“Hezbollah understands very well that we can inflict enormous damage on Lebanon if a war is launched,” said Minister Yoav Gallant. “We have the capacity to return Lebanon to the Stone Age, but we do not want to do it […] We do not want a war,” he added, specifying that the Israeli government was “preparing for any scenario”.
“Potentially apocalyptic”
The spread of Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip to Lebanon would be “potentially apocalyptic”, the head of UN humanitarian affairs, Martin Griffiths, had earlier warned from Geneva. “I see this as the spark that will ignite the powder,” he stressed, estimating that a conflict involving Lebanon “will win over Syria… will win over the other” territories in the region, leading to “unforeseeable” consequences. “.
During the night from Wednesday to Thursday, witnesses reported bombings in different sectors of the Gaza Strip, while in Lebanon, five people were injured in an Israeli airstrike on a building in Nabatiyeh (south), according to the official Lebanese agency Ani.
In Syria, two people were killed in an Israeli strike shortly before midnight, the official Sana agency announced, citing a military source. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), the strike targeted a service center of a foundation affiliated with Lebanese Hezbollah and pro-Iranian groups, near the capital Damascus.
And in Yemen, the US military’s Middle East Command said it had destroyed a “radar” of the Houthi rebels, allied with Hamas, who are targeting international maritime traffic in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden in “solidarity” with the people of Gaza.
Lebanon, after Gaza?
The war in Gaza has led to an outbreak of violence on the border between Israel and Lebanon, where exchanges of fire are almost daily between Lebanese Hezbollah, an ally of Palestinian Hamas, and the Israeli army.
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 towards the north”, on the border with 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,” declared Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“Netanyahu’s plans to expand the war to the region will lead to great disaster,” he added. Like Canada, Germany followed suit by calling on its nationals on Wednesday to leave Lebanon.
“Regional war”
“A war between Israel and Hezbollah could easily become a regional war, with disastrous consequences for the Middle East,” also worried the American Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, while receiving Yoav Gallant in Washington.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned last week that “no place” in Israel would be spared by his movement, the day after an announcement by the Israeli army that “operational plans for a offensive in Lebanon” had been “validated”.
Hezbollah opened the front with Israel in support of Hamas the day after the attack perpetrated on October 7 by the Palestinian Islamist movement in southern Israel, which resulted in the death of 1,195 people, mostly civilians. 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 the Hamas-led government’s Health Ministry.
“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 base themselves. Water is also lacking in the middle of summer in the overpopulated area, where residents rush with cans when a truck loaded with tanks arrives.
