How the hostage killings in Gaza have deepened Israel’s political divisions

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Updated 05 September 2024
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How the hostage killings in Gaza have deepened Israel’s political divisions

  • As anger over the prime minister’s handling of the Gaza hostage crisis mounts, internal splits in Israel deepen
  • Protests and strike action highlight growing public distrust of Netanyahu, but experts question if it will lead to his ouster

LONDON: The message on the placard held by one of the tens of thousands of Israelis who flooded on to the streets of Tel Aviv on Sunday was as clear as it was damning: “Bibi, their blood is on your hands.”

It is rare for any country at war to experience internal dissent on the scale of the protests that have convulsed Israeli society this week — let alone the state of Israel, whose citizens are famously patriotic.

But the sense of shock and grief that gripped the nation following the discovery on Saturday that six of the Israeli hostages held in Gaza had been shot dead turned quickly to anger — directed not at Hamas, but at “Bibi,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The world has watched extraordinary scenes unfolding on the streets of Israel.




Relatives of Israeli hostage Edan Alexander speak during a demonstration by the families. (AFP/File)

At mass protests in Tel Aviv, speakers calling for a peace deal shared a stage with six coffins draped in the Israeli flag. Outside Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem a peaceful sit-down demonstration was broken up by police.

On Monday, Israel’s biggest trade union, Histadrut, staged a nationwide general strike that closed schools, businesses, government and municipal offices, and Ben Gurion International Airport.

The strike, backed by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, was called with one aim — to put pressure on Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition government to reach a deal for the return of the remaining hostages.

A US-backed deal with Hamas has been on the table since May, and there is now a growing belief in Israel and around the world that Netanyahu is perpetuating the war with the sole aim of saving his own political skin.

On Monday, US President Joe Biden accused Netanyahu of not doing enough to secure a hostage deal. And, after months of trying to bring Israel and Hamas to an agreement, reports suggest that frustrated US negotiators plan to present Israel with a final “take it or leave it” deal.

In a statement issued before Monday’s general strike, Arnon Bar-David, the chairman of Histadrut, said he had “come to the conclusion that only our intervention can shake those who need to be shaken. A deal is not progressing due to political considerations, and this is unacceptable.”




The world has watched extraordinary scenes unfolding on the streets of Israel. (AFP)

The traumatized relatives of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum accused the government of cynically frustrating peace efforts with “delays, sabotage and excuses,” without which the six hostages found dead in a tunnel in Rafah on Saturday afternoon “would likely still be alive.”

The divisions in Israeli society run deeper than the fault lines that have opened up since Oct. 7, said Ahron Bregman, a senior teaching fellow in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London and a veteran of the Israeli military.

“The Gaza war coincides with a significant change in Israeli society that has been in the making for many years, namely the emergence of a new elite,” he told Arab News.

“The old elite, mainly left-wing or centrist Ashkenazi, Kibbutzniks, and so on, are now replaced by right-wing nationalists, with settlers being the most active and dominant among them.”




Dividing Israeli society over the issue of hostages “was certainly one of Hamas’s aims,” Sir John Jenkins told Arab News. (AFP)

These groups, he said, “have been fighting each other for years, but now this fight has reached its climax, and it is out in the open for all to see. Netanyahu, by appointing people from the new elite, settlers like Itamar Ben-Gvir (national security minister) and Bezalel Smotrich (finance minister), to critical positions in his government, gave this change of guard a big push.

“And in the Gaza war, and particularly over the issue of the hostages, many of whom belong to the old elite, the new elite practically dictates Israel’s policies.”

To survive, Bregman said, “Netanyahu needs the war to continue, otherwise, his coalition partners, who want the war to continue, might abandon him. Therefore, whenever there’s progress in talks to have a ceasefire, which will include the release of Israeli hostages, Netanyahu puts new obstacles in the way.”

His “latest toy,” Bregman added, was the Philadelphi corridor, on the western edge of the Gaza Strip bordering Egypt, which Netanyahu insists must continue to be occupied by Israeli troops.

