As clashes increase on the border between Israel and Lebanon, the UN warns of a “potentially apocalyptic” situation.
The UN humanitarian chief warned on Wednesday (June 26) 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.
“I see this as the spark that will ignite the powder… It is potentially apocalyptic,” Martin Griffiths warned in Geneva, saying he feared the “unforeseeable” consequences of a conflict that spread to Lebanon.
The war in the Gaza Strip, triggered by an unprecedented attack by Hamas 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 Lebanese Hezbollah, an ally of the Palestinian Islamist movement, and the Israeli army.
Climbing on the Lebanese border
A conflict involving Lebanon “will win over Syria… will win over the other” territories in the region, said Martin Griffiths, whose mandate ends at the end of the month. “It will obviously have consequences in Gaza” and “an impact on the West Bank”, occupied by Israel, he added.
Israeli bombardments continued on Wednesday on the Gaza Strip, where according to witnesses, fighting raged in the west of Rafah, a town in the south of the territory where the army launched a ground offensive on May 7.
On the Israeli-Lebanese border, an escalation last week in attacks on both sides and threats exchanged between Israel and Hezbollah have raised fears of a new war.
“A war between Israel and Hezbollah could easily become a regional war, with disastrous consequences for the Middle East,” warned American Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, receiving his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, in Washington on Tuesday .
“We are working closely to reach an agreement, but we must also prepare for all possible scenarios,” said Yoav Gallant.
“Unpredictable situation”
On June 19, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, an 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 afterward, Israel could “redeploy some forces to the north”, on the border with the Lebanon, “for defensive purposes”.
“It seems that Israel, which devastated Gaza, is now setting its sights on Lebanon. We see that Western powers support Israel behind the scenes,” accused Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday.
Speaking of an “unpredictable situation”, Canada called on its nationals to leave Lebanon as quickly as possible.
“Uproot Hamas”
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 on the Gaza Strip, which has so far killed 37,718 people, mostly civilians, 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 reaffirmed 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.
The objective,” according to Benjamin Netanyahu, is “to recover the hostages” and “uproot the Hamas regime.”
Level of “catastrophic” hunger
The war has caused a humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip, besieged by Israel, where there is a “high and sustained risk” of famine, according to a report released Tuesday by the Integrated Food Security Classification Framework (IPC), on which the UN agencies are based on.
According to this report, 495,000 people suffer from hunger at “catastrophic” levels.
According to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), “every day, 10 children lose one or two legs on average” in Gaza. “Ten a day means around 2,000 children after more than 260 days of this brutal war,” the agency said.
Humanitarian workers are not spared. Doctors Without Borders said on X that one of its members, Fadi al-Wadiya, had been “killed along with five other people, including three children, in an attack in Gaza City while he was cycling his work”.
The army confirmed that it had eliminated Fadi al-Wadiya, presenting him as an “important agent” of Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian group allied with Hamas.
