Since then, 1,072 people have been killed in Lebanon, according to the Lebanese health ministry, including at least 121 children and 42 health workers.
More than a million people have been displaced, worsening an existing humanitarian crisis in Lebanon.
Israeli officials say the aim is to protect communities in northern Israel from Hezbollah attacks.
Israeli residents had returned to towns in the region after the ceasefire. For around a year and a half before that, they had been unable to go back to their homes because of rocket attacks by Hezbollah.
It would be a major blow to both the communities and the Israeli government if they were forced to evacuate again from Hezbollah, however weakened it now is.
Fighting escalated after the group fired at Israeli positions a day after the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023, drawing immediate Israeli retaliation.
In his briefing with defence chiefs on Tuesday, Israel Katz added that the aim would be “to create a defensive space and keep the threat away”. The strategy is based on the model followed in Rafah and Beit Hanoun – major population centres in the Gaza Strip that have been largely destroyed by air strikes and remain under Israeli military control.
Katz said the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) was now “manoeuvring into Lebanese territory to seize a front line of defence, eliminating Hezbollah terrorists and destroying the terrorist infrastructures that were established there”, as well as houses which he said were used by Hezbollah near the border.
He said that the many thousands of Lebanese people in the south who have been displaced “will not return south of the Litani River until security is guaranteed for the residents of the north” of Israel.
Southern Lebanon is the heartland of Lebanon’s Shia Muslim community, Hezbollah’s main support base. But it is also home to other communities, including Christians.