“This, of course, is nonsense and only an obvious attempt to kill a deal with Hamas. We now know that all the tunnels under Philadelphi have been blocked on the Egyptian side for years, and nothing came through.

“Whatever was smuggled into Gaza came through the Rafah crossing. And anyway, 80 percent of the weapons used by Hamas are produced inside the Strip.”

Iranian-Israeli author and commentator Meir Javedanfar, a lecturer at Israel’s Reichman University, agrees that “the government’s handling of the hostages and the war in general, has created incredible division within the State of Israel.”




Israel says it is conducting a military campaign in Gaza to eliminate Hamas and rescue hostages. (AFP)

One of the main causes is that “Netanyahu does not have much credibility with many Israelis,” Javedanfar told Arab News.

“He had already lost credibility prior to Oct. 7 because of the judicial reform crisis,” during which months of large-scale protests erupted last year after Netanyahu’s cabinet moved to weaken the ability of the Supreme Court to block “unreasonable” government decisions.

“Now people are concerned that, just as with the judicial reform, Netanyahu is acting to serve his personal political interest, which is mainly to stay in power as long as possible.”




Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. (AFP)

But “while the demonstrations are putting pressure on him, I’m not optimistic that it’s going to make him reach a deal. Right now, the Israeli parliament is not in session, so he doesn’t have to worry about his government being toppled. But as we get closer to the next session, I think he will have to show more leniency, at least.”

The Knesset returns from a three-month recess on Oct. 27.

Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, says it is important to remember that in Israel “there is a consensus and support for Israeli attacks on Hamas and that the government does have a mandate to go after them.”

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Doyle told Arab News: “The opposition to Netanyahu is far more about the man than the policy against Hamas. Where a lot of these protesters differ with Netanyahu and his coalition is that they would have put the survival and the return of the hostages above politics, which is actually a strong tradition within Israel’s history.

“But if you look at the polling, there isn’t actually a lot of antipathy and opposition toward the actual conduct of the war amongst Israeli Jews. So the difference is, who’s prepared to pay a price in negotiations to get the hostages back, and who’s not?”




Displaced Palestinians returning to Bani Suhayla and neighbouring towns east of Khan Yunis in July, 2024. (AFP)

On Wednesday CAABU was one of 18 UK charities and NGOs that signed a joint statement welcoming the British government’s decision to suspend some arms licenses to Israel, but called for it to go further and “immediately end ALL arms transfers to Israel to prevent their use in violations of international law.”

“Yes, the demonstrations are large, but they are in the more liberal Israeli Jewish cities, such as Tel Aviv, and not in the more conservative right-wing ones,” Doyle said.

“Netanyahu is Israel’s longest-serving prime minister. I disagree with him politically and morally, but in terms of Israeli politics he is a superb political operator.

“I thought that in the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7 he would have to go, because of the colossal failure on his watch. But one underestimates him at one’s peril. He is a survivor, he’s very obstinate and not somebody who is going to give up. He would have to be forced out.

“He knows that these protesters aren’t the people who support him, or are ever likely to. So what would finish Netanyahu is not protests, but more likely any rifts within his coalition.”

A poll published by Israel’s Channel 12 news on Saturday, carried out before the discovery of the six murdered hostages, illustrated this dynamic.

Although a large majority of Israelis — 69 percent ­— said they believed this should be Netanyahu’s last term in office, opinion was more finely balanced among supporters of his coalition parties, with an almost 50-50 split between those who believed he should go and those who wanted him to run again.

The same poll also revealed a telling split between the 18 percent of respondents who supported the state ceremony being planned to commemorate the events of Oct. 7 and the 60 percent who favored the alternative ceremony being organized by the families of the dead and hostages. Only a quarter of Israelis plan to watch the government event on TV.




The traumatized relatives of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum accused the government of cynically frustrating peace efforts. (AFP)

Bregman, who served six years in the Israeli army, believes that “only civil resistance in Israel could force Netanyahu to reach a deal with Hamas” ­— and that such an event is now more a possibility than ever before in a fundamentally divided Israel.

