An Israeli airstrike on the evening of Feb. 15 struck a vehicle near the Syrian border in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley, killing at least four people, Lebanon’s public health ministry emergency operations centre reported. The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) said the strike targeted members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in the town of Majdal Anjar, but provided no further operational details.
Majdal Anjar sits in the Bekaa, a fertile but politically fragmented region long used as a staging ground by various armed groups. The valley’s proximity to Syria and its patchwork of militias and refugee communities make it a sensitive fault line: strikes there carry a heightened risk of drawing in additional actors or prompting local reprisals.
The attack illustrates a persistent pattern of cross-border operations by Israel against perceived militant threats inside Lebanon. While Israel frequently cites security imperatives in striking armed groups on its northern flank, such operations underscore the limits of Lebanese state control in border areas and the volatility of a theatre crowded with proxies and patrons.
The targeting of PIJ is significant because the group, though smaller than Hezbollah, is an Iranian-backed Palestinian faction that has carried out cross-border attacks in the past. Action against PIJ in Lebanon will be watched closely by Hezbollah and by regional backers such as Iran, both of whom have incentives to respond if they judge an attack to threaten their networks or prestige.
For Beirut, the strike compounds political and humanitarian pressures. Lebanon’s government and security forces have limited capacity to prevent militias from operating near the border, and repeated Israeli action risks further destabilising border communities already strained by displacement and economic collapse.
The immediate military consequences are unclear: the IDF announced the raid but released no follow-up intelligence, and there have been no public claims of retaliation at the time of writing. Still, the strike reaffirms the ever-present risk that localized hits — even those aimed at small groups or individual targets — can cascade into wider confrontations in a region where alliances and grievances run deep.