الهجوم بلش.

A common Levantine pronunciation is il-hjūm ballash.

A few useful notes:

• الـ here is usually il- or el-
• ج in Levantine is usually pronounced like the s in measure
• بلش is often pronounced bal-lash

So a rough English-friendly pronunciation is: il-hzhoom bal-LASH.

بلش means started or began.

It is the common Levantine everyday verb for to start / to begin.
In this sentence, it is in the past tense, so الهجوم بلش means The attack started.

بلش is dialect, specifically very common in Levantine Arabic.

In Modern Standard Arabic, you would more often see:

• بدأ الهجوم
• الهجوم بدأ

So الهجوم بلش sounds natural in spoken Levantine, but not like formal written Arabic.

Because الـ is the Arabic definite article, meaning the.

So:

• هجوم = an attack / attack
• الهجوم = the attack

Also, the first letter of هجوم is ه, which is a moon letter, so the l in الـ is pronounced. That is why you hear il-/el- clearly.

Both are possible in Levantine.

• الهجوم بلش = The attack started
• بلش الهجوم = The attack started / The attack has begun

The version with the noun first, الهجوم بلش, is very natural in everyday speech. It often feels a bit more like starting with the topic: As for the attack, it started.

Because it agrees with الهجوم, which is grammatically masculine singular.

In Arabic, past tense verbs change depending on the subject.
Here:

• الهجوم is masculine singular
• so the verb is بلش = he/it started

Even though English uses it for things, Arabic still gives nouns grammatical gender.

Compare:

• الهجوم بلش = The attack started
• الحفلة بلشت = The party started

Yes.

Arabic verbs already contain subject information. So بلش by itself can mean he started or it started, depending on context.

In الهجوم بلش, the noun الهجوم makes the subject explicit, but the verb form itself already matches a masculine singular subject.

They are the same word.

بلّش includes a shadda on the ل, which shows that the l sound is doubled. In careful spelling, that is more precise.

• بلّش = more explicit spelling
• بلش = very common informal spelling

Both are read as ballash.

Yes.

Depending on context, هجوم can also be translated as:

• assault
• offensive
• onslaught

So the exact English word may change depending on whether the context is military, political, sports-related, or metaphorical.

A very common Levantine negation is:

• الهجوم ما بلش = The attack didn’t start / hasn’t started
• الهجوم لسا ما بلش = The attack hasn’t started yet

ما is the basic negation here, and لسا adds the idea of yet / still.

It is used all the time for ordinary things too. It is one of the most common everyday verbs in Levantine.

Examples:

• الفيلم بلش = The movie started
• الدرس بلش = The lesson started
• بلشت أدرس = I started studying
• بلشنا = We started

So in الهجوم بلش, the verb itself is not dramatic; it is just the normal word for started.