Without losing sight of the entrenched war in Gaza, Israel is taking into account the growing tension on its northern border while it is torn between war and diplomacy. The Jewish state claims that it is trying to prioritize the negotiation path so as not to launch itself into a more intense war in Lebanon at a time when the war in the Palestinian Strip is not abating. But, at the same time, reality indicates that the situation on the ground is not moving in the direction of an entente with the Shiite guerrilla Hezbollah. Israel is deploying a greater number of forces on its northern border, some transferred from the Gaza area, while it is carrying out training with its troops in that same northern area to be prepared in case the powder keg ends up exploding.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has traveled to the United States to try to make a move with the help of his main ally. It is from there that he has stated that his first option is to reduce tension in the north to avoid a more frontal clash with Hezbollah, which has between 50,000 and 100,000 fighters and is a tougher nut to crack than Hamas. However, in the last few hours Gallant has launched one of those grandiloquent threats that, in a few minutes, make headlines: if there is war, Israel can send Lebanon “back to the Stone Age.”
The growing boil has led to a low-intensity war. In the more than eight months of fighting, Israel has launched 6,142 attacks on Lebanese territory compared to Hezbollah’s 1,258, according to data collected by the Qatari network Al Jazeera from October 8 to June 21. The deaths amount to 21 on the Israeli side and 543 on the Lebanese side, according to the same source. Hezbollah announced this Thursday the death of one of its men after being bombed by an Israeli drone while traveling on a motorcycle. The attack was also announced by Israeli military spokesmen, who also reported a drone attack by the Lebanese guerrilla without causing casualties in the coastal area near the Ros Hanikra border.
Some 60,000 Israeli residents of the conflict zone have been evacuated for months and distributed throughout different regions of Israel. In the Lebanese case, internally displaced people amount to almost 100,000. The Ombudsman of the Israeli Administration, Matanyahu Englman, warns from his profile on the social network Gallant and the Minister of the Interior, Moshe Arbel. Englman adds that he has written to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to bring “order”
In the midst of this environment, the Israeli army is developing exercises with infantry and vehicles to be ready for a possible more serious threat from the other side of the border, as reported by the army in a statement accompanied by images of maneuvers. day and night. Some of those men would have arrived from the desert plain of Gaza, according to Israeli Channel 12, and would be carrying out maneuvers to face a possible war in a different scenario such as the one dotted with mountains that separates the two countries.
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At the same time, the United States Government recommended this Thursday that its citizens “seriously reconsider” any trip to Lebanon and warned that the security situation “could change quickly.” The French Government, for its part, has assured that it is “extremely concerned” about the seriousness of the situation and asks the parties for restraint, as reported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
On June 12, the Lebanese militia launched its largest offensive against the southern neighbor with up to 215 projectiles that reached the city of Tiberias, more than 60 kilometers from the border. The following week, the guerrilla leader, Hasan Nasrallah, assured that he does not want a “total war”, but that, if necessary, he will fight “without rules or limits.” His words included, for the first time, threats to Cyprus, a member of the European Union, if that island agrees to allow Israel, with which it has already held maneuvers, to use its bases to launch attacks.
An escalation similar to that of Gaza with its northern neighbor would deal a blow to Israel in terms of economics and human lives. The plans to fulfill their basic objectives in the Strip, ending Hamas and bringing back the hostages, are very far from being fulfilled. At the same time, the street is angry because many citizens believe that the military route cannot be prioritized over the humanitarian route and that we must focus on freeing the kidnapped people. The demonstrations also point to the person who is considered the main person responsible for the fact that, after more than eight months, the conflict does not slow down and the signing of a ceasefire moves away every time a certain optimism appears. It is none other than Benjamin Netanyahu.
The attacks and counterattacks from both sides of the so-called Blue Line that the UN military tries to protect on the Lebanese side of the country occur on the Israeli side, supported by the United States, and by Hezbollah, supported by Iran, from the first moments. of the current war, which began on October 7, which has already claimed more than 37,000 deaths in the Palestinian enclave. The Israeli military machine responded that day on the fly by attacking the Strip after the massacre of some 1,200 people by Palestinian fundamentalists. The Shiite guerrillas, who experienced their worst confrontation against Israel in 2006, soon expressed their solidarity with Hamas with projectiles.
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