By Deborah Haynes, security and defence editor 

Despite mounting calls from allies to cease fire, Israel’s march across its border into Lebanon felt the inevitable next step after days of punishing airstrikes.

The military has described its operation against Hezbollah as “limited, localised and targeted”.

Israeli forces will surely want to avoid a full-scale invasion, given their last ground war into Lebanon in 2006 was costly, difficult and ended in retreat.

This time, though, the momentum is with Israel following a two-week onslaught against the Iranian-backed paramilitary force. 

It began with a covert mission to destroy their communication devices and culminated in the death of their leader in an airstrike on Beirut.

It means Hezbollah’s ability to command any effective counterattack against Israel will have been severely undermined.

Israel will be wanting to exploit the chaos to fight as hard as it can to achieve its stated goal of pushing Hezbollah forces back from the border in southern Lebanon, and take out all militant positions to prevent the group from being able to fire rockets into northern Israel.

Hezbollah stepped up rocket and drone attacks against Israeli targets in the north the day after the 7 October Hamas atrocities against Israel in the south.

The escalating threat prompted Israel to evacuate around 60,000 of its civilians from towns, villages and small farming communities that dot the northern border.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has now vowed to create conditions for them to be able to return.

But Hassan Nasrallah, the long-standing Hezbollah leader who was killed in an airstrike last Friday, had vowed to prevent Israel from achieving its goal days before his death. 

It means if Hezbollah is able to reorganise its ranks, Israeli forces will face significant resistance on the ground, while the rest of Israel could come under a much more intense barrage of missile strikes.

Yet Israel is looking and sounding supremely confident after its ramping up of attacks against Hezbollah and other Iran-aligned groups has yet to trigger an overwhelming return of fire.

Tehran in particular has so far been muted as it considers how to react to a series of escalations by Israel, which could well spiral into all-out regional war depending upon the Iranian response.

But the Iranian regime will be all too aware that such an eruption – while devastating for everyone – could put its very survival under threat. 

If Israel believes it can achieve its war goals with a limited ground invasion into Lebanon alone, it will surely not seek to overstretch its hand given the potential for new fronts erupting elsewhere at this hugely volatile time.