Israel and Hezbollah have now entered a stage in their nearly year-long conflict that reports say is verging on a full-out war. Citing Israel’s military, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that “dozens of warplanes” struck southern Lebanon on Saturday night into Sunday morning.
In response to attacks on Lebanon’s communication devices, Hezbollah targeted Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems which is one of the developers of its Iron Dome air-defense system over the weekend. Hezbollah also said that they targeted Israel’s Ramat David Airbase near Haifa.
Michael Maloof, a former senior security policy analyst with the Office of the Secretary of Defense, joined Sputnik’s The Final Countdown on Monday to discuss the increasing hostility between Israel and Hezbollah.
“[Displacing people is a] major problem for the Israeli government. That's why they've now decided to put Gaza aside and start extending northward because they need to try to reopen that northern part. Because you got increasingly disgruntled population of Israelis, many of whom are saying they're never going to return. Now, the Israeli government’s got to find room for them and new placement,” Maloof explained. “They have to pay for it and it's draining the Israeli economy.”
A week ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet made the decision to initiate the return of residents to the north of Israel an “official war goal”, BBC reported. About 60,000 people were evacuated from the area due to the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel as the conflict in the Gaza Strip nears its one-year anniversary.
During a military parade in Tehran on Saturday which commemorated the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988, Iran revealed a new solid-fueled ballistic missile dubbed the Jihad (Holy War). The missile has a reported range of up to 1,000 km and was designed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ aerospace division, Sputnik reported on Saturday.
“[Iran is] going to have to respond sooner than later because Hezbollah is, I should say Lebanon, not just Hezbollah, but Lebanon is now being attacked with missiles, soon to be with ground forces. That's from reports that I'm getting there. There are troops coming up from Gaza as well as tanks being rolled into the northern parts to enter southern Lebanon,” the analyst explained.
“So, this is getting [riskier] by the day. It isn't just, as I said, a tit-for-tat. Now it's escalating on a daily basis, and that portends something very serious,” the expert said.
“...this [conflict] could extend because I also see we're going to have the Iraqi Shia and the, potentially, the Iranians and the Yemenis coming in on this,” he added. “Now what the Hezbollah are sending in are just rockets. They haven't really put into effect their high precision missiles that they have yet. And, they may be doing some around the Haifa area. I understand that Haifa has been hit pretty much, but all news about that has been blacked out.”
A mysterious string of attacks on Hezbollah members’ communication devices left thousands of people injured across Lebanon and Syria on Tuesday. The attacks killed 37 people according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry, and are suspected to be the responsibility of the Mossad, Israel’s national intelligence agency.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called the events in Lebanon a monstrous act of terrorism and an attempt to ignite a major conflict.
“I think what's going to happen here is that Hezbollah is going to ratchet up on a daily basis now. Their missiles are deep, deep in silos, like 90 feet,” Maloof explained. “And the fact is that they have not implemented them yet. Plus, Hezbollah has a history of deception. They are good at, and they've seen this from their experiences in the 2006 war.”
“They will set up dummy launchers and what have you, and give the impression in areas that people are moving around. And I would add that the pagers that were blowing up, these are, the people that were affected were not the Hezbollah military. These were civilians who did the trafficking,” the analyst added. “But this is separate from the military comms. They have separate military comms and they don't use pagers,” the expert said.
“[Israel is] dying from a thousand cuts, and that is actually the strategy by the Iranians and Hezbollah is to drag it out because Israel is not accustomed to long-term battles like this. And they see the economy as going h*** in a handbasket. And you've got very disgruntled Israelis internally and you've got feuding going on within the government. At some point, things are just going to collapse as long as they can prolong this thing,” Maloof explained.