The Israeli military this week began a "limited" and "localised" deployment of ground troops in Lebanon as its conflict with militant group Hezbollah continues to escalate.

The last time Israel launched a ground offensive over the border of its northern neighbour was in a bloody and unsuccessful 33-day campaign in 2006, which the government admitted ended "without its clear military victory".

What happened in the 2006 war?
The last Israeli incursion into Lebanon was a "debacle", said Al Jazeera. Airstrikes decimated Lebanese infrastructure and civilian life, while Israeli ground troops were left "bogged down in fierce fighting". A total of 121 Israeli soldiers were killed and 20 tanks destroyed after Hezbollah fighters laid "carefully prepared ambushes".

The 2006 war ended only when both sides adopted a United Nations Security Council resolution that called for the disarmament of Hezbollah and the full withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) from southern Lebanon. 

What is Israel doing differently this time?
The Israeli government has long considered Lebanon to be its "primary foe", said Foreign Policy, and in 2019 created "revised plans" for a "rapid destruction of the group's military capabilities in the event of a future conflict".

The IDF has also seemingly changed its approach to ground incursion since 2006, with the current "nature and scale of troops and tanks" on the ground indicating it could be eyeing a "longer invasion" that avoids the bloody stalemate of 2006, said Al Jazeera.

What about Hezbollah?
Lebanon has remained a priority for the IDF and Israel's Mossad intelligence agency since the war ended in 2006. Hezbollah is better armed than ever and has been firing rockets into Israel since late 2023 in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza. And while Israel has long planned how it would defeat the group on its home turf, Hezbollah has also not been idle since the last war.

Hezbollah has spent the "last 18 years" preparing "tunnels and positions in solid rock", said Jeremy Bowen at the BBC, and now has a "formidable arsenal". Unlike Hamas, it is not isolated from supply lines, and while much of its communications have been hampered, the Lebanese group is "obdurate, well-armed and angry" and will find a way to fight back against Israeli forces.

Phillip Schofield has returned to the small screen for what will either be the "first seeds of a television comeback" or the "incontrovertible death knell of his career", said Stuart Heritage in The Guardian. "Honestly, at this point it's hard to tell which way it's going to go."

It's been a year and three months since the "This Morning" presenter was sacked by ITV, following the highly publicised scandal of his extramarital affair with a much younger showrunner. Now, he's back on television – this time marooned alone on a remote island off Madagascar for 10 days in a three-part Channel 5 special, "Phillip Schofield: Cast Away".

'Main character syndrome'
Whatever your opinion of Schofield, said Heritage, you have to "grudgingly admit" that some parts of the new show are "pretty entertaining". Schofield is "frank and funny and self-effacing about his lack of survival instinct". It feels "almost like nothing ever happened" last year.

Actually,  said Ed Power in The Irish Times, his "self-absorption is exhausting and makes for wearying entertainment". Schofield seems to be suffering from a "chronic case of main character syndrome"; instead of letting things go and taking the chance to "find peace" on the remote island, he continues to "stew with resentment".

'Performance of a lifetime'
While Schofield discusses the fallout from the scandal in detail, he skims over the "particulars of his behaviour", said Louis Chilton in The Independent. Scenes filmed with his family feel like a "PR exercise", attempting to reposition him as a "benevolent victim of a cruel and pernicious hate campaign", and the inclusion of his reflections on coming close to suicide "feel rather calculated".

It's a "compelling" watch, said Anita Singh in The Telegraph, but "not for the reasons Schofield had hoped". "Castaway" is a "revealing study" of an "entitled TV star" struggling to come to terms with his life without the "adulation and stardom" to which he had become accustomed.

The timing of the show, shortly after Huw Edwards pleaded guilty to making indecent images of children, could "work in Schofield's favour, and afford a bit of perspective", said Carol Midgley in The Times. "Revenge is a dish best served cold, they say. Let's see if it also works when served under a hot Madagascan sun."

"I can't, in any ordinary sense, recommend Yariv Mozer's 90-minute Storyville documentary, 'Surviving October 7th: We Will Dance Again'," said Rachel Cooke in The New Statesman. "It will destroy you; sleep was impossible for me afterwards."

The film – part of a collection marking the anniversary of the terror attacks against Israel – includes mobile phone videos from festival-goers, interviews with survivors and Hamas bodycam footage, telling the story in "visceral detail", said Rachel Aroesti in The Guardian. It unfolds "much like a disaster movie" – one young woman "passes out inside the airless fridge where she cowers for hours", while a man is forced to hurl back a live grenade thrown inside the shelter where he is hiding. 

There are "countless things that the film opts not to discuss". The delayed response from Israeli authorities following the attack is "barely" mentioned, and the documentary provides "almost no context" about the wider conflict. While the footage included is "graphic and extremely disturbing", the film fails to "convey all the dimensions of the atrocity that occurred that day".

For some viewers this may be a "problematic omission", but the film's goal is "very clear": it shines a light on the experience of the "utterly defenceless" Israeli citizens at the Nova music festival that day, "and it does so unflinchingly, exhaustively and movingly".

For anyone planning to view Storyville's upcoming sister film, "Life and Death in Gaza", this is an essential watch, said Jasper Rees in The Telegraph. "And, it should go without saying, vice versa."

Our students are being failed in every way
Alice Thomson in The Times
"Pity the poor students traipsing off to university" and then "realising" they "may never meet a professor", writes Alice Thomson. Instead, some will "log into lectures from their bedrooms and have 24-hour online exams with little adult contact", while "accumulating vast debts". Universities "need to play their part if they are to deserve more tuition fee and taxpayer cash" and sixth-formers should "know that in return for their tuition fees they will receive an invaluable boost to their career".

This might be Donald Trump's most dangerous speech yet
Emma Clarke for The Independent
"Whenever Donald Trump talks", says Emma Clarke, it feels like "a dystopian movie is playing out", but his latest speech was "even darker than usual". The former president told supporters in Pennsylvania that to combat crime, he would allow law-enforcement units to use "extraordinarily rough" tactics over "one really violent day… and I mean real rough". Though we are "weary" of his "sensationalist spiel", we "run the risk" of his "fanatics thinking these awful threats will go unchallenged".

The Tory delusion
Rachel Cunliffe for New Statesman
The mood at the Conservative conference is "cheerful, upbeat even", in part because "now the worst has happened, the party can relax for a bit", writes Rachel Cunliffe. They are also "telling themselves" that there is "an easy – or at least a straightforward – way back from the wilderness". There is "delusion in the relaxed, magnanimous, we-barely-have-to-try vibe" and "if losing an election is like losing a loved one" then "the party is still in denial".