“A violent, bloody civil war in Israel is a real possibility, as the Israeli tribes disagree on so many things and, in many cases, literally hate each other,” he said.

“And now, ‘thanks’ to the initiative of Ben-Gvir, Israeli society is armed to the teeth, as he has distributed weapons left and right.”

Since Oct. 7, Ben-Gvir’s ministry has issued hundreds of thousands of gun permits to private Israeli citizens and distributed thousands of assault rifles to “civilian security teams,” including those operated by right-wing settler groups in the West Bank.

“In the past, external threats, such as wars, used to unite the Israelis, bringing them together,” said Bregman.

“But now, the Gaza war seems to have worked in the opposite direction, leading to ever-growing divisions among Israelis over a possible ceasefire and the release of Israelis from Hamas captivity.”

Sir John Jenkins, former British ambassador to Iraq and Saudi Arabia and UK consul-general in Jerusalem, cautions that one should not forget that Hamas also has a big say in how events might unfold in the weeks and months ahead.

Dividing Israeli society over the issue of hostages “was certainly one of Hamas’s aims,” he told Arab News.

“They know from long experience the importance Israel attaches to freeing hostages and captives. The hostages are a powerful card they think they can play into the game when it best suits them.

“Even shooting hostages gives Hamas the chance to exert moral pressure on Israel, as we’ve just seen.”




“Only civil resistance in Israel could force Netanyahu to reach a deal with Hamas,” said Ahron Bregman. (AFP)

But “Hamas needs to end the fighting and the hostages are a wasting asset. The tactic hasn’t worked so far, and Netanyahu shows no sign of relenting, and that means continued fighting is almost certain — and continued suffering for the people of Gaza.

“Hamas could end this immediately by releasing all the hostages, of course. But I guess they think that if they wait then something else will turn up — a war in Lebanon, an Iranian attack on Israel, a new US president or whatever — that will benefit them.”

 


Pager and walkie-talkie blasts targeting Hezbollah across Lebanon raise questions, stoke Middle East tensions

Updated 23 min 51 sec ago
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Pager and walkie-talkie blasts targeting Hezbollah across Lebanon raise questions, stoke Middle East tensions

  • Communication devices exploded simultaneously across Lebanon, killing at least 15 people and injuring thousands
  • Suspected Israeli attack represents an embarrassing security breach on such a scale that Hezbollah has almost no choice but to respond

LONDON: At precisely 3:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday, an estimated 3,000 pagers carried by Hezbollah members beeped several times before exploding simultaneously, killing at least 12 people and injuring thousands more across Lebanon and parts of Syria.

At least eight of the dead were reportedly members of Iran-backed Hezbollah, and the many wounded included Mojtaba Amini, Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, who may have lost at least one eye.

But clips from security cameras in shops in Beirut and other locations, circulated on social media, illustrated the dangerously indiscriminate nature of the attack.

Many civilians going about their day also fell victim to the blasts as pagers exploded in supermarkets, on the streets, and in cars and homes. Among the dead were two children who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Fleets of ambulances ferried a reported 2,700 wounded to hospitals across Lebanon, where overwhelmed medics struggled to cope with multiple victims suffering serious wounds, mainly to their hips, where pagers are generally worn on belts, and to hands and eyes.

On Wednesday afternoon, further blasts were reported across Lebanon, this time reportedly involving hand-held radios, causing at least three further fatalities and a hundred more wounded, according to Lebanese state media.

 

 

Israel has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility for the attack. But on Wednesday a US official told AP that Israel had briefed Washington on the attack after it had been carried out and, with no other feasible suspect in the frame, there is little doubt that it was the handiwork of Mossad, Israel’s lethally inventive foreign intelligence agency.

It is also clear that, figuratively and literally, the pager attack was both designed and timed to send a message.

The opportunity to use pagers as an offensive weapon arose in February when Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah publicly warned members to stop using cell phones, which are easily bugged and traced and have been linked with many assassinations executed by missile attacks.

