Israel carried out a series of airstrikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut, south Lebanon and the Bekaa valley early on Monday morning, striking buildings belonging to the Hezbollah-run banking institution Al-Qard Al-Hassan.
At least 10 airstrikes were carried out in the southern suburbs of Beirut, with an entire building collapsing and a jet of fire streaming into the air in the Chiyah neighbourhood of greater Beirut. A building close to Lebanon’s only commercial airport was also struck, video footage showing a smoke plume billowing while a nearby airplane sat on the runway.
“They struck empty buildings in residential neighbourhoods, and destroyed those surrounding neighbourhoods. These weren’t military centres or weapons caches,” Ma’an Khalil, the mayor of Ghobeiry municipality in the southern suburbs of Beirut, said.
Israel issued several warnings via X prior to the bombings, pinpointing buildings belonging to Al-Qard Al-Hassan in the southern suburbs of Beirut and across Lebanon, warning people to move at least 500 metres away from these buildings. Streets from the affected areas were soon choked with traffic as people fled in anticipation of Israeli bombing.
Al-Qard Al-Hassan has branches across Lebanon, with 15 in greater Beirut alone.
The strikes were part of what Israel said were efforts to dismantle Hezbollah’s financial system. The Israeli military said on Sunday night that Al-Qard Al-Hasssan finances Hezbollah and the group “uses this money to finance its terrorist activities”, including purchasing and storing arms.
The announcement that Israel would start targeting the bank, a part of Hezbollah’s civilian institutions, signified an expansion of the scope of Israel’s targets from just the group’s military wing.
The institution was sanctioned by the US in 2017 during the Trump administration for giving Hezbollah access to the international financial system, according to the US Treasury.
Al-Qard Al-Hassan was founded in the early 1980s as a charitable institution, part of Hezbollah’s robust social services network.
The banking institution became more popular after Lebanon’s 2019 financial crisis, when commercial banks froze almost all accounts and almost entirely stopped issuing loans. Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese people, primarily Shia Muslim, bank with Al-Qard Al-Hassan, many of them giving the bank familial assets such as gold in exchange for loans.
According to Lina Khatib, the director of the Soas Middle East Institute, though Al-Qard Al-Hassan is not the main way in which Hezbollah manages the finances of its social network, the potential loss of the institution would be a “significant blow”.
“If this gold is destroyed, Hezbollah’s constituents expect that it will be able to compensate them for their loss. For the time being, the level of trust that Hezbollah’s constituency has in the group remains high despite its huge losses,” Khatib said.
Shortly after the strikes, Hezbollah announced that it had launched rockets at a groups of Israeli soldiers in al-Malakiyah and Markaba, south Lebanon. Intense fighting between Israeli soldiers and Hezbollah fighters stretched on from Sunday into Monday morning, as Israel continued to conduct cross-border incursions into south Lebanon.
Israel has said it is trying to degrade and destroy Hezbollah’s infrastructure and capabilities along the border. Its progress is unclear, as the border areas have been virtually depopulated and media access is limited.
Top US envoy Amos Hoschstein is set to return to Beirut on Monday morning to meet with the speaker of Lebanon’s parliament, Nabih Berri, and the country’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati. Berri negotiates on behalf of Hezbollah, as the US does not have diplomatic contact with the group it classifies as a terrorist organisation.
Hochstein is expected to push for full implementation of UN security council resolutions 1701 and 1559, which call for Hezbollah’s withdrawal north of the Litani river – about 18 miles from the border – and the disarmament of the militia.
Hezbollah has previously rejected being pushed back from the border, but unprecedented losses for the group have reportedly softened its stance as it seeks a ceasefire with Israel. Almost all of its senior military leadership and its former secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, have been killed by Israel in the last three months.
More than 2,400 people have been killed and more than 11,530 wounded in Lebanon since the Gaza war began in October last year.