Inside Israel’s ground offensive in Lebanon

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Near the point where Israel, Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea meet, Israeli soldiers were patrolling a forest when they spotted something strange—a small patch of green paint on a tree.

It was a tipoff that led troops to find what Israeli officers said was one of hundreds of hide-outs that Hezbollah had built along the border to prepare for an incursion into Israel. Inside the shallow bunker were combat boots, fatigues, a small device for getting solar electricity and an explosive comprising eight interconnected mines that Israeli officers said could be used to blow up the border wall for militants to go through.

In the two weeks since Israel sent troops en masse into Lebanon for the first time in 18 years, soldiers are scouting hilly forests and often-deserted villages, engaging in close combat with Hezbollah, and occasionally walking into ambushes. Their goal, Israeli officials said, is to find and destroy bunkers and other military infrastructure that Hezbollah developed over many years to facilitate its own ground maneuver into northern Israel.

Israeli officials describe the operation as limited to removing the border threat and thus allowing the tens of thousands of Israelis evacuated from northern Israel to return to their homes. “It’s about a sense of security," an Israeli official said.

“We need to show our citizens that we’re destroying infrastructure close to the border." In the process, they are reshaping the swath of southern Lebanon on the border, cutting new roads into the mountainsides for troops and bulldozing homes they say were used by Hezbollah, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. Tens of thousands of people have been displaced from southern Lebanon and more