Introduction
The Israeli war on Gaza between 2023 and 2025 arguably sparked one of the most significant regional Arab-Israeli escalations since the 2006 war in Lebanon and 2014 war in Gaza (Al Jazeera English, 2024f; Khoury, 2025a; 2025b; Popalzay et al., 2025; Lob et al., 2025). It led to the involvement of multiple regional actors including Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen (Al Jazeera English, 2024f; Khoury, 2025a; Popalzay et al., 2025). The involvement of these actors eventually led to Israel launching a wide-scale war in Lebanon, a short war in Iran, and two attacks on the Arab gulf state of Qatar (Lob et al., 2025; Khoury, 2025b). Given the continuous major occurrences that affected the region from the Levant to the Persian Gulf from 2023 to 2025, understanding the context and the series of events leading up to the eventual Israeli war on Lebanon is thus crucial and highly relevant to this paper.
On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched an attack on Israel which killed 1,200 people and hundreds of hostages were taken (Reuters, 2025a). The attack was followed by an ongoing war on Gaza that has so far resulted in the killing of more than 66,005 Palestinians (Al Jazeera English, 2025e). On September 16, 2025, the UN commission found that Israel had committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza (OHCHR, 2025). The day following the initial attack, on October 8, 2023, Hezbollah fired rockets in Israel in support of Hamas (Reuters, 2025a). This led to Israeli bombardment of southern Lebanon and the displacement of tens of thousands of people, despite neither Israel nor Hezbollah formally declaring war (Reuters, 2025a).
Since then, Israel has launched multiple attacks targeting Hamas and Hezbollah officials in Lebanon. One of the most significant strikes occurred on September 17, 2024, when Hezbollah experienced one of the largest cyberattacks in its history (Reuters, 2025b). The attack occurred through explosive-bugged pagers and walkie-talkies that killed nine people and injured 3000 (Reuters, 2025b). The attacks, described as a “crime” by Lavazza and Farina (2024), were executed without controlling the consequences as children were killed and injured. The pagers also exploded in crowded civilian places such as hospitals, streets and shops (Lavazza & Farina, 2024). These attacks were “an unprecedented use of civilian technology as a weapon of war,” (Lavazza & Farina, 2024, p. 68). Moreover, the pager attacks caused a sense of insecurity in Lebanese society regarding everyday communication devices (Back, 2025)
On September 23, 2024, a week after the pager attacks, Israel launched a wide-scale attack on Lebanon, which lasted until the signing of the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hezbollah on November 26, 2024, which went into effect on November 27, 2024 (Reuters, 2025b). According to the Lebanese ministry of health, the war resulted in the killing of approximately 3,823 and the injury of 15,859 others (MOPH, 2024). Despite signing the ceasefire deal, Israel has continued to strike Lebanon and kill civilians in violation of the agreement and of international law, which UN experts have repeatedly warned about (OHCHR, 2025).
Purpose and Significance of the Study
A high volume of studies have examined the media framing of various events and wars occurring in the Middle East, especially the recent Israeli war on Gaza 2023 – 2025 (Elmasry, 2024; Michilot & Sanchez, 2025; Muharam, 2024; Abdullah, 2025; Ab, 2025; Tarek, 2025; Grimm et al., 2025; Satkhed et al., 2025; Jebril, 2025; Bejermi & Nilsson, 2025; Noori, 2025; Guta & Eissa, 2025). On the other hand, across the high volume of studies on the Israeli war in Gaza, Lebanon has received extremely limited academic interest, as demonstrated by the search that yielded very limited results, especially with the latest incidents in Lebanon including the pager and walkie-talkie attacks and the last war in 2024. Some studies appeared on the media framing and representation of the 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon, but much of the literature on that specific war were published years after the war, with the most significant study being published by Melki (2014), 8 years after the war (Shinar, 2009; Ringrose, 2011; Melki, 2014; Parry, 2010; Cooper, 2007; Kalb & Saivetz, 2007; Schwalbe & Dougherty, 2015; Hoewe et al., 2012; Cavari & Gabay, 2014; Elbaz & Bar – Tal, 2016; Harb, 2009). Similarly, no studies to this day have investigated the media framing or representation of neither Western nor Arab media of latest Israeli war in 2024, despite the geopolitical significance of Lebanon that heightened since Hezbollah joined the war immediately after Israel launched a genocidal war on Gaza (Reuters, 2024a).
