The skirmishes between Israel and the Lebanese Hezbollah group have become a matter of concern for the United States, which does not want to see an escalation of the war on other fronts in the Middle East at the present time.
Indicators of escalation between Hezbollah and Israel
The US administration’s concerns emerged, according to the newspaper “Washington Post“, after Israel made clear that it believes that the regular exchange of fire between its forces and Hezbollah along the border is something that cannot be tolerated, and that it may soon launch a major military operation in Lebanon.
The most prominent statements by Israeli leaders were what Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Friday when he noted, “We prefer the path of the agreed-upon diplomatic settlement, but we are approaching the point at which the hourglass will turn,” according to the newspaper.
The Israeli army’s chief spokesman, Daniel Hagari, said on Saturday evening, in reference to the threat of attacks from Lebanon, that the Israeli army is still “prepared with very high readiness in the north, in defense and attack,” according to the newspaper.Wall Street Journal“.
Threats of a broader conflict in the region increased on Saturday, after Hezbollah fired about 40 missiles at Israel, in response to the assassination of the prominent leader of the Palestinian Hamas movement, Saleh Al-Arouri, and six others in an air strike on the outskirts of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, a few days ago. This comes with the arrival of the Biden administration’s chief diplomat to the region to defuse the escalating Middle East crisis resulting from the war in Gaza, according to the Wall Street Journal.
In recent weeks, regular shootings between Israel and Hezbollah along the border have become more aggressive, drawing particular criticism from Washington, US officials told The Washington Post.
In another sign of escalating fighting, Israeli air strikes reached deep into Lebanon on Saturday, according to Lebanese authorities. The missiles struck the town of Kouthiriyat Al-Siyad, more than 30 miles north of the Israeli border, according to what the Wall Street Journal reported from the Lebanese National News Agency.
According to US intelligence data reviewed by the newspaper, the Israeli army has struck the positions of the Lebanese Armed Forces, which is funded and trained by the United States, more than 34 times since October 7, officials familiar with the matter said.
American officials are concerned, they told the newspaper, that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will see shifting the expanded fighting from Gaza to Lebanon as key to his political survival amid internal criticism of his government’s failure to prevent a Hamas attack on October 7, which killed an estimated With about 1,200 people and about 240 hostages, according to the Israeli authorities.
The newspaper reported that the US administration warned Israel in private talks of a major escalation in Lebanon.
The Washington Post explained in its report, in which it relied on more than a dozen US administration officials and diplomats, that US President Joe Biden sent his senior aides to the Middle East to achieve a crucial goal of preventing the outbreak of a comprehensive war between Israel and Hezbollah.
American fears of a new war
The dilemma, according to the newspaper, is that if Israel actually launched a war against Hezbollah, it would be difficult for the Israeli army to succeed because its military assets and resources would be spread very thin due to its involvement in the Gaza war, according to a new secret assessment issued by the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) DIA), according to two people familiar with the findings. A DIA spokesperson did not provide any comment to the newspaper, according to the newspaper.
The newspaper reported that Hezbollah, a long-time adversary of the United States that has well-trained fighters and tens of thousands of rockets and missiles, wants to avoid a major escalation, according to American officials, who said that the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, seeks to avoid entering into a conflict. A massive war.
In a speech on Friday, Nasrallah pledged to respond to “Israeli aggression,” while hinting that he might be open to negotiations on demarcating the border with Israel.
US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, is scheduled to arrive in Israel on Monday, where he will discuss specific steps to “avoid escalation,” his spokesman Matt Miller said before boarding the plane heading to the Middle East.
Miller said: “It is in no one’s interest, neither Israel, nor the region, nor the world, for this conflict to spread beyond Gaza. But this view is not held uniformly within the Israeli government.”
American officials told the newspaper that since the Hamas attack on October 7, Israeli officials have discussed launching a pre-emptive attack on Hezbollah. This possibility has faced continued American opposition due to the possibility of drawing Iran, which supports Hezbollah, into the conflict, a possibility that could force the United States to respond militarily on behalf of Israel.
The fears of American officials, according to the newspaper, are that a large-scale conflict between Israel and Lebanon will cause more blood than the Israeli-Lebanese war witnessed in 2006 due to Hezbollah’s arsenal of long-range and precise weapons, which has now become much larger.
According to some experts the newspaper spoke to, the number of casualties in Lebanon may range between 300,000 and 500,000, which would require a large-scale evacuation of the entire north of Israel. Officials also fear that Hezbollah may strike Israel deeper than before, hitting sensitive targets such as petrochemical plants and nuclear reactors, and Iran may activate militias across the region.
Another aspect that Washington fears, according to the Wall Street Journal, is that the conflict in Gaza has increased the risks facing American military forces in the region, which are increasingly being attacked by Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria. Since mid-October, there have been at least 115 attacks on US and coalition forces in Iraq and Syria, according to US officials.
The war in Gaza strained US relations with Arab security partners and key allies such as Turkey, who criticized US support for Israel and called for a ceasefire amid the increasing number of civilian deaths in the Strip, according to the newspaper.
The war has also had a ripple effect on the global economy after attacks by Houthi rebels in Yemen forced major shipping companies to divert ships from the Red Sea and Suez Canal in recent weeks, instead of sending ships around the Horn of Africa. The United States issued a final ultimatum to the Iran-backed Houthis this week warning of the consequences of launching further attacks on ships, in preparation for possible military strikes against the group.
A senior American official told the Wall Street Journal that Washington is walking a tightrope in the region, and is trying to use its influence to reach an agreement with regional actors to avoid escalation on the one hand, while insisting that the United States will defend its personnel and ships crossing the region.
2024-01-08 00:17:48
#Indicators #widespread #escalation #Hezbollah #Israel…and #Washington #walking #tightrope #Hurra
