Photo: archive, BGNES
Lebanon’s influential pro-Iranian group Hezbollah has so far contented itself with limited intervention in the war launched by its ally Hamas against Israel, which has already claimed thousands of lives, mostly civilians. However, close ties between the two groups could lead Hezbollah to open a new front on Israel’s northern border, particularly in the event of an Israeli ground operation in Gaza, analysts cited by AFP said.
Long before the conflict erupted on October 7, Hamas and Hezbollah established close ties and cooperation in conducting operations alongside the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group and the Al Quds Force, an elite unit of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. said a source close to Hezbollah. They have been coordinating their actions for years within the so-called an “axis of resistance” that includes Palestinian, Lebanese, Iraqi and other groups and movements that oppose Israel and are close to Iran, which provides them with financial and logistical support.
According to analyst Mohammad Ali of the Middle East Center of the Carnegie Foundation, in the event of a large-scale Israeli offensive in Gaza, Hezbollah may be forced to take part in the war. “A large-scale operation against one of the members of this axis, such as could destroy Hamas, would lead to the intervention of the other members as well,” explains the analyst.
An Israeli army spokesman indicated on Thursday that Israeli forces were preparing for a ground operation in Gaza, but “nothing has been definitively decided yet”.
In the days following Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, Hezbollah, which possesses a significant arsenal, announced that it had shelled Israeli army positions near the Israeli-Lebanese border.
The Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups also announced that their fighters had shelled border settlements and entered Israel from Lebanon.
An Israeli border village was hit yesterday by an anti-tank missile fired from Lebanese territory, killing at least four people, Reuters reported, citing Israel’s army radio.
The Israeli army said it struck Lebanon after a report of an attack on the village of Shtula.
Later yesterday, Hezbollah announced that it had fired a rocket at an Israeli post from southern Lebanon and that there had been casualties in the attack. The group’s press office said the rocket hit an Israeli post in Stula directly. According to a source in the Lebanese security services, in response to the attack, Israeli artillery fired about 12 shells on the outskirts of the southern Lebanese city of Ait al-Shaab. The source added that Israel also shelled the southern Lebanese villages of Rmeish and Ramiya with artillery.
Meanwhile, the Israeli army cordoned off an area within a 4km radius of the Lebanese border and said it was deliberately disrupting GPS services in the area. The measure in question could affect the functions of mobile applications, Israel’s chief military spokesman, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, said on the X social network.
Potential intervention by Hezbollah and uncertainty about the role played by Iran itself are risk factors that could escalate the unprecedented conflict between Israel and Hamas into a wider regional war, analysts say.
So far, there are no indications of an imminent Hezbollah offensive against Israel, despite rising tensions along the border with Lebanon. If the Lebanese Shiite group does decide to launch a massive attack on Israel, there could be a repeat of the 2006 war between the Jewish state and Hezbollah, which killed 1,200 people on the Lebanese side and 160 on the Israeli side.
Iran, at least officially, maintains that it was not involved in the Hamas attack on Israel and did not provoke other regional Islamist groups to join the conflict. On the other hand, some neighboring Arab countries, which seek to improve their relations with Israel, see an opportunity to play the role of mediators in the conflict, but this will only be possible if the violence does not escalate into a regional war.
(Alexei Margoevski, BTA)
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2023-10-16 11:16:00
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