Four weeks into the war, Israel's invasion of southern Lebanon is facing fierce resistance that it has struggled to break.
Despite more than 15 months of sustained airstrikes across Lebanon, entering the ground assault with control of at least five occupied strategic hilltop positions, and deploying tens of thousands of troops along the border, Israeli forces have made only minimal gains since launching their ground invasion.
What was presented in mid-March as a widening ground operation to "secure" northern Israel has instead produced slow, uneven movement, with advances measured in a few kilometres rather than anything close to a breakthrough.
The gap between Israel's stated goals and the reality on the ground is now shaping the war, with Hezbollah slowing the advance, targeting troops as they move, and turning the fight into a drawn-out confrontation that is forcing Israel to commit more forces without being able to hold significant ground, even as rockets continue to be fired from southern Lebanon into Israel.
In practice, this has meant limited advances carried out under heavy bombardment, with villages flattened before entry, only for troops to face ambushes, anti-tank fire, and sustained attacks on their positions that continue to slow their advance and, at times, force them to pull back.
Israeli officials, however, continue to frame the invasion as a "security" necessity, while Hezbollah presents its fighting as resistance to occupation, further reinforcing its argument for keeping its weapons .
With Israeli military censorship restricting reporting and Hezbollah actively shaping its own wartime narrative, the reality of what is happening in southern Lebanon remains obscured. So what is really happening on the ground? A stalled invasion The US-Israeli war on Iran expanded into Lebanon on 2 March, when Hezbollah launched rockets and drones into Israel after more than a year of sustained Israeli attacks on the country, prompting airstrikes and, days later, the announcement of a ground invasion aimed at establishing a "buffer zone" up to the Litani River - around 30 kilometres from the border.
Weeks later, that objective, which dates back to 1978 and Israel's long-running push to occupy land up to the Litani River under the guise of a "security buffer", is far from being achieved.
This comes after more than a year of near-daily Israeli strikes on alleged Hezbollah targets prior to 2 March, alongside a Lebanese government campaign to curb the group's presence in southern Lebanon. Authorities had declared the area south of the Litani free of Hezbollah and its weapons, with UNIFIL also reporting no Hezbollah presence there at the end of 2024.
Mariam Farida, a lecturer in security studies at Australia's Macquarie University who specialises in non-state armed groups and political violence, says Hezbollah has so far succeeded in containing the invasion.
"Hezbollah has been quite successful in trying to limit and stop any of the expansion of the ground operations," she tells The New Arab . "So far, they have been successful in terms of the Israeli army hasn't been able to advance - maybe around seven kilometres beyond the borderline."
Israeli reporting has similarly described advances of roughly seven to eight kilometres in areas such as Taybeh, with most other movements along the border, including at Houla, Kfar Shuba, Yaroun and Khiam, confined to shallow incursions of between one and six kilometres.
That these are still the kinds of figures being cited weeks into the invasion highlights how slow the advance has been, despite days of relentless bombardment, sweeping evacuation orders up to the Litani River, and the forced displacement of more than one million people, leaving large parts of the south open to Israeli military movement.
On the ground, Israeli forces have advanced under heavy air cover, flattening villages through scorched-earth bombardment before moving in. Even with that level of destruction, their advance has repeatedly been met with ambushes and anti-tank fire that have slowed them down and prevented them from holding ground.
The destruction has come at a high human cost, with Lebanese authorities reporting that Israeli attacks have killed more than 1,200 people since 2 March, including women, children, journalists, and medical workers .
Israeli media reports this week indicate that four divisions have been deployed to southern Lebanon, with initially the 91st, 146th, and 210th Divisions operating, and then the 162nd Armoured Division joining in late March.
Rather than accelerating the advance, however, this expansion appears to reflect mounting pressure on Israeli forces to reinforce positions and sustain operations in the face of continued resistance.
Lebanese military expert and retired brigadier general pilot Bassam Yassin describes a battlefield where progress exists, but remains constrained and costly.
"There is some [Israeli] field progress, no one denies that," he tells The New Arab . "But after 28 days of fighting, and 22 days of the ground battle, they still haven't been able to hold ground beyond [the southern village of] Taybeh, which is four kilometres from the border. That shows there are significant difficulties on the ground." A defence built on stalling advance Hezbollah's battlefield approach is not designed to stop Israeli forces from entering Lebanon altogether, but to shape how they move once inside, ensuring every advance is contested, slowed, and made costly.
Rather than defending from fixed positions, the group has shifted to a strategy of attrition, allowing Israeli forces to enter into areas before targeting them through ambushes and sustained attacks.
Military expert Bassam Yassin says the fighting has become increasingly decentralised across southern villages and terrain.
"In every village, in every alley, fighters are either confronting or attacking them from afar," he explains to TNA .
