By: Steven Sahiounie, Journalist and political commentator
The Middle East is sitting on a powder keg, and every minute that passes brings heightened tensions between Israel and Hezbollah.
The Middle East is sitting on a powder keg, and every minute that passes brings heightened tensions between Israel and Hezbollah.
Canada, the U.S., Great Britain and Kuwait have all warned its citizens in Lebanon to evacuate.
The impending war is caused because Israel refuses to a ceasefire in Gaza. Hezbollah says they will continue to stand in solidarity with the Palestinians of Gaza as the continuing genocide is perpetrated by Israel, but as soon as a ceasefire begins, Hezbollah’s response will cease.
Hezbollah is a Lebanese resistance group which is heavily armed. Most experts agree that the military might of Hezbollah and Israel are quite comparable on many levels, but Israel has air superiority.
Israel has a sophisticated air defense system, the ‘Iron Dome’. However, this system can be overwhelmed by Hezbollah if they were to launch a massive amount of missiles at Israel, and all agree that Hezbollah has a huge arsenal of missiles.
If the ‘Iron Dome’ was inundated by missiles launched from Lebanon, the effectiveness of the Israeli defenses would stop, and Israel could suffer destruction on a scale it has never experienced before. We have witnessed the destruction of Israeli missiles on Gaza, and homes and buildings across Israel could face a similar disaster.
Hezbollah demonstrated it has an air defense system, but it has been secretive in showing the capabilities of its defense from Israeli jets; however, on at least one occasion Hezbollah utilized their air defenses to repel an Israeli jet flying over Lebanon.
Amos Hochstein, the U.S. special envoy dispatched recently to Israel and Lebanon in hopes of averting a war between Israel and Hezbollah, came back empty-handed. Hochstein had been successful in a negotiation between Israel and Lebanon in 2022 over the maritime borders, but this time he was not negotiating with the Lebanese government alone, but with the most powerful resistance group in the Middle East.
The root cause of all conflicts in the Middle East emanate from the brutal Israeli occupation of Palestine, which has stripped away all human rights, and civil rights, from about six million Palestinians, while the six million Jews in Israel live in a quasi-democracy with human rights and civil rights comparable to most western democracies.
U.S. President Joe Biden and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken have repeatedly told Israeli officials the U.S. does not want to see a wider war in the Middle East, where other nations could be involved should Lebanon face destruction.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned Israel would “turn Beirut into Gaza” in the event of a war.
Experts agree that Biden would continue to support Israel even in the face of a war on Hezbollah. The international community has come out against Israel and its genocide on Gaza, but Biden continues to support war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Israel.
Biden has sponsored a ceasefire plan, but Israel refused it, and experts suggest that the Biden plan was not designed by Washington to succeed, but was drafted only as an exercise in buying time for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Israeli public and military are divided on the war on Gaza. Many are demanding Israel stop the war and get the hostages out after almost 9 months of captivity. Others support the war on Gaza as part of the Zionist plan to eliminate all non-Jews and create one Jewish nation from the ‘river to the sea’.
Netanyahu firmly demands the continuation of the war on Gaza and demands that Hamas be destroyed, but his military leaders have said that is an impossible task, as Hamas is an ideology, that of resistance to occupation, which is guaranteed to all people through the Geneva Convention.
On June 18, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said plans for an attack in southern Lebanon had been approved and steps had been taken to “accelerate readiness in the field.” The statement came from Major General Ori Gordin, the head of IDF Northern Command, and Major General Oded Basiuk, who heads the IDF’s Operations Division.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz threatened Hezbollah that they faced “destruction” amid “all-out war” at the Israel-Lebanon border.
Katz’s threat came after Hezbollah published a surveillance video that it took by a drone over various Israeli military, infrastructure and civilian installations, including some in the Israeli port city of Haifa.
“In an all-out war, Hezbollah will be destroyed and Lebanon will be severely hit,” Katz wrote on X.
On June 21, Hezbollah said it fired dozens of rockets into northern Israel in retaliation for a deadly air strike in south Lebanon that Israel said killed one of the group’s operatives. Hezbollah also claimed several other attacks on Israeli troops and positions over the course of the day.
In a meeting with visiting Israeli officials in Washington, Blinken underscored “the importance of avoiding further escalation in Lebanon and reaching a diplomatic resolution that allows Israeli and Lebanese families to return to their homes”, according to a statement.
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah had warned “no place” in Israel would “be spared our rockets” if a wider war began, in a TV address on Wednesday. He also threatened Cyprus if it opened its airports or bases to Israel “to target Lebanon”. Cyprus houses two British bases, including an airbase.
Israel invaded and brutally occupied Lebanon from 1982 to 2000. Its withdrawal was a victory for Hezbollah. In 2006, Israel launched a second war on Hezbollah which saw Israel prevented from invading by the might of Hezbollah, and in the following years the resistance group has gotten much stronger militarily.
Dozens of Israeli towns are now deserted, with around 60,000 Israelis evacuated to temporary accommodation, while about 90,000 have also fled from southern Lebanon.
Israel has launched roughly four times as many attacks as Hezbollah over the course of the conflict, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, a Wisconsin-based research group specializing in conflict data analysis. Last week, Israel made its deepest attack yet into Lebanon, striking 75 miles north of the border.
Israeli troops have also deployed white phosphorus in Lebanon, a substance that burns at high temperature and can be used to create smokescreens to obscure troop movements, but can cause respiratory damage and deadly burns. Its use near civilian areas is a violation of international humanitarian law.
“It’s not a question of if it will happen but when it will happen,” Avichai Stern, the mayor of Kiryat Shmona, the largest town in Israel’s north, said in an interview, and added, “We have to wipe them out.”
The war between Israel and Lebanon can be avoided if Israel will stop the unrelenting attacks on Gaza, which have resulted in over 36,000 deaths, mostly women and children.
Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist
This article is originally published at Strategic Culture foundation
