2023-10-24 00:21:59
Since the surprise attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas against Israel on October 7, Lebanese Hezbollah and the Israeli army have clashed on the border between Israel and Lebanon.
On Sunday, the Israeli army accused the powerful Lebanese Shiite movement of seeking a military escalation. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Hezbollah He would make “the mistake of his life” if he went to war with his country.
Iran, an ally of Hezbollah and Hamas, warned that the conflict could worsen following the incessant bombings that Israel has launched in the Gaza Strip in response to the attack by Islamist militias in its territory, which caused more than 1,400 deaths according to Israeli authorities.
Since October 7, violence on the border between Israel and Lebanon has left 40 dead in Lebanon, mostly Hezbollah fighters, but also four civilians, including a photographer from the Reuters agency. Four people have died on the Israeli side.
The day after the attack launched by Hamas against Israel, Hezbollah began bombing Israeli positions from southern Lebanon, to which Israel responded. So far, Hezbollah has carried out only limited attacks.
According to analysts, long before the October 7 attack, Hamas and Hezbollah formed a “joint operations room” with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Al Quds Force, the elite unit of the Revolutionary Guard in Iran, a source close to Hezbollah told AFP who requested anonymity.
For years, these groups have been coordinating their actions with other Palestinian factions, Syrians and other formations supported by Iran, forming the “Axis of Resistance”.
Reinforced security on the border between Israel and Lebanon. AFP Photo
According to analyst Michael Young of the Carnegie Middle East Center, Shiite Hezbollah’s support for Sunni Hamas comes from the fact that they ideologically coincide in their opposition to Israel.
According to Young, the “axis of resistance” has always tried to “highlight that it is not an exclusively Shiite structure.”
“Hamas is at the heart of the Palestinian issuewhich is part of the revolutionary identity of Hezbollah and Iran.”
Hezbollah is the most important political and military force in Lebanon. The Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), a think tank in Tel Aviv, estimates its arsenal at between 150,000 and 200,000 rockets and missiles of all types, including “hundreds of precision missiles.” In 2021, the group claimed to have 100,000 fightersbut the INSS estimates that it would have half.
Tehran finances the party and supplies it with weapons and equipment through Syria.
The fighters
In 2021, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah announced that his party had 100,000 trained and armed fighters. The Israeli Institute for Security Studies (INSS) counts at least half.
Since the 2006 war with Israel, Hezbollah has had no visible military presence on the Lebanese-Israeli border, in accordance with a resolution of the UN Security Council. However, experts and reports report positions, tunnels and trenches dug by the party in the region and through which its members circulate.
For years, Hassan Nasrallah has repeated that the precision weapons available to his party are capable of reaching even Ashdod, an Israeli coastal city located north of Gaza.
In mid-August, he declared that his party needed “some high-precision missiles“to destroy a list of targets, including airports (…), power and communications plants, and the Dimona (nuclear) power plant.”
Hassan Nasrallah has not spoken since the Hamas attack on October 7. But the prospect of a probable Israeli ground intervention in Gaza worries the international community, which fears that the conflict will intensify and expand.
Imad Salameh, from the Lebanese American University (LAU), believes that Hezbollah could intensify its attacks, although he does not want to divert attention from the conflict between Hamas and Israel.
For Michael Young, Hezbollah’s objective is, for the moment, “keep Israeli troops sufficiently away from Gaza“. It could also have been aimed at “generating fear of a regional conflagration, which would lead to pressure within the United Nations, and perhaps even the United States, to call for a ceasefire,” he added.
Regarding the possibility of Iran pushing Hezbollah into a direct confrontation with Israel, Salameh and Young declared themselves convinced that “Iran will not sacrifice Hezbollah.”
#Lebanese #Hezbollah #join #Hamas #war #Israel