 

According to a senior Lebanese security source quoted by The Times of Israel, Hezbollah then ordered 5,000 pagers, which were imported into Lebanon earlier this year.

Initial speculation was that Israel had somehow infected the pagers with code designed to cause lithium batteries inside them to overheat and explode. However, it has since emerged that the pagers used only ordinary AAA batteries.

Besides, the near-instantaneous and synchronized detonations, apparently triggered by incoming messages, suggest the pagers had all been fitted with a small amount of explosive and a miniature electronic detonator.

On Tuesday, a senior Lebanese security source told Reuters: “The Mossad injected a board inside of the device that has explosive material that receives a code. It’s very hard to detect it through any means, even with any device or scanner.”

On Wednesday, Gold Apollo, the Taiwanese firm whose brand name was found on the pagers used in the attack, denied involvement, saying the AR-924 models widely identified after the blasts had been made under license by a Budapest-based company, BAC Consulting KFT.

Hsu Ching-kuang, head of Taiwanese company Gold Apollo, speaks to the media outside the company's office in New Taipei City on Sept. 18, 2024, saying his company had nothing to do with the pager explosion attack in Lebanon. (AFP)

In a statement issued at 1:40 p.m. Taiwan time on Wednesday, Gold Apollo said: “This model is produced and sold by BAC. Our company only provides the brand trademark authorization and is not involved in the design or manufacturing of this product.”

Images of BAC’s headquarters — a modest, semi-detached building on Szonyi Street in the north of Budapest — have spread on social media, but BAC has yet to comment. Its website went offline on Wednesday and the profile of its owner and managing director was deleted from LinkedIn.

It is, however, extremely unlikely that any genuine company would knowingly take part in such an operation, risking Hezbollah’s wrath, knowing full well that the devices would be easily traced back to it. This has provoked some speculation that BAC, established only in 2022, might have been a front company operated by Israeli intelligence.

Combo image showing a walkie-talkie (right frame) that was exploded inside a house in Baalbek, east Lebanon, on Sept. 17, 2024, and a man holding a walkie talkie device after he removed the battery following the pager explosions. (AP/AFP)

A more likely scenario is that the batch of pagers ordered by Hezbollah were intercepted en route to Lebanon by Israeli agents — most probably at a port or airport, where typical customs and shipping delays may have given agents, working with local collaborators, enough time to meddle with the devices.

Budapest, the capital of Hungary, is a major transport hub on the River Danube and is home to Csepel Freeport, the country’s principal port.

Wherever the devices were tampered with, “the use of pagers bears the hallmark of Israel weaponizing digital technology to achieve political ends,” Ibrahim Al-Marashi, associate professor in the Department of History at California State University San Marcos, told Arab News.

Social media photo showing a pager battery that exploded during an apparent Israeli attack on Sept. 17, 2024 against users of the device in southern Lebanon. (AFP)

Israel has “form” in such warfare. In 2010, “a code known as Stuxnet, snuck into a USB drive, caused Iranian centrifuges to accelerate to the point that they destroyed themselves.”

In 1996, Hamas bombmaker Yahya Ayyash was killed when explosives hidden inside his cell phone were triggered remotely by Israeli agents.

“The advantage of the most recent attack in Lebanon is that it allows Israel to strike from a distance while claiming plausible deniability, avoiding a US rebuke at a time when Washington has pressured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to strike Hezbollah,” said Al-Marashi.

But the pager attack, he warned, could lead to a dangerous escalation.

“Hezbollah does have the ability to weaponize the digital in retaliation, raising the possibility that violent non-state actors might even pursue artificial intelligence to retaliate against their adversaries.”

Given the complexities of the operation, and the sheer workload involved in sabotaging thousands of devices, there is little doubt that the attack would have been weeks, if not months, in the planning.

But it is the timing of the attack that sends the most worrying signal.

The day after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, its ally Hezbollah began firing missiles into northern Israel — a near-daily bombardment that has increased steadily in intensity, forcing the evacuation of thousands of Israelis from the border region.