This paper aims to address a significant gap in Lebanon-focused research, in this case the Arab media framing of the recent Israeli war on Lebanon which took place from the from September 23 until the signing of ceasefire deal on the 27th of November 2024. Furthermore, this study employs framing theory as pioneered by Goffman (1974), Tuchman (1978), Gitlin (1980), and Entman (1993), accompanied by contemporary interpretations by more recent scholars such as Semetko and Valkenburg (2000), Reese (2001; 2007), Scheufele (2000), D’Angelo (2002), de Vreese (2005) and Brugman (2025). With framing theory as a basis, qualitative framing analysis, based on Alozie’s (2005) inductive approach to framing analysis, is further utilized to explore the dominant frames present in Al Jazeera Arabic and Al Arabiya’s coverage and reporting on the war (As cited in Lindstrom & Marais, 2012). This approach will also observe how Arab politics and foreign policy affect the media framing of Lebanon, especially during war and conflict.
Conclusion and Limitations
Al Jazeera Arabic and Al Arabiya’s coverage of the Israeli war in 2024 revealed polarizing results with the dominance of the Humanitarian Consequences, Attribution of Responsibility, and Victory/Defeat frames. Some frames were present only in AJA – the Martyrdom frame – and other only in Al Arabiya – the Security justification and Culture frames. AJA generally framed the war as an Israeli aggression and attributed responsibility to Israel for starting the war and causing human suffering, death, and destruction. Al Arabiya, however, while it did not deny Israel’s responsibility, it tended to hold Hezbollah responsible for triggering Israel due to the opening of “Support front” for Gaza and dragging Lebanon into a war. With caution and without full endorsement, AJA would often refer to Hezbollah as a resistance group, while Al Arabiya portrayed it as an Iranian proxy. The end of the war and ceasefire agreement was depicted within a victory and defeat framing where AJA portrayed Hezbollah as the winner and Israel as defeated, while Al Arabiya depicted the latter as the winner and Hezbollah as defeated. The findings of this study illustrated highly similar results to AJA’s and Al Arabiya’s framing patterns during the 2006 war as concluded by Kalb and Saivetz (2007), Melki (2014) and Saber (2016).
The study was subject to multiple limitations. The original research intent was to study the Lebanese media coverage of the war and compare different Lebanese media outlets, like Melki’s (2014) state-of-the-art analysis which not only included Lebanese media, but also Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, as well as US and Israeli media. Faced with data restrictions and the inability to acquire full data of some Lebanese media outlets, whether articles or news reports, a practical decision was made to analyze Al Jazeera Arabic and Al Arabiya, due to the ability to access the data, and because it was feasible for a single researcher. The second limitation was the inability to conduct interviews with Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya news executives and editors due to time and geographical constraints.
There were additional limitations concerning research design and sample. The sample unit of analysis consisted only of the textual elements of the articles. The analysis of the visual aspect – photos used in each article – was not possible as it would have required a more complex methodological approach. Furthermore, with the existing gap in the literature, and the previous studies analysis reports from Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya (Elmasry et al., 2013; Melki, 2014; Kalb & Saivetz, 2007; Saber, 2016), the discussion was limited to general conclusions of the channels’ reporting of the 2024 war and previous wars and conflicts involving Israel.
These results, while consistent with previous similar studies, nevertheless raise new questions on their continuity after the recent developments in the Arab region. During the writing of this dissertation, Iran attacked Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain (Nereim & Desoukie, 2026). And with the renewed escalation between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon (Al Jazeera English, 2026), it is crucial to further examine Al Jazeera’s coverage and portrayal of Israel, Iran and Hezbollah and their reporting of the conflict and comparing the two time periods. It is also important to examine Al Arabiya’s reporting and whether the negative portrayals of Iran and Hezbollah have increased or remained the same.
Building on the theoretical contributions of this study, future research could examine the Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya framing of the 2026 Hezbollah-Israel conflict in Lebanon, as well as the Iranian attacks on the Arab Gulf states, especially Qatar, with consideration given to including mainstream Lebanese media outlets in the comparative analysis.
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