"The anti-tank factor is the main element in the battle. Hezbollah relies heavily on anti-armour weapons. Despite the new protection systems on Israeli tanks and interception measures, missiles are still hitting, and drones are now being used against them. They may not always destroy a tank, but they can injure the crew and affect its ability to operate."
This has played out in a steady pattern of ambush-style attacks and repeated targeting of Israeli armour and engineering units, often once positions are established.
According to Lebanese media, more than 100 Israeli tanks and vehicles have been targeted since the start of the latest confrontation, with multiple attacks reported in a single day at times. Analysis by L'Orient-Le Jour newspaper, which is critical of Hezbollah, also points to a sharp rise in operational tempo, with the group carrying out between 60 and 80 attacks per day, largely focused on Israeli forces advancing inside Lebanon.
Israeli authorities have confirmed that at least 10 soldiers were killed in separate incidents inside Lebanon between 7 and 30 March. No official overall figure has been released for wounded soldiers, though Israeli reports suggest at least 70 troops have been injured.
Rather than dispersing firepower, Hezbollah is concentrating it at the point of contact, disrupting movement, forcing redeployments, and preventing Israeli units from consolidating positions.
Yet even as Israel leans on its technological edge and intelligence capabilities, these advantages have not translated into clear gains on the ground.
"What they are trying to claim as military superiority is their technological advancement and intelligence gathering, including the ability to locate and assassinate high-level targets," says Farida.
"But in terms of tangible gains on the ground, I don't think they can yet claim to have established or maintained a buffer zone. Hezbollah rockets are still being fired into northern Israel, so it cannot be presented as a clear military success at this stage." Sustained fire and contested narratives Meanwhile, Hezbollah has also maintained sustained rocket fire into Israel, sometimes striking deep into central Israel. Israeli media reports indicate that more than 850 rockets have been launched since 2 March, mostly targeting border areas, and at times, in coordination with Iranian missile attacks on Israel.
At the same time, Israeli journalists have pointed to strict military censorship which limits reporting on casualties and battlefield developments. Journalists say they have received instructions not to publish details of strikes, damage or losses, while emergency services have reportedly been restricted from releasing information.
Unlike in past confrontations with Israel, Hezbollah has not been publishing figures on its casualties, with Israel alleging that more than 500 of its fighters have been killed since 2 March.
This has made it difficult to independently verify the scale of casualties, even as reports of helicopters evacuating wounded soldiers and rising injuries continue to circulate across both Lebanese and Israeli media.
"So when [Israel] talks about eliminating the threat, it's very much about whether they're talking about weakening or taming Hezbollah as a military power, or talking about eliminating them completely and dismantling the group completely, which is quite unrealistic now if we look at what's happening on the ground," Farida says.
She adds that both sides are shaping narratives to serve strategic and domestic purposes.
"Hezbollah has been able to reclaim its narrative as a resistance against Israeli expansion, and gain local legitimacy and credibility back from the Lebanese population," she says. "From the Israeli perspective, the narrative is about creating future security, but we still don't see how that translates into eliminating Hezbollah as a threat."
With competing claims, restricted reporting, and deliberate messaging on both sides, "it's really hard to keep track of what information can be relied on to understand how the conflict is unfolding", she says. A war of attrition with high costs for Israel As the ground invasion slows, and with Israel engaged in a multi-front war that began with strikes on Iran on 28 February, all while its war on Gaza continues , the broader costs are becoming more visible inside Israel.
The military has expanded its deployment to tens of thousands of troops, with additional divisions brought into the northern front and preparations underway for a much wider reserve mobilisation that could reach into the hundreds of thousands.
Financial strain is also mounting. Israeli estimates put the cost of the war at roughly one billion shekels per day (just over $316 million), with the defence establishment already requesting at least seven billion shekels (around $2.22 billion) in additional funding and warning that a deeper push into Lebanon could drive costs significantly higher.
Sustained Hezbollah rocket fire has placed northern Israel under continuous pressure, forcing residents into shelters for extended periods and prompting some to leave border areas. Israeli media report growing frustration among these communities, alongside protests against a "never-ending war".
"Hezbollah can very much last in a war of attrition," Farida says. "We've seen that before, in 2006, where it was able to continue to deter ground operations."
Rather than seeking a decisive confrontation, Hezbollah appears focused on prolonging the conflict and steadily imposing costs.
"They are trying to delay them as much as possible," Yassin says. "The longer Israeli forces stay on the ground, the more this turns into a war of exhaustion."
For now, these battlefield dynamics suggests that Hezbollah's strategy of slowing, disrupting, and outlasting is proving effective in denying Israel the quick results it had expected in its ground invasion of southern Lebanon. Sarah Khalil is a senior journalist at The New Arab