On the morning of November 27th – the one-year anniversary of the ceasefire agreement between Lebanon and Israel – the BBC News website published a report by Beirut bureau correspondent Hugo Bachega which was originally headlined “’This is no life’: Security and long-held views shattered in Lebanon amid Israeli strikes”.
That headline was later amended to read “Year after ceasefire, peace eludes south Lebanon as Israeli strikes continue”.
Bachega opens his report with a description of an incident that took place on the evening of November 21st: [emphasis added]
“Last Friday, at around 19:00, an Israeli air strike hit a car in a village in southern Lebanon called Froun. This part of the country is the heartland of the Shia Muslim community, and for decades has been under the sway of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia militia and political party. On streets, banners with the faces of fighters killed in battle hang from lamp-posts, celebrating them as “martyrs of the resistance”.
I arrived in Froun an hour after the strike. Rescue workers had already removed the body parts of the only casualty – a man who was later described as a “Hezbollah terrorist” by the Israeli military. Despite a ceasefire deal that came into force last November, ending the latest war with Hezbollah, Israel has continued with its bombing, almost every day.”
Notably, even though a week had gone by since that strike, Bachega was unable to inform BBC audiences that the target was named by Hizballah on the same evening as Ahmad Mohammad Ramadan or that he was given a military funeral which was attended by Hizballah MP Hassan Ezzedine.
Later in his article, Bachega reports on another trip (also featured in an Instagram reel) that he made to southern Lebanon on November 20th: the day after the IDF exposed terrorist infrastructure in the village of Beit Lif which is located not far from the border with Israel and next to a UNIFIL compound.
Notably, Bachega does not explain to BBC audiences why he needed a terrorist organisation’s permission to travel to the southern part of a supposedly sovereign country.
“Last week, Lt Col Avichay Adraee, the Arabic spokesman for the Israeli army, published on social media a warning for the Lebanese village of Beit Lif: Israel had detected “dozens of terrorist infrastructures” belonging to Hezbollah, and would act to remove any threat. Worried that an attack could be imminent, residents made a public appeal, late at night, for Lebanese soldiers to be deployed.
I visited Beit Lif the following morning. (To travel to southern Lebanon, we had to inform Hezbollah’s media office in Beirut; the group did not interfere in our reporting.) The village had a pre-war population of around 8,000; now, less than a third remains.”
While Bachega’s account promotes denials of Hizballah assets in the village from its mayor and “a man called Haider”, he fails to inform readers of an important part of that story: the fact that the IDF’s announcement stated that it had already reported some of the Hizballah sites in Beit Lif to the international mechanism overseeing the ceasefire, but the issues were not addressed.
Bachega later tells readers that:
“I drove on to the border village of Yaroun. From there, I could see a concrete wall that Israeli soldiers had recently built inside Lebanon. The authorities say this is another Israeli violation of the ceasefire agreement, and a breach of the country’s sovereignty.”
No mention is made of the fact that Israel has stated that the wall does not cross the Blue Line.
The point of Bachega’s long 1,874-word article is however not only to report on his trips to southern Lebanon but to persuade BBC audiences that it is Israel that is violating the terms of the year-old ceasefire agreement. His description of that agreement includes the following:
“The ceasefire in Lebanon ended 13 months of war that killed 4,000 Lebanese and 120 Israelis. Israel and Hezbollah have been fighting for decades, and this conflict started when Hezbollah began firing rockets and missiles at Israeli positions a day after Israel launched its massive military response to the Hamas-led attacks on 7 October 2023.”
As was the case in one of his previous reports, Bachega does not inform his readers that the majority of the “4,000 Lebanese” killed were members of Hizballah or other terrorists organisations. According to the INSS, the number of Israeli fatalities on the Lebanon front was 132 rather than 120. Interestingly, the term “Israeli positions” – with its obvious military connotations – only appeared in the third version of Bachega’s report and it clearly does not contribute to audience understanding of the fact that while on October 8th 2023 Hizballah did indeed launch unprovoked attacks on military sites, the thousands of attacks that followed also targeted civilians.
