This Associated Press timeline says the Israel-Hezbollah war is far from the first clash between the two sides, describing an enmity that has stretched back more than four decades and has repeatedly moved between periods of fighting and tense calm.
The timeline begins in 1982, when Israel invaded Lebanon during an offensive against the Palestine Liberation Organization and allied groups. It says Hezbollah was then formed with Iranian backing, modeled on Iran’s Islamic Revolution, to fight Israel’s ensuing occupation of southern Lebanon, and it says the group launched a guerrilla war against Israel.
It then traces changes in Hezbollah leadership: in 1992, the timeline says Abbas Mousawi was killed by an Israeli helicopter attack, and it says Mousawi’s successor was Hassan Nasrallah, who would lead Hezbollah for roughly the next three decades.
The AP timeline also highlights 1996, when Israel launched an offensive aimed at pushing Hezbollah north of the Litani River, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the border. It describes Israeli artillery shelling on a United Nations compound in Qana that housed hundreds of displaced people, saying it killed at least 100 civilians and wounded scores more.
Another major shift came in 2000, when the timeline says Israel withdrew its forces from southern Lebanon after a long war of attrition. It says that withdrawal was heralded around the Arab world as a major victory for Hezbollah.
In 2006, the timeline describes a cross-border raid in which Hezbollah fighters ambushed an Israeli patrol, killing three Israeli soldiers and taking two hostage, which it says sparked a monthlong war that ended in a draw. It adds that Israeli bombardment razed villages and residential blocks in southern Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs, describing it as a scorched-earth approach dubbed the “Dahiyeh Doctrine.”
The timeline further notes significant operations targeting Hezbollah leadership and involvement in other conflicts. It says that in 2008, Hezbollah’s military chief Imad Mughniyeh was killed when a bomb planted in his car exploded in Damascus, and it says the assassination was blamed on Israel. In 2012, it says Hezbollah entered the Syrian civil war in support of then-President Bashar Assad, and it says that in subsequent years Israel carried out periodic airstrikes in Syria targeting Iranian and Hezbollah facilities and officials, or weapons shipments that it said were bound for Hezbollah.
The timeline then moves to the more recent regional escalation that preceded renewed Israel-Hezbollah fighting. It says that on Oct. 8, 2023—one day after the Hamas-led attack in southern Israel that sparked the war in Gaza—Hezbollah fired missiles across the border. It says Israel responded with airstrikes and shelling and that the two entered into a low-level conflict that initially remained mainly confined to the border area.
The AP timeline describes major changes in 2024. It says that on Sept. 17, 2024, Israel launched an attack in Lebanon using remotely triggered explosive-laden pagers issued to Hezbollah fighters and civilian employees, and it says that a day later a similar attack targeted walkie-talkies. The timeline says those attacks killed dozens of people and maimed thousands, most of them Hezbollah members but also including women and children.
It also says that on Sept. 27, 2024, Hassan Nasrallah was killed in a series of massive airstrikes in Beirut’s southern suburbs. Later, on Nov. 27, 2024, it says a U.S.-brokered ceasefire nominally ended the Israel-Hezbollah war, while adding that Israel continued regular strikes in Lebanon aimed at stopping Hezbollah from rebuilding.
Finally, the timeline reaches the current renewed round of hostilities. It says that on March 2, 2026—two days after Israel and the U.S. attacked Iran—Hezbollah launched missiles toward Israel, saying the salvo was in retaliation for the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and for “repeated Israeli aggressions” in Lebanon.
The Associated Press note says the story was first published on Apr. 9, 2026, and it was updated on Apr. 30, 2026, to correct the date of the start of the most recent conflict between Israel and Hezbollah: it is March 2, 2026, not March 2, 2025.