The United States fears that Benjamin Netanyahu will expand the war on Lebanon out of politics

American officials expressed concern that the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahumay consider expanding the fight to the Lebanon as a key to their political survival, according to an article published this Sunday by the newspaper Washington Post.

More than a dozen Joe Biden Administration officials and diplomats spoke to The Washington Post to discuss the “delicate military situation” between Israel and Lebanon.

In addition, two of those sources warned that a new secret evaluation by the Defense Intelligence Agency (IAD) concluded that it will be difficult for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to succeed in a possible incursion into Lebanon because Israel's military assets and resources are too dispersed by the conflict in Gaza.

All this, the newspaper points out, in the midst of internal criticism of Netanyahu for the failure of his Government to prevent the Hamas attack on October 7, which killed some 1,200 people and left more than two hundred hostages and unleashed a war that has now left more than 22,300 Palestinian dead.

Thousands of Israelis took to the streets of Tel Aviv and other cities in the country to protest on Saturday night to demand the release of the hostages that the Islamist group Hamas continues to hold captive in Gaza and to demand new general elections, even in times of war.

It was the first major anti-government demonstration since the war between Israel and Hamas broke out on October 7. Protesters believe that the current government is to blame for the attack carried out by Hamas and are calling for Netanyahu to resign and new elections to be held.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken left on Thursday night for the Middle East for the fourth time since Israel started the war in Gaza and his main objective is to prevent the war from expanding to Lebanon.

Blinken will arrive in Israel on Monday, where he will discuss specific measures to “avoid escalation,” his spokesman, Matt Miller, said at the start of the trip.

According to US officials consulted by the Washington Post, Hezbollah itself wants to avoid a major escalation and the group's leader, Hasan Nasrallah, is trying to stay away from a broader war.

Officials fear that a large-scale conflict between Israel and Lebanon will surpass the bloodshed of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war because the group is better armed.

“The number of victims in Lebanon could be between 300,000 and 500,000 and involve a mass evacuation of the entire north of Israel,” Bilal Saab, a Lebanon expert at the Middle East Institute, told the newspaper.

Israeli aviation attacked positions of the Shiite group Hezbollah in Lebanon this Sunday, after intercepting a “hostile aircraft” who had entered Israel, the Israeli Army reported in a statement.

Hezbollah launched at least 62 projectiles at one of the main intelligence centers in northern Israel on Saturday, in its first response to the assassination on Tuesday of the number two of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, Saleh al Arouri, on the outskirts of Beirut in a bombing attributed to Israel.

The Israeli-Lebanese border is experiencing its greatest tension since the war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006following an upsurge in aggression by pro-Palestinian militias the day after the outbreak of war between the Islamist group Hamas and Israel in Gaza on October 7.

Hostilities have increased even more after the bombing that killed Saleh Al Arouri, deputy head of Hamas, in Beirut on Tuesday, in an action attributed to Israel, which neither recognized nor denied the operation.

Israel has deployed more than 200,000 soldiers to its northern border, where violence has also displaced thousands of residents, with some 80,000 people evacuated from communities in northern Israel and more than 70,000 having fled southern Lebanon.

EFE