Hezbollah launches its biggest attack on Israel since the start of the war with 200 projectiles and 20 drones

Amid the constant sound of alarm bells in northern Israel, the Shiite guerrilla Hezbollah carried out on Thursday what is considered the largest attack against its southern neighbor in almost nine months of war. At the same time, the Israeli Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, acknowledged that they are “closer than ever” to freeing the hostages who remain in the Gaza Strip, where more than 38,000 people have already died from Israeli attacks. In fact, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened his security cabinet on Thursday night to address the proposal presented the day before by the Palestinian fundamentalists to Qatar, Egypt and Turkey. The Israeli Prime Minister held a telephone conversation with the President of the United States, Joe Biden, in which he let him know that he is going to send a delegation to advance the negotiations.

In total, Hezbollah has launched some 200 rockets and around twenty drones. Despite the forcefulness of the offensive, it has left only one fatality, a soldier in the Golan Heights – Syrian territory occupied by Israel. He is one of the thousands of Israeli reservists who have been deployed for months around the border in anticipation of a high-intensity war that could lead them to invade Lebanon. In recent weeks, the Hebrew State has reinforced this deployment and is preparing its men for special maneuvers.

The group confirmed the attack and said it was in response to Israel’s targeted assassination of Muhammad Nimah Nasser, a senior Hezbollah commander, on Wednesday in the Lebanese city of Tyre. Hezbollah has used Nasser’s funeral to launch new threats against Israel. “We will continue to target new sites that the enemy does not imagine could be attacked,” said Hashem Safieddine, a senior Hezbollah official, during the ceremony, Al Jazeera reports. In response, Israel bombed various Hezbollah positions from the air.

Israeli anti-aircraft systems intercepted part of the attack, which also caused some material damage. What could not be avoided was that dozens of open spaces ended up as prey to the flames. Up to 40 firefighting units supported by 10 aircraft were trying to combat the flames late Thursday afternoon at different points around the border where the projectiles and drones fell. A road remains closed by the fire, according to the newspaper. Yedioth Ahronoth.

Progress in negotiations

While there are no signs in the north that the warring parties are moving towards a cooling of the conflict, in Gaza, the main theatre of the war, a certain hope is blooming in the diplomatic arena despite the fact that, on the ground, the attacks by the occupation troops in different areas of the Strip continue. Hamas could, for the first time, agree to move forward with a ceasefire, yielding to its demand that this means the total end of the war.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has told the families of the hostages held in Gaza since the war began on October 7 that Israel is “closer than ever” to reaching an agreement to end their captivity, the statement said. The Times of Israel He quoted Channel 12 as saying: “A month ago I was pessimistic about our chances of reaching an agreement in the short term. One of my main goals in all my meetings in the United States was to pressure Hamas to reach an agreement,” he said. “Today, and I say this with caution, we are closer than ever before,” he reiterated.

Although no details have been released of the proposal sent to negotiators for them to pass on to the Israeli side, Netanyahu’s reaction alone to mobilize a delegation, although it is not yet known where it will go, is already a positive sign. Prime Minister Netanyahu explained this decision to Biden, although, at the same time, he “reiterated the principles to which Israel is committed, especially its commitment to ending the war only after all its objectives have been achieved,” according to a statement from the president’s office. Both also discussed Hamas’s ceasefire proposal, the White House reported.

Since October, only one week of truce has been agreed. It was the last one in November, when more than 100 of the 250 hostages captured by Hamas were released. Since then, contacts have been almost constant and, on some occasions, it has even been reported that a deal was very close. A month ago, Biden even considered it reasonable to believe that the prime minister is delaying the end of the war in Gaza for political reasons, according to statements to the magazine Time.

There are still more than a hundred hostages inside the Palestinian enclave, some 40 of them already dead, and bringing them back is, along with the total annihilation of Hamas, Netanyahu’s goal. Meanwhile, demonstrations in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem on Thursday night put pressure on the street for the prime minister to move more decisively towards the release of hostages and to leave the helm of the country.

Events, however, are showing that putting an end to a movement that is much more than a few leaders and thousands of armed men is not easy. The Palestinian group’s battalions are reorganising in areas of the Strip where Israel had already declared them extinct. These areas, such as the Yabalia refugee camp or the Shujaiya neighbourhood in Gaza City, are forcing the occupation troops to return to areas where they had already been fighting intensely for weeks.

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