Officials and analysts believe Israel’s embattled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking to escalate with Lebanese Hezbollah to force them to accept a new security arrangement along the Blue Line.
Lebanon suffered the deadliest day in decades on Monday after Israel stepped up its aerial assault against Hezbollah on the heels of an intelligence operation that penetrated the group’s long-hailed covert communications network, reports Al Arabia.
The Israeli military claimed on Monday that it carried out over 800 strikes on various Hezbollah targets in the south and throughout the Bekaa Valley, which Beirut said killed more than 350 people, including 24 children and 42 women. Initial reports also indicated that an Israeli strike in Beirut targeted Hezbollah’s commander for south Lebanon. Hezbollah later said the target, Ali Karaki, was “safe.”
While the cross-border exchanges have been taking place since last October, Al Arabiya English spoke to several officials and analysts to better understand why the decision to escalate them further was made almost a year later.
US officials have said they do not support any form of land invasion of Lebanon, and they do not believe a military campaign will force Hezbollah to back down. A senior State Department official told reporters on Monday that they couldn’t recall any escalation that ended up leading to de-escalation in recent years.
Randa Slim, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Middle East Institute (MEI) think-tank, said there were only two ways for Israel to achieve its objective of returning citizens to the north: diplomacy contingent on a Gaza ceasefire and a ground incursion into southern Lebanon. “Either is unpalatable to Netanyahu,” Slim told Al Arabiya English.
Despite repeated US opposition to any large-scale operation in Lebanon out of fear that a regional war could erupt, Netanyahu decided to push ahead and approve Israeli plans to bombard Lebanon.
Bd pratidin English/Lutful Hoque
