The Zionist entity has achieved several successes in Lebanon over the past year, from killing Palestinian Hamas leader Saleh Al-Arouri and Hezbollah official Fuad Shukr, to last week’s pager and walkie-talkie attacks, as well as killing others such as Ibrahim Aqil and Ahmed Wahbi. All of these attacks were concentrated in the southern suburbs of Beirut, the stronghold of Hezbollah.
We need to understand that the Lebanese resistance group is up against Israeli, US, British and German intelligence agencies, and probably even some Arab intelligence agencies as well, all of whom are hostile to Hezbollah and the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas. They are against any resistance that threatens the Zionist entity, especially if it is Islamic and is ready for armed struggle against the Israeli occupation.
Armed struggle against military occupation is legitimate under international law, of course.
And we must not forget that the Lebanese security services are fed up with Hezbollah and its weapons, regarding it as a state within a state that occupies Lebanon and works under the command of Iran. Hezbollah’s loyalty, they say, is to Iran and not to Lebanon. Their hidden hostility towards the movement is no less than that of the Zionist entity.
In saying this I am trying to provide some context for the resistance in Lebanon and why the Zionist entity has succeeded with such painful blows against Hezbollah, which Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah acknowledged in his last speech. We cannot ignore that these tactical successes achieved by the Zionist entity have pleased its military and political leaders, as well as its supporters, especially after their relative setback in Gaza.
A review of the resistance groups’ security arrangements is obviously likely. It is illogical for leaders to gather in one place that is easy to monitor and easy to bomb. Decisions will not be made under pressure from friends and foes alike, I’m sure. Hasty decisions can be fatal because they are not thought through properly.
It is no coincidence that the complex security operation launched by the Israeli occupation army against Hezbollah members, which caused thousands of injuries and dozens of deaths, came after the Israelis announced that they had thwarted an assassination plot by Hezbollah. They alleged that the movement planned to use a “Klimagor” explosive device against an Israeli security official in response to the killing of Shukr.
We are in a new phase of the ongoing conflict between Hezbollah, and what it represents on the regional and Lebanese levels, and the Zionist entity, which seeks to prove itself after the humiliation of its intelligence and security forces last October.
The Hezbollah leadership has apparently been keen to keep the operations it carries out within the framework of supporting the Palestinian resistance in Gaza. Cross-border missile attacks have tended to aim for military targets. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, wants to turn events on the occupation state’s nominal northern border with Lebanon into a full-scale war to divert attention from the genocide in Gaza. However, the pager explosions that targeted civilians in more than 100 locations in Beirut were not only an attack on Lebanese sovereignty, but may also push Hezbollah into targeting civilians among Israeli settlers, something that Nasrallah has insisted on avoiding so far.
The Zionist entity is talking-up the possibility of a strong response from Hezbollah after last week’s bombings. The center of gravity of the war looks like shifting to the northern front to escape from Gaza, which is still inflicting heavy losses on the occupation army. Four soldiers were killed in Rafah only two hours after the bombings in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital.
Can the Israel occupation forces cope with expanding war aims?
Personnel from the Israeli navy are being repurposed as infantry, and it has been reported that the occupation state is considering offering African immigrants residency in exchange for joining the army. This suggests that all is not well in terms of having enough trained personnel to fight its battles, but Israel’s far-right regime is determined to press on regardless and drag the entire region into war.
The question then arises, are Hezbollah and Iran, with their proxies in Yemen and Iraq, ready for this? And are the Zionist entity and the Western colonial powers, led by the US, seeking such a war despite their repeated denials and calls for calm? These are questions that demand answers as tensions rise across the Middle East.
-Dr Amira Abo el-Fetouh is a dentist and a political commentator. Her article appeared in MEMO.