Regarding the ceasefire agreement itself, Bachega tells BBC audiences that:
“The truce, brokered by the US and France, required Hezbollah to remove its fighters and weapons from the south of the Litani river, about 30km (20 miles) from the border with Israel, and Israeli troops to withdraw from areas of southern Lebanon that they invaded during the war. Thousands of Lebanese soldiers would then be sent to areas that had been effectively under Hezbollah control.”
Notably, Bachega fails to clarify that the removal of Hizballah forces “from the south of the Litani river” is only the first stage of that agreement, which in fact requires the implementation of UN SC resolution 1701 (which is not mentioned at all in Bachega’s report) including the “disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon”.
Bachega continues:
“A year later, the Israeli military continues to occupy at least five hilltops in southern Lebanon and has carried out air and drone attacks across the country on targets it claims are linked to Hezbollah. Last Sunday, it killed the group’s chief of staff and four others in a strike on a building in the Dahieh district, outside Beirut.
Unifil, the United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon that operates south of the Litani, says Israel has committed more than 10,000 air and ground violations during the ceasefire. According to the Lebanese health ministry, more than 330 people have been killed in Israeli attacks, including civilians.”
Bachega apparently did not ask UNIFIL how many violations have been committed by Hizballah and other terrorist groups throughout the past year. The INSS puts that number at 1,520. Neither does he inform readers that over 370 terror operatives have been eliminated during the same period.
Hizballah’s efforts to rebuild its capabilities (with the aid of Iran) are presented by Bachega as solely an Israeli claim.
“Israeli officials say Hezbollah has been working to rebuild its military capabilities south of the Litani, which would be a violation of the ceasefire, and also tried to smuggle weapons into Lebanon while ramping up the production of explosive drones as an alternative to rockets and missiles.
So far, Israel has not made the evidence it says it has public.”
Incredibly – given UNIFIL’s long record of failure to enforce UN SC resolution 1701 – Bachega appears to consider that organisation a reliable source of information on Hzballah activities.
“A Unifil spokesperson told me they had not observed any military activity by Hezbollah or attempts to rebuild infrastructure. Hezbollah, too, rejects the Israeli allegations and says the terms of the ceasefire deal only apply to south of the Litani. There, it has not opposed the Lebanese army’s operations against its arsenal.”
Bachega then goes on to tell BBC audiences that Hizballah has not attacked Israel since November 27th 2024 – except for when it did.
“The group has not fired on Israel since the truce came into force, although it did launch several mortars that hit an Israeli army base in the disputed Mount Dov/Shebaa Farms area in the occupied Golan Heights in December, in response to what it said were repeated Israeli violations.”
In addition to that incident five days after the ceasefire came into effect, residents of northern Israel have experienced cross-border shooting and rocket attacks from areas still so much under Hizballah control that the BBC has to request permission from the terror group to visit them.
On the topic of the Lebanese state’s failure to disarm Hizballah one year after committing to doing so, Bachega tells BBC audiences that:
“Hezbollah’s arsenal, more powerful than that of the country’s own army, has long divided the Lebanese. Opponents accuse Hezbollah of dragging Lebanon into wars and of defending the interests of the group’s main backer, Iran. They see this as a unique opportunity to disarm it. But President Aoun, who is a former army chief, has refused to use force against Hezbollah, saying this could exacerbate sectarian divisions and lead to a civil war. If the authorities were not careful, Aoun said in April, “we’ll lead Lebanon to ruin”. […]
The army is expected to announce it has completed the disarmament of the group in the areas south of the Litani next month. The army, an intelligence officer told me, would then turn its attention to other parts of the country – Hezbollah’s presence is also significant in the Dahieh and the eastern Bekaa Valley. This will be a more challenging, and risky, mission without the group’s consent, and there is no timeline for that.”
While Bachega’s report does include a one-paragraph reference to a speech by Hizballah’s current leader in which he stated that the terrorist organisation “would “never” surrender its weapons”, he fails to provide BBC audiences with a realistic view of the LAF’s failure to disarm Hizballah or prevent its rehabilitation efforts to date.
Instead, Bachega’s chosen framing seeks to persuade BBC audiences that “peace eludes south Lebanon” only because Israel is hindering full implementation of the ceasefire’s terms.
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