The double suicide bombing that targeted a cafe in the Alawite neighborhood of Jabal Mohsen on Jan. 10 was not an ordinary episode in the series of bombings recently targeting Lebanon’s north and Bekaa Valley region. The importance of this incident lies with those who planned the bombing and the ones who executed it, which indicate that the threat posed by the Islamic State (IS) has appeared on the Lebanese scene.

Could this incident be a prelude to the large-scale military operation that media outlets and officials have been speculating about? Lebanese Interior Minister Nouhad al-Machnouq has spoken of “a new death triangle for IS, stretching from the barren Lebanese lands of Arsal to the Palestinian Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp and Roumieh prison [east of Beirut], reaching Iraq and Raqqa.”

Two young Lebanese men were behind the suicide bombings: Taha Samir al-Khayal and Bilal Mohammed al-Mariyan. Notably, neither of them were known to have partisan or religious affiliations; they were ordinary people, living in poor conditions. Misery was the common denominator between Khayal and Mariyan.

This was the first instance of Lebanese nationals carrying out a suicide bombing using explosive belts. Previously, the Iranian Embassy in Beirut was bombed on Nov. 19, 2013, by a Lebanese suicide bomber who detonated a car bomb.