After a meeting of its Security Cabinet on Monday night, barely 12 hours before the pagers were detonated, Netanyahu’s office announced that “the Security Cabinet has updated the objectives of the war to include the following: Returning the residents of the north securely to their homes. Israel will continue to act to implement this objective.”

At the same time, reports suggested Netanyahu was on the brink of buckling to the extremist elements in his cabinet by sacking his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who has criticized him for having no postwar plan for Gaza, and replacing him with Gideon Saar, leader of the New Hope — The United Right party.

On Wednesday, the day after the pager attack, reports in Israeli and other media, citing anonymous US and Israeli officials, suggested it had been planned originally as “an opening blow in an all-out war against Hezbollah.”

According to The Times of Israel, a Hezbollah operative “had come to suspect the devices had been tampered with.” He was killed before he could alert his superiors, but the decision was taken to detonate the pagers before the plot was uncovered.

The question now is whether Israel is poised to follow up the pager attack, perhaps as was planned, with an all-out assault against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

“We have been teetering on the brink of a wider war for many months now,” Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the London-based Royal United Services Institute, told Arab News.

“Hezbollah and Iran have made it clear they don’t want this broader conflict to erupt, but Israel cannot end the war in Gaza without addressing the security crisis on its northern borders with Iran, Lebanon and Syria.

“In order to address this security imbalance, which puts at risk the safety of the broader population but also that of those displaced since the war began, Israel is trying to target and degrade the ‘Axis of Resistance’ to stave off further threats,” she said, referring to the loose network of Iranian proxies throughout the region.

“But this strategy could certainly push the groups and Iran to respond and eventually draw in regional states and above all the US.”

Most Israelis, said Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli lawyer and founder of the nongovernmental organization Terrestrial Jerusalem, “will tell you that war with Hezbollah is inevitable, but a large percentage say: ‘Not now.’

“The priorities for many are a ceasefire in Gaza, release of the hostages and dialing down the tension in Lebanon. Hezbollah can wait,” he told Arab News.

“Hezbollah, actively backed by Iran, is a much greater threat to Israel than Hamas and the general perception is that there will eventually be a war with Hezbollah, but Israelis know this will be much different than what we have witnessed in the past. It would mean years of war and vast devastation.

“But Netanyahu has a vested interest in the perpetuation of the war, which would be good for Netanyahu but intolerable for Israel.”

What happens next, added Seidemann, “is not only an Israeli decision. Will the US provide the munitions and the rest of the world the legitimization to pursue a protracted war in Lebanon?

“The bottom line is that right now, anything can happen.”

For Al-Marashi, “there are a lot of variables in regard to further escalation that make predictions difficult, more difficult than at any time in analyzing systemic conflicts in the Middle East.

“Despite US sanctions on Iran, news emerged over the weekend that Iran has launched a satellite into space and allegedly has provided ballistic missiles to Russia.

“Second, the Houthis in Yemen have overcome a technical hurdle, launching a ballistic missile against Israel and having it hit Israeli soil, meaning Israel’s system that intercepts such missiles failed.

“From that perspective, both Israeli adversaries have demonstrated they can overcome technical hurdles, signaling to Israel that it is not invulnerable.”

Were a regional war to escalate, he added, “it would put US positions in Bahrain and Iraq in the crosshairs of the Axis of Resistance. Biden, seeking to ensure a Kamala Harris victory in the US election, is most likely going to pressure Israel not to escalate matters prior to the election.

“At the same time, if war in the Middle East helped Donald Trump, that would work to the advantage of Netanyahu, who would prefer a Trump presidency.”

The Middle East, said Brian Katulis, senior fellow for US foreign policy at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, “has been teetering on the edge of a wider escalation for much of this past year, with the risk of nation-states going directly to war with one another growing.”

It was, he told Arab News, important to keep in mind the two core drivers of events — “a regime in Iran that operates with a revolutionary ideology that seeks to upend the state order of the Middle East, and an increasingly right-wing Israeli government that rejects a two-state solution and is unable to see the historic opportunity it has in opening relations with key Arab states if it took steps to define a clear end to this war that leads to a State of Palestine.”

