Hezbollah forces crossed the Israel–Lebanon border and attacked Israeli military positions while firing rockets and mortars at Israeli towns, sparking a five-week war.

Hezbollah is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and paramilitary group. Hezbollah's paramilitary wing is the Jihad Council, and its political wing is the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc party in the Lebanese Parliament. Its armed strength was assessed to be equivalent to that of a medium-sized army in 2016.

The Blue Line is a demarcation line dividing Lebanon from Israel and the Golan Heights. It was published by the United Nations on 7 June 2000 for the purposes of determining whether Israel had fully withdrawn from Lebanon. It has been described as "temporary" and "not a border, but a “line of withdrawal”. It is the subject of an ongoing border dispute between Israel, Lebanon, and Hezbollah.

The 2006 Hezbollah cross-border raid was a cross-border attack carried out by Lebanon-based Hezbollah militants on an Israeli military patrol on 12 July 2006 on Israeli territory.

The 2006 Lebanon War was a 34-day armed conflict in Lebanon, fought between Hezbollah and Israel. The war started on 12 July 2006, and continued until a United Nations-brokered ceasefire went into effect in the morning on 14 August 2006, though it formally ended on 8 September 2006 when Israel lifted its naval blockade of Lebanon. It marked the third Israeli invasion into Lebanon since 1978.