The UN humanitarian chief warned Wednesday that the spread of Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip to Lebanon would be “potentially apocalyptic” as bombings and fighting continue in the Palestinian territory. .
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“I see this as the spark that will ignite the powder… It is potentially apocalyptic,” Martin Griffiths declared in Geneva in his warning, saying he feared the “unforeseeable” consequences of a conflict which would win the Lebanon.
The war in the Gaza Strip, sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, has led to an outbreak of violence on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, where exchanges of fire are almost daily between the Lebanese Hezbollah, an ally of the Palestinian Islamist movement, and the Israeli army.
The United States, Israel’s main ally, has also highlighted the risks linked to the expansion of the war.
A conflict involving Lebanon “will spread to Syria… will spread to other territories in the region,” Griffiths said. “It will obviously have consequences in Gaza” and “an impact on the West Bank” occupied by Israel, he added.
AFP
Israeli bombardments continued on Wednesday in the Gaza Strip where, according to witnesses, fighting raged in the west of Rafah, a town in the south of the territory, where the Israeli army launched a ground offensive on May 7.
In the north, Civil Defense said three children and a woman were killed in a strike in Beit Lahia. Tank fire was reported in Gaza City.
A Civil Defense official told AFP that rescuers had recovered 15 bodies from “various areas of the city of Rafah”. The spokesperson for this agency, Mahmoud Bassal, however affirmed that the bombings were less intense on Wednesday.
“Disastrous consequences”
On the Israeli-Lebanese border, a recent escalation of attacks on both sides and threats exchanged between Israel and Hezbollah have raised fears of a new war.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, receiving his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant in Washington on Tuesday, issued this warning: “A war between Israel and Hezbollah could easily become a regional war, with disastrous consequences for the Middle East.”
“We only fight those who seek to harm us,” retorted Mr. Gallant.
AFP
The Israeli minister also estimated that “significant progress” had been made during his visit to Washington regarding the delivery of American weapons to Israel, the source of tensions in recent days between the two allies.
On June 19, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, the all-powerful Islamist movement in Lebanon, warned that “no place” in Israel would be spared by his movement’s missiles, the day after an announcement by the army Israeli statement that “operational plans for an offensive in Lebanon” had been “validated”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Sunday that the “intense” phase of fighting was coming to an end in the Gaza Strip and said that then Israel could “redeploy some forces towards the north”, on the border with the Lebanon, “for defensive purposes”.
After Canada, Germany on Wednesday urged its nationals to leave Lebanon.
AFP
Hezbollah opened the front with Israel in support of Hamas the day after the attack carried out by the Palestinian movement on October 7 in southern Israel, which resulted in the death of 1,195 people, mainly civilians, according to a count from AFP established from official Israeli data.
Of 251 people kidnapped during the attack, 116 are still held hostage in Gaza, of whom 42 are dead, according to the army.
In retaliation, Israel launched an offensive in the Gaza Strip where more than 37,718 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed since the start of the war, according to data from the Hamas-led government’s Health Ministry.
By announcing that the “intense” phase of the fighting, particularly in Rafah, was “about to end”, Benjamin Netanyahu affirmed that the war would continue against Hamas, in power in Gaza since 2007 and considered a terrorist organization. by the United States, the European Union and Israel.
“Need water”
The war has caused a humanitarian catastrophe in the territory of 2.4 million people besieged by Israel, where 495,000 people are suffering from hunger at “catastrophic” levels, according to a report released Tuesday by the Integrated Human Rights Classification Framework. food security (IPC), on which UN agencies rely.
There is also a shortage of water in the middle of summer in the overpopulated territory of Gaza, where residents rush with their cans when a truck loaded with tanks arrives.
“The crisis worsened with the arrival of summer. People need water to drink and wash,” says Muhammad Bashir, who in his workshop in Deir El-Balah, in the center of the Gaza Strip, repairs dozens of tanks damaged or pierced by shrapnel. shell.
The opening of a maritime corridor from Cyprus in March allowed 7,000 tons of humanitarian aid to be sent to Gaza, of which 6,000 tons remain in storage due to looting and violence preventing their distribution, officials said Wednesday. Americans gathered in Cyprus.
“I have never seen such a difficult or complex environment” for humanitarian missions, said Doug Stropes of USAID, the US development agency, speaking of “anarchy” and “gangs”.
