Will Israel's troops take over more of southern Lebanon?

The Israeli army has now told locals in Tyre several times that they should evacuate the southern Lebanese city, previously home to over 100,000 people as well as around 10,000 displaced from surrounding areas. But her father and other members of her family are staying, says Lily, a community worker from Tyre.

Lily, who didn't want to give her full name for security reasons, is now living with friends in the Lebanese capital Beirut. But when she can, the 29-year-old returns to Tyre to deliver medicine and food.

"Tyre is a ghost town," she tells DW. Since early March, ongoing Israeli aerial attacks have seen successive waves of locals leave. Drone and artillery attacks on Tyre are continuing this week, with Israel saying it is targeting the Lebanese militant group despite the new ceasefire between Iran and Israel.

"Three weeks ago, you had one pharmacy opening here every two or three days, then closing for security," Lily continues. "There are some grocery shops open but you can count them on one hand. And it's hard to get supplies in. Nobody wants to come to Tyre by road because it's risky."

Never-ending anxiety

Sometimes the Israeli military warns it will target a certain building, Lily says, "but then they actually hit four buildings. Or the building they warn about won't be hit for a week. So, there's no specific timing and it keeps everybody anxious as they don't know what's happening."

Other times, Israeli forces won't even warn of a strike, she adds. On Sunday, a historic family home belonging to a close friend, located near an area in Tyre classified by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, was completely destroyed.

"There was no warning but luckily, there was nobody there," Lily said, adding that her friend, a 32-year-old who previously volunteered with the Red Cross, had actually been in the process of moving to France for a new job. The main casualties were a dozen cats the family had been taking care of.

"She's devastated," Lily says. "We're all devastated. And we're asking why. Because, you know, there were no military targets there. Unless cats are now considered military targets."

Some of the other questions Lily says a lot of people in southern Lebanon are asking are: whether they will ever be able to return to their homes, how long Israeli armed forces will stay in their country, and whether the army might even push further into Lebanon.

In March, Israel's defence minister Israel Katz said locals won't be able to return to southern Lebanon until "the safety and security of northern Israeli residents are guaranteed."

Israel has marked a "yellow line" in southern Lebanon it says marks a security buffer zone set up to protect its citizens from attacks by Hezbollah. The line is about 10 kilometres (6 miles) from the border. But there have been reports of Israeli soldiers operating beyond the yellow line and Lebanon's Litani river, for the first time since 2006. Besides Tyre, Israel also recently issued evacuation orders for another southern city, Nabatieh, which is also beyond the yellow line.

Shift from limited border defence

At the end of May, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he wanted troops to "deepen and expand" their hold on Lebanese terrain. The Israeli government has previously stated it wants "freedom of operation" in Lebanon, although experts say this mostly refers to air strikes.

All this signals "a shift from limited border defence to a strategy of territorial control and deterrence," experts at the US-based risk consultancy, the Institute for Applied Geopolitics, argued in a June briefing. "The operation's scale and symbolism evoke Israel's 1982 occupation, suggesting a potential re-establishment of a long-term security zone."

In fact, Israeli armed forces have not even gone that deep into Lebanon, counters Yossi Kuperwasser, head of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security and a former chief of the Israeli army's research division.

"The depth into Lebanon that the military wants to go, and the government has agreed to go, is about 10 kilometres from the border — so that our communities on the southern side of the border are immune from direct fire from anti-tank missiles," Kuperwasser tells DW.

There is a debate about whether to go further into Lebanon, the retired army chief concedes. "We pay a heavy price for drones almost on a daily basis, we have some casualties, so this may affect the debate," he says. "But so far, there's no new decision that I know of [to go beyond the yellow line]."

Still, he adds, the people of southern Lebanon are right to be worried: "Because the more pressure that is put on Israel, the more Israel will reconsider that policy."

Security zone, or territorial expansion?

Right now, the Lebanese are not too worried about "an Israeli occupation stretching all the way to Beirut," says David Wood, senior Lebanon analyst at the International Crisis Group think tank. "That said, Lebanese do fear that Israeli troops might push further into new areas of southern Lebanon, such as Nabatieh."

"I think a big part of what's going on right now is that they [the Israelis] recognise they have freedom of action," suggests H.A. Hellyer, a senior fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies in London and the Center for American Progress in Washington. "But they know that this freedom of action is not going to be permanent, not with the Trump administration necessarily, and definitely not with whoever comes afterwards. So, I think they're using this particular period to draw some new lines in the sand, to create these sort of security zones."

Although Israeli forces did pull out of one town in southern Lebanon last week, Hellyer says that recent history shows Israeli security zones often turn into permanently occupied or annexed territories. He points to the Golan Heights in Syria and Netanyahu's recent comments about controlling 70% of Gaza as examples.

That doesn't mean nothing can be done to rein in Israeli forces in Lebanon though, both Hellyer and Crisis Group's Wood argue. Mainly this would involve countries like the US and others, including Germany.

"They wouldn't even need to negatively sanction the Israelis," Hellyer argues. "They just need to say, 'We're not going to support this anymore'."

"As Israel's key ally, the US should pressure Israeli leaders to observe a genuine ceasefire, then begin withdrawing and allow the Lebanese army to enter and assert control," Wood argues. Israel's buffer zone plan in southern Lebanon isn't working anyway, he points out, because Hezbollah has continued to launch drones and rockets at Israel and inflict casualties on Israeli soldiers.

Lily, who was displaced from Tyre city, also doesn't believe Israeli plans for her hometown will work out, but for different reasons.

"I've spoken to so many people here and they all say they want to return home," she tells DW. "After all, this isn't the first time we've been invaded or occupied, it's not the first time we've been displaced, or lost a loved one or our homes. So, we will rebuild. Because that's the mentality of the people of the south. We're resilient and this is our land."