In this context, “the US and outside actors such as Europe, China, and Russia can play important roles in trying to shape the trajectory of events in the region, but the main drivers are the regional actors themselves.

“One interesting pivotal grouping is the Arab Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia, who do not want to see a wider regional escalation with Iran but do want to advance a two-state solution.”

Right now, however, even as uncertainty remains about Israel’s next move, much depends on how Hezbollah will respond to the extraordinary blow it suffered on Tuesday.

The attack, described by a Hezbollah official as “the targeting of an entire nation,” has been condemned as “an extremely concerning escalation” by Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the UN special coordinator for Lebanon.

In the past year, Hezbollah has suffered the loss of more than 400 fighters, including senior commander Fuad Shukr, to Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon.

But the pager attack represents an embarrassing security breach on such a scale that if it is to save face, Hezbollah’s leadership has almost no choice but to respond with more than the usual daily delivery of a handful of rockets.

After Israel’s multiple airstrikes in southern Lebanon last week and now the pager attack, “we are more on the precipice of a regional war than ever,” Kelly Petillo, program manager for Middle East and North Africa at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told Arab News.

“We will have to see how Hezbollah will retaliate now, and the level of that response will determine where this goes. But these episodes are an indication that things are heating up and we are close to the precipice.”

As for Netanyahu, after almost a year of fighting in Gaza, the fear now is that his answer to growing domestic criticism over the apparent absence of a postwar plan may be an even more nightmarish scenario — more war, only this time in Lebanon.

 


Tunisia presidential candidate gets prison term, still on ballot: lawyer

Updated 19 September 2024
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Tunisia presidential candidate gets prison term, still on ballot: lawyer

TUNIS: Tunisian presidential candidate Ayachi Zammel was handed a 20-month prison term for charges related to forging voter endorsements Wednesday but will still stand in next month’s election, his lawyer told AFP.

Zammel, a former lawmaker and head of a small liberal party, is one of only two candidates approved by Tunisia’s electoral authority ISIE to challenge President Kais Saied in the October 6 poll.

One of Zammel’s lawyers, Abdessatar Messaoudi, said a court in the northwestern city of Jendouba issued the sentence which the defense team “will appeal.”

Messaoudi said the ruling was not final and does not prevent 43-year-old Zammel from remaining on the presidential ballot.

“He is still a presidential candidate, and his team will keep campaigning,” the lawyer said.

“Nothing can put an end to his candidacy apart from death.”

In the 2019 election that brought Saied to power, businessman Nabil Karoui made it to the second round behind bars.

Zammel, a businessman who was little-known to the general public before his presidential bid, was arrested on September 2 on suspicion of forging endorsements.

He was released on September 6, but was almost immediately arrested again on similar accusations.

Saied, 66, the incumbent and frontrunner, was democratically elected but orchestrated a sweeping power grab in 2021 and has since ruled by decree.

ISIE earlier this month announced the final list of approved candidates: Saied, Zammel and former lawmaker Zouhair Maghzaoui, 59, who had supported the president’s power grab.

The election board dismissed the presidential bids of three other hopefuls despite court orders in their favor.

Human Rights Watch accused ISIE of having “intervened to skew the ballot in favor of Saied,” with at least eight prospective candidates prosecuted, convicted or imprisoned in the run-up to the election.

“Holding elections amid such repression makes a mockery of Tunisians’ right to participate in free and fair elections,” said the New York-based advocacy group.

The European Union has said Zammel’s arrest and the exclusion of the three candidates demonstrated “a continued limitation of the democratic space” in Tunisia.


A war with Hezbollah may be looming. Is Israel prepared?

Updated 19 September 2024
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A war with Hezbollah may be looming. Is Israel prepared?

