VIDEO: Israel moves troops into Lebanon

ADAM HARVEY, REPORTER: Lebanon's domestic refugees are scattered across Beirut. 

BASMA ALLOUSH, INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE:   These are families displaced. This is a waterfront area.

ADAM HARVEY: Sheltering where they can, on open ground and in the city’s schools. 

BASMA ALLOUSH:   This is the kind of living room, living space, and the bedroom is over there.

Talking about water and, and basic infrastructure, these, many of these shelters are in, you know, they're schools, they're football stadium. It's, they're not intended for people to live there for a long time. 

ADAM HARVEY:  This is what they're escaping. 

Israeli attacks on the city’s crowded southern suburbs, home to many of the city’s Shia Muslims, where support is strongest for Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia. 

The war erupted on March 1 when Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel after the assassination of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei.

The Hezbollah and Iranian attacks continue daily keeping Israelis close to their bomb shelters. 

Yesterday, Benjamin Netanyahu was out and about reassuring citizens that victory is close. 

WOMAN:  The IDF will win and we will keep ourselves safe.

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAELI PRESIDENT:  Excellent, this is exactly, you said it best. The public understands the issue.

ADAM HARVEY:  As well as bombing Beirut, the Israeli military is now pushing into southern Lebanon.

As it attacks, locals are told to move north. So far, around 800,000 people have been displaced.   

SAMI NAIDER, SAINT JOSEPH UNIVERSITY, BEIRUT:  What is really concerning if this continue to escalate, that means that more infra infrastructure would be targeted. And this comes at a very wrong moment for Lebanon.

ADAM HARVEY:  Lebanon has been in cascading crises since 2020. 

First COVID then an explosion at the city’s port devastating central Beirut and a currency collapse and hyper-inflation.

BASMA ALLOUSH:  There, you know, there's an economic crisis going on in the country. People's savings have been depleted because this is likely their second time being displaced. So right now, we're in a very fragile situation.

ADAM HARVEY:  And now, war. 

SAMI NAIDER:  And this war can really be the tipping point that is threatening the very exist, very existence of this country.

ADAM HARVEY: Lebanon’s government has promised to disarm Hezbollah 

The nation's new Prime Minister, elected last year, had taken a huge risk by speaking against the militia. 

NAWAF SALAM, LEBANESE PRIME MINISTER (subtitled):  The immediate prohibition of all Hezbollah’s security and military activities as being outside the law and obliging it to hand over its weapons to the Lebanese state.

SAMI NAIDER:  And this is unprecedented. However, the implementation does not match the, the talk.

ADAM HARVEY:  The problem Hezbollah is arguably more powerful than the state.   

SAMI NAIDER:  And this window of opportunity for the Lebanese government to assert its own control has vanished. And now, Hezbollah decided to launch this missile and to Israel in support of Iran. And now Israel is trying to dismantle Hezbollah through its own means. 

AMIN SAIKAL, MIDDLE EAST ANALYST:  I think what basically the Israeli operations doing, they're weakening the position of the Lebanese government further. And if there is a collapse of the government, and then I think that grounds will be ripened for another round of civil war. That's not really going to benefit anybody.

ADAM HARVEY:  The last Lebanese power vacuum led to a vicious 15-year civil war marked by the massacre of civilians, an explosion of international terrorism and an Israeli invasion and long occupation. 

AMIN SAIKAL:  Israel had done it before. They had done it in 1982, and then they get it 2006 and so on and in the past, they've not been terribly successful. And then finally, Israeli is, are withdrawn. But at this time, it looks like that Israel is determined to remain in occupation of Southern Lebanon,

ADAM HARVEY:  That would not be in Israel's interests, said Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli diplomat. 

ALON PINKUS, FMR ISRAELI DIPLOMAT:  And so, an Israeli military occupation in the south of Lebanon, uh, would achieve nothing other than turn Israeli soldiers into sitting ducks, as was the case until Israel withdrew in May of 2000.

ADAM HARVEY:  He believes Benjamin Netanyahu does not plan to leave troops in Lebanon for long.

ALON PINKUS:  No, no. But, but then again, every occupation in Lebanon began with what the government declared would be a very limited in scope and duration operation, and then ended up being a defacto military occupation.

ADAM HARVEY:  This conflict carries a substantial risk for the Israeli Prime Minister who is facing both a corruption trial and parliamentary elections later this year.

ALON PINKUS:  It depends how it all ends. If this, if this becomes a war of attrition, again, if the northern part of Israel is constantly bombarded with missiles, rockets and drones, which is the case in the last 10 days and if the war in Iran stops, yet the war in Lebanon continues, then I can see his popularity plummeting.