The danger of war contagion from Gaza reaches a peak in the Middle East after three months of war

The war in the Gaza Strip has reached a dangerous peak of regional expansion that threatens to spread hostilities throughout the Middle East. Three months have passed since a conflict marked by the death of more than 22,000 Palestinians and 1,200 Israelis, as well as the destruction of the coastal enclave and the uprooting of 90% of its 2.3 million inhabitants. Now the spread of the escalation of war raises fears of an outbreak in southern Lebanon after the assassination, on Tuesday, of the number two Hamas, Saleh al Aruri, and the closure of the strategic Red Sea route to navigation due to the harassment of Yemen's Houthis to merchant ships.

The army or militia that makes a miscalculation when launching raids or responding with reprisals will be held responsible for an eventual new conflict. That is why the sides in the fray, old archenemies, try their hand at each other.

After four days of relative containment, Hezbollah, considered the most powerful paramilitary organization in the Middle East, fired more than 60 rockets from southern Lebanon early this Saturday morning at an observation post of the military intelligence services of Israel in Meron, as well as against other border areas in Metula and Margaliot, in one of the most intense attacks since the start of the war in Gaza, after the Hamas attacks on October 7.

The pro-Iranian militia party defined the barrage as a “preliminary response” to the death in Beirut of Hamas' number two in a drone attack. Hezbollah has accused Israel of the apparent selective murder, committed in one of the Shiite strongholds of the Lebanese capital, but the Government of Benjamin Netanyahu has not claimed responsibility for the action, which bears the seal of the Israeli intelligence services. Hezbollah's leader, Shiite cleric Hasan Nasrallah, had warned on Friday that his organization would not leave the attack on Al Aruri “unanswered.” Since October 7, he claims to have already ordered 670 operations against Israel.

The army initially responded with artillery and drone attacks against Shiite militia positions in southern Lebanon where the rocket launching ramps were located. A common reaction, despite the magnitude of the wave of rockets fired. However, a few hours later, the Israeli Armed Forces launched ground and air attacks against various Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon located in Ayta Shab, Yarun and Ramyeh, according to a report. military statement.

Israel is in a “very high state of alert” on the border with Lebanon, the chief spokesman, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, had admitted on Friday, alluding to the precedent of the open war waged by both sides in 2006. Then 1,300 Lebanese perished , mostly civilians, and 165 Israelis, almost all military, in 33 days of fighting. Subsequently, 10,800 were deployed to the border blue helmets of the UN from 40 countries, including 600 Spaniards.

The Secretary of State of the United States, Antony Blinken, and the High Representative of the EU for Foreign Policy and Security, Josep Borrell, coincided this Saturday on diplomatic tours of the Middle East that have the common objective of preventing the Gaza conflict from escalating. overflows to a regional scale. Blinken has stated that Israel “does not want an escalation of the conflict, but has the right to defend itself,” in reference to the attacks by Hezbollah and Hamas. During his visit to Greece as part of his trip to several Middle Eastern countries, he also assured that Turkey is prepared to use the relations it has with “critical actors in the region to de-escalate the conflict.” “We want to make sure that countries in the region are using their ties and relationships to make sure that we do not see an escalation,” he told reporters, quoted by Reuters.

The head of EU diplomacy said this Saturday in Beirut that “it is imperative to avoid a regional escalation in the Middle East, and that Lebanon is dragged into a regional conflict,” in an appearance before the press cited by Efe. He also sent a message to Israel: no one will emerge victorious from a regional conflict. “Even war has rules and there are international humanitarian norms that have to be respected. “One horror does not justify another.” “There must be another way to eradicate Hamas that does not mean that so many innocent people die,” he emphasized along with the Lebanese Foreign Minister, Abadalah abu Habib.

“Over time, the low predisposition of the parties to slide towards a regional conflict on the northern front is being reaffirmed,” argues the Israeli analyst Daniel Kupervaser. “They care about expressing their presence on the ground, but they avoid going overboard,” he points out. He considers this Saturday's exchange of attacks to be a good example. “Hezbollah claimed that this was retaliation for the assassination of Al Aruri,” explains Kupervaser, “knowing that his rockets were not going to cause significant damage.” Other actors also operate on the northern front, such as the Palestinian militias exiled in Lebanon, affiliated with both Hamas and the secular nationalist party Fatah.