  • Israeli media reported Wednesday that the government has not yet decided whether to launch a major offensive in Lebanon

JERUSALEM: With Israel’s defense minister announcing a “new phase” of the war and an apparent Israeli attack setting off explosions in electronic devices in Lebanon, the specter of all-out combat between Israel and Hezbollah seems closer than ever before.
Hopes for a diplomatic solution to the conflict appear to be fading quickly as Israel signals a desire to change the status quo in the country’s north, where it has exchanged cross-border fire with Hezbollah since the Lebanese militant group began attacking on Oct. 8, a day after the war’s opening salvo by Hamas.
In recent days, Israel has moved a powerful fighting force up to the northern border, officials have escalated their rhetoric, and the country’s security Cabinet has designated the return of tens of thousands of displaced residents to their homes in northern Israel an official war goal.
Here’s a look at how Israel is preparing for a war with Lebanon:
Troops drawn from Gaza to the northern border
While the daily fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has escalated on several occasions, the bitter enemies have been careful to avoid an all-out war.
That appears to be changing — especially after pagers, walkie-talkies, solar equipment and other devices exploded in Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday, killing at least 20 and wounding thousands in a sophisticated attack Hezbollah blamed on Israel.
“You don’t do something like that, hit thousands of people, and think war is not coming,” said retired Israeli Brig. Gen. Amir Avivi, who leads Israel Defense and Security Forum, a group of hawkish former military commanders. “Why didn’t we do it for 11 months? Because we were not willing to go to war yet. What’s happening now? Israel is ready for war.”
As fighting in Gaza has slowed, Israel has fortified forces along the border with Lebanon, including the arrival this week of a powerful army division that took part in some of the heaviest fighting in Gaza.
The 98th Division is believed to include thousands of troops, including paratrooper infantry units and artillery and elite commando forces specially trained for operations behind enemy lines. Their deployment was confirmed by an official with knowledge of the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss troop movements.
The division played a key role in Gaza, spearheading the army’s operations in the southern city of Khan Younis, a Hamas stronghold. The offensive inflicted heavy losses on Hamas fighters and tunnels, but also wreaked massive damage, sent thousands of Palestinians fleeing and resulted in scores of civilian deaths. Israel says Hamas endangers civilians by hiding in residential areas.
The military also said it staged a series of drills this week along the border.
“The mission is clear,” said Maj. Gen. Ori Gordin, who heads Israel’s Northern Command. “We are determined to change the security reality as soon as possible.”
A ‘new phase’ of war
The military movements have been accompanied by heightened rhetoric from Israel’s leaders, who say their patience is running thin.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Wednesday night declared the start of a ” new phase” of the war as Israel turns its focus toward Hezbollah. “The center of gravity is shifting to the north by diverting resources and forces,” he said.
He spoke a day after Israel’s Cabinet made the return of displaced residents to their homes in northern Israel a formal goal of the war. The move was largely symbolic — Israeli leaders have long pledged to bring those residents home. But elevating the significance of the aim signaled a tougher stance.
After meeting Wednesday with top security officials, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared: “We will return the residents of the north securely to their homes.”
Netanyahu delivered a similarly tough message with a top US envoy sent to the region this week to soothe tensions.
An official with knowledge of the encounter told The Associated Press that the envoy, Amos Hochstein, told Netanyahu that intensifying the conflict with Hezbollah would not help return evacuated Israelis back home.
Netanyahu, according to a statement from his office, told Hochstein that residents cannot return without “a fundamental change in the security situation in the north.” The statement said that while Netanyahu “appreciates and respects” US support, Israel will “do what is necessary to safeguard its security.”
Is war inevitable?
Israeli media reported Wednesday that the government has not yet decided whether to launch a major offensive in Lebanon.
Much, it seems, will depend on Hezbollah’s response. The group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, is expected to deliver a major speech on Thursday.
But public sentiment in Israel seems to be supportive of tougher action against Hezbollah.
A recent poll by the Israeli Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem think tank, found that 67 percent of Jewish respondents thought Israel should intensify its response to Hezbollah. The majority believed Israel should launch a deep offensive that includes striking Lebanese infrastructure.
“There’s a lot of pressure from the society to go to war and win,” said Avivi, the retired general. “Unless Hezbollah tomorrow morning says, ‘OK, we got the message. We’re pulling out of south Lebanon,’ war is imminent.”
Such a war would almost certainly prove devastating to both sides.
Already, more than 500 people have been killed in Lebanon by Israeli strikes since Oct. 8, most of them fighters with Hezbollah and other armed groups but also more than 100 civilians. In northern Israel, at least 23 soldiers and 26 civilians have been killed by strikes from Lebanon.
Israel inflicted heavy damage on Lebanon during a monthlong war against Hezbollah in 2006 that ended in a stalemate. Israeli leaders have threatened even tougher action this time around, vowing to repeat the scenes of destruction from Gaza in Lebanon.
But Hezbollah also has built up its capabilities since 2006. Hezbollah has an estimated 150,000 rockets and missiles, some believed to have guidance systems that could threaten sensitive targets in Israel. It has also developed an increasingly sophisticated fleet of drones.
Capable of striking all parts of Israel, Hezbollah could bring life in Israel to a standstill and send hundreds of thousands of Israelis fleeing.


