The Israeli military said Monday that forces operating in the Israeli buffer zone in Lebanon were targeted by an "explosive drone" launched by Hezbollah, while Israel also kept up strikes in Lebanon and withheld 590 million shekels, about $198 million, in taxes and customs duties it collected on behalf of the Palestinian Authority. The same day, the military said an Israeli soldier and three reservists entered southern Lebanon's Bint Jbeil for non-operational purposes, and that the commander of the Givati Brigade facilitated their entry without authorization from the appropriate command levels. The incident is under investigation.
Who Gets Hit First
According to the Israeli military, the drone detonated adjacent to the soldiers in the buffer zone and no injuries were reported. The military also said its forces killed armed militants while operating in the Israeli buffer zone in Lebanon, saying Golani Brigade troops engaged in "close-quarters combat" before a drone struck and killed them. These are the kinds of details that arrive from the top of the chain of command: soldiers, reservists, commanders, and military statements describing the violence as if it were a managed procedure rather than a system grinding through people on both sides of the border.
The Israeli military began carrying out strikes in Lebanon's east on Monday, saying it was striking Hezbollah infrastructure in Lebanon's eastern Beqaa Valley as well as areas in southern Lebanon. Security sources said strikes hit near the town of Nabi Chit, near Lebanon's eastern border with Syria. Israel also continued to strike Lebanon, including airstrikes in the Al-Shaara area in the eastern Beqaa Valley and in the village of Toulin in southern Lebanon, and Lebanon's National News Agency reported an additional Israeli strike in the Tyre region.
What the Command Structure Calls Order
In a separate update, the Israeli military said an Israeli soldier and three reservists entered southern Lebanon's Bint Jbeil for non-operational purposes, and that the commander of the Givati Brigade facilitated their entry without authorization from the appropriate command levels. The incident is under investigation. That is the language of hierarchy policing itself: unauthorized movement, command levels, and an internal review after the fact. The structure remains intact while the paperwork catches up.
Meanwhile, a senior Hezbollah military official said in an interview with Al Jazeera that the group intends to "use 1980s-era tactics" and deploy squads of "suicide fighters" to prevent, as he described it, Israel's entrenchment in the area. He said, "large groups of suicide fighters are deployed in the occupied area according to pre-prepared plans," and that their mission is to "confront officers and soldiers of the enemy in the occupied Lebanese villages." Those words describe a conflict already shaped by occupation, military entrenchment, and the logic of armed blocs speaking over the people living in the middle.
The Money Trail and the Pressure Below
The coercion is not only military. In a separate report, Israel is withholding 590 million shekels, about $198 million, in taxes and customs duties it collected on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Monday. According to a ministry statement, 590 million shekels, about $198 million, of the 740 million shekels, about $248 million, in funds to be transferred from Israel to the PA this month were diverted under Smotrich's direction to cover what Israel described as the authority's debts to the electric company, water and environmental corporations. Israel also said some of the funds were earmarked by the PA for "terror groups."
Israel has withheld funds from the PA intermittently since 2019, but has tightened its restrictions since Smotrich began his tenure as finance minister, and more so since October 7, 2023. Smotrich said, "We will not transfer funds that ultimately reach terrorists who harm Israeli citizens. Our policy is clear: every shekel intended to encourage terrorism or hostile activity will be deducted and stopped." The statement lays out the logic of financial punishment dressed up as policy, with the Palestinian Authority left to absorb the consequences.
In February, Palestinian Finance and Planning Minister Estephan Salameh warned the PA would face extreme fiscal difficulties throughout 2026 and was confronting the most severe economic crisis since its establishment. According to Salameh, the authority's dire financial situation is a result of the Israeli authorities' continued refusal to transfer tax revenues and customs duties collected on their behalf. That is the cost of the arrangement for people below: withheld revenue, deepening crisis, and another layer of control enforced through the apparatus of collection and denial.
Separately, Lebanon's president said, "what we are doing is not betrayal, but the real betrayal is by those who lead their country to war for external interests." He said his goal is to end the state of war with Israel, similar to a cease-fire agreement, while emphasizing that any deal should include an Israeli commitment not to carry out military strikes against targets in Lebanon. The statement sits beside the ongoing strikes, the drone attack, and the border incursions, all of it unfolding under the familiar promise that the next agreement will finally restrain the machinery already in motion.