Raya Jalabi

It was a very strange day because most of Lebanon woke up that morning quite hopeful that there was some kind of ceasefire in the making.

But everything seemed eerily quiet.

And then just after two o'clock, I was sitting at home and you hear this raft of missiles literally flying overhead and then massive explosions all across the city.

And we've grown quite used to this, unfortunately.

But what was so shocking is the intensity and the ferocity of those strikes.

We've never had so many come simultaneously in that way.

And pretty soon we started to realize that Israel has struck a number of targets.

around the country, including one attack on a funeral processions.

You also had attacks on aid distribution centers where people had been gathering medicines to distribute to displaced residents of southern Lebanon.

In Beirut itself, in the capital, you had attacks that collapsed entire residential buildings in densely packed neighborhoods.

I mean, it depends who you ask.

Israel will say that they had been planning this operation and seized at a moment to strike more than 100 Hezbollah targets across the country.

But for the Lebanese, it was a lot murkier.

I mean, I think especially the attacks on these densely packed residential and commercial areas didn't really make sense to many.

And I think many people in Lebanon, certainly ones that I spoke to on the day as I went around interviewing residents of the city, they said that they felt like Israel was passing along a message, that it was saying that there may be a ceasefire with Iran, but that doesn't include Lebanon, and that Israel would continue to attack Lebanon as much as it wanted, wherever it wanted.

In the days after Iran was attacked by the US and Israel, its proxy forces in the region, including Hezbollah, decided to launch their own attacks in support of Iran.

So in Lebanon, that looked like Hezbollah launching dozens of projectiles across the border at Israel.

Now, Hezbollah has always been the crown jewel in Iran's regional proxy forces.

So when it became clear that Lebanon would not be included in the ceasefire that was brokered between the US and Iran...

Then Iran was predictably quite upset and it became a key sticking point in the negotiations between Washington and Tehran.