White House warns against ‘escalation’ in Mideast after Lebanon blasts

Updated 18 September 2024
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White House warns against ‘escalation’ in Mideast after Lebanon blasts

WASHINGTON: The White House on Wednesday warned all sides against escalation in the Middle East after two days of blasts in Lebanon, widely attributed to Israel, on hand-held devices targeting militant group Hezbollah.

“We still don’t want to see an escalation of any kind. We don’t believe that the way to solve where we’re at in this crisis is by additional military operations at all,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters.

“We still believe that the best way to prevent escalation, to prevent another front from opening up in Lebanon, is through diplomacy,” Kirby said.

Iran, which supports Hezbollah, had held back from major retaliation after an attack inside Tehran that killed the visiting political leader of Hamas.

Israel has been engaging in regular skirmishes with Hezbollah since the October 7 attack by Hamas, also backed by Iran’s clerical state.

Asked if Israel was adhering to international humanitarian law in the blasts on pagers and walkie-talkies in Lebanon, Kirby replied: “As we have said from the very beginning, Israel has a right to defend itself.”

“How they do so matters to us, and we don’t shy away from having those kinds of conversations with the Israelis as appropriate,” he said, without confirming Israeli involvement.

As for the United States, Kirby echoed previous statements denying involvement: “We were not involved in yesterday’s incidents or today’s in any way.”
 


Iran condemns attacks in Lebanon involving exploding communications devices

Updated 18 September 2024
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Iran condemns attacks in Lebanon involving exploding communications devices

  • “The terrorism of the Zionist regime causes aversion and disgust,” MoHajjerani said
  • Tehran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, was injured in the explosion of his pager on Tuesday

DUBAI: Iran condemned attacks in Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday that involved exploding communications devices, government spokesperson Fatemeh MoHajjerani said in a post on the X social media platform on Wednesday, offering help to the wounded.
Hand-held radios used by Hezbollah detonated on Wednesday across Lebanon killing at least three people and more than 100 injured, further stoking tensions with Israel a day after similar explosions launched via the group’s pagers which caused 12 fatalities.
“The terrorism of the Zionist regime causes aversion and disgust. Iran strongly condemns yesterday’s criminal explosion of communication devices and today’s criminal explosion of walkie-talkies, which resulted in the death and injury of hundreds of Lebanese civilians,” MoHajjerani said.
Earlier in the day, according to state media, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian had said: “The incident in Lebanon shows once again that Western countries and the United States, despite claiming to seek a ceasefire, fully support the crimes, massacres and blind terrorism of the Zionist regime in practice.”
Tehran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, was injured in the explosion of his pager on Tuesday, and shared on Wednesday a message of solidarity to Lebanon on his X account.
Iran’s Minister of Health Mohammadreza Zafarqandi said a team of Iranian ophthalmologists and nurses were dispatched to Lebanon on Wednesday and that several injured Lebanese would be transferred to various hospitals in Tehran.