Since Israel’s strike on Iran, a particularly virulent set of attacks and counterattacks have flared at the Lebanese-Israeli border.

An Israeli soldier looks on at a scene, after it was reported that people were injured, amid ongoing cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, near Arab al-Aramashe in northern Israel April 17,

Eli Harel was an Israeli soldier in his early 30s when he was sent into Lebanon in 2006 to battle fighters from the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah in a bloody, largely inconclusive, month-long war.

Hezbollah began attacking northern Israel on Oct. 8 to support Hamas, whose rampage killed some 1,200 Israelis and was soon to provoke an armed response. Yet by attacking Israel, Hezbollah embroiled itself in a war of attrition that it neither envisioned nor wanted.