Since the beginning of hostilities in Gaza, at least 177 deaths have been recorded on the Lebanese border front: 13 in Israel (nine soldiers and four civilians) and 164 in Lebanon (127 members of Hezbollah, 16 members of Palestinian militias , a Lebanese soldier and 20 civilians, including three journalists), according to the Efe agency. Israel has deployed more than 200,000 troops to its northern border, where more than 80,000 people have been evacuated due to hostilities. On the Lebanese side of the border, more than 70,000 civilians have been displaced from their homes.

“Netanyahu's decision to evacuate from the beginning of the war the towns closest to the Lebanese border, including Kyriat Shmona (60,000 inhabitants), which were later occupied by soldiers, has allowed Hezbollah to attack them daily, considering them military objective,” highlights Amos Harel, defense correspondent of the newspaper Haaretz. “The exchange of attacks in the current format (of relative intensity) can last months, while the United States continues to mediate to achieve a diplomatic solution. The alternative is military action, especially if the reaction to Al Aruri's death unleashes a chain of miscalculations,” this expert warned in his weekly article on Friday.

Netanyahu excludes stopping fighting

In the midst of the usual instability that plagues the Middle East, the chaos of a famine looms inexorably over hundreds of thousands of civilians crowded in the open in the southern Gaza Strip. Malnutrition and disease will decimate the child population if it is not urgently addressed. There is no ceasefire in sight. Netanyahu assured on Saturday night that he will not stop the war until “all objectives are achieved.” “Three months ago, Hamas committed a terrible massacre,” he said in a statement, “the Government ordered the army to go to war to eliminate Hamas, recover our hostages and ensure that Gaza will never again be a threat to Israel. ”. The prime minister warned that there will be no immunity for Hamas.

Despite Netanyahu's ardor for war, the Israeli Armed Forces have in fact entered the so-called phase 3 of the war, which involves the demobilization of the reservist units that have fought in the enclave and a strategy of operations focused on very specific objectives. concrete. Lat
e on Saturday, spokesman Hagari assured that the Israeli army had completed the dismantling of the “military framework” in northern Gaza and was now focusing its operations on the center and south of the Strip. Gazans, meanwhile, continue to die in a war that is on track to far exceed 100 days. At least 122 people have lost their lives between midday Friday and Saturday, according to data released by the Strip's Ministry of Health, controlled by Hamas. Most of the victims are women and children.

As long as it does not achieve the release of the 136 hostages that Hamas still holds in Gaza, presumably in exchange for the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners accused of “security crimes”, Israel will not end hostilities or allow mass return. of those displaced to their homes—or what remains of them—in the north of the Strip. In the three months of war that have now passed, 175 Israeli soldiers have died in combat compared to the 8,000 Hamas militiamen that Israel claims to have killed.

Benny Gantz, former Minister of Defense and member of the emergency government formed in Israel for the war, already recognized two months ago that his country is fighting a “multi-front war” while fighting Hamas. “We are fighting both in the north and in the south,” warned Gantz, who led the previous large-scale conflict in the Palestinian strip in 2014 as general chief of staff.

The attacks against Israel, mostly by militias and armed groups associated with Iran, extend from the borders of Lebanon and Syria to the Red Sea. On this southern front, the head of the Supreme Committee of the Revolution of the Yemen Houthis, Mohamed Ali al Huthi, told the BBC on Friday that any country that is involved in the international coalition led by the United States in the Red Sea “it will lose the right to maritime security” of its ships, which will be considered “targets.” The main international shipping companies are already avoiding passage through the Red Sea towards the Suez Canal and have been forced to follow longer routes bordering Africa.

Since last November, Yemeni rebels have launched attacks on ships headed toward Israel or owned by Israelis. They have also attacked the southern tip of Israeli territory: the port city of Eilat, in the Gulf of Aqaba, where the Jewish State has access to the Red Sea. The launches of suicide drones and cruise and ballistic missiles from Yemen have redoubled the threat of pro-Iranian forces against Israeli territory, which has resorted to the new Arrow defensive system to protect itself. It is the most advanced anti-rocket shield it has.

“We are facing a new type of multifront war,” said former general Yossi Kuperwasser, who was head of the intelligence research division of the Armed Forces, recently. For this analyst, Iran's allies are putting pressure on “a simultaneous operation by Shiite forces,” to which Tehran generously supplies weapons and finances.

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