation in the Israeli media that even if this broader regional conflict
03:42starts to calm down, that the US calls time on its strikes in Iran, this front which has
03:47opened up just beyond these hills over here could drag on for much, much longer.
03:52So thank you.
Comments