Men check the rubble of a building in Bint Jbeil in southern Lebanon near the border with Israel, following Israeli bombardment the previous night, on Dec. 27, 2023, amid ongoing cross-border tensions as fighting continues between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza. (Credit: AFP)
The intensity of strikes between Hezbollah and Israel in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, and Israeli threats to eliminate the party's secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, rekindled fears of a widening conflict in Lebanon.
The war in Gaza between Hamas and Israel, sparked by the Islamist movement's surprise Oct. 7 attack, spilled over into southern Lebanon the very next day. These hostilities have so far claimed more than 150 lives in Lebanon, most of them Hezbollah fighters.
Against this backdrop of heightened tensions, the foreign press, particularly the Israeli and American press, has been talking in recent days about the growing risk of a wider war between Israel and Lebanon.
"At a fork in the road"
In the American press, according to The Washington Post, the "escalating strikes and counterstrikes along the border between Israel and Lebanon are raising fears of a possible new front for Israel."
Eylon Levy, spokesperson for the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told the American daily on Wednesday that Hezbollah is now at a "fork in the road," and, after the recent days of escalation, "either Hezbollah backs off from the Israeli border, in line with UN Resolution 1701, or we will push it away ourselves," warns Mr. Levy.
"Hezbollah and its Iranian warlord patrons are dragging Lebanon into a totally unnecessary war, into the war that Hamas started," Levy told The Post.
In an analysis on Tuesday, the US-based site al-Monitor, which specializes in Middle East issues, believes that the elimination of Iranian general Razi Moussavi in Damascus on Monday could indicate that "Israel is now prepared for an additional front on its northern border."
Teheran accused Israel of being behind the death of the senior officer. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied this.
"No one is immune"
According to a diplomat in the Middle East quoted by al-Monitor, this attack "signals that no one is immune in the war that is developing in the Middle East, from ]Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah and southward." "[Razi Mousavi's] assassination is as close as it can get to the Iranian leadership and to the Hezbollah leadership," continues the diplomat, suggesting that other leading figures could soon be eliminated.
"The residents do not want Hezbollah terrorists at the border," Orna Mizrachi, a former Israeli security advisor and researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), a think tank affiliated with Tel Aviv University, told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday. "There is some truth in the voices that call for an all-out war as the only way to completely remove the Hezbollah threat," she adds.
On Wednesday, the Party of God launched the largest number of rockets and armed drones in a single day since the fighting began on Oct. 8. Meanwhile, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen declared on the same day that "(Hassan) Nasrallah must understand that he is next on the list." "If he does not want to be next on the list, he must immediately implement UN Security Council Resolution 1701 and withdraw Hezbollah north of the Litani River," he added.
"The current phase is coming to a close"
Quoting a minister from the Likud Party (Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's party) on Wednesday, Haaretz reports that "more and more people are accepting the idea that war with Hezbollah, maybe soon, is unavoidable." "The real test of Hezbollah's intentions will come when we move to the next stage in Gaza," continues the minister. "The north is one second away from an explosion and the start of a full-fledged war," a source involved in Israel's security deliberations also told Haaretz.
"Israel's political establishment is anxiously looking toward the northern front, where the situation is pointing increasingly in the direction of all-out war. More than in Gaza, where opinions regarding the war's duration and its nature differ, there is a consensus that the current phase is coming to a close. It is now Hezbollah that will decide where Israel is headed next," continues Haaretz.
This article originally appeared in French in L'Orient-Le Jour.