Rami Mortada, Lebanon’s ambassador to the UK, warned that the Lebanese army would not “stand idly” by and watch if Israel launches a ground invasion or “heavy aerial attack” on Lebanon, The Cradle reported on Friday. The diplomat reportedly said that an Israeli ground invasion into southern Lebanon would be a “doomsday” scenario and would lead to an all-out regional conflict and the radicalization of Muslims in Europe.
Israel announced that it would try and create a “buffer zone” in south Lebanon by pushing Hezbollah’s forces behind the Litani River. 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 on-year anniversary.
Dimitri Lascaris, a lawyer and journalist based in Montreal, Canada, and Kalamata, Greece, joined Sputnik’s The Critical Hour on Monday to discuss the ongoing hostilities in the Middle East.
“Hezbollah is a much more formidable force than the Lebanese army in terms of its weaponry and in terms of its combat capability. The idea that the Israelis can drive Hezbollah from the area south of the Litani River is pure fantasy. It's an absolute fantasy,” said Lascaris. “I, at this point, am not convinced they're actually going to invade Lebanon.”
“I think they may simply do what they do well, do best of all, which is bomb civilians from the sky until they have inflicted untold suffering on the civilian population. I think there are serious concerns on the Israeli side. Some retired generals, in fact, Yitzhak Brik, have been saying that a ground invasion into south Lebanon would be a disaster and it would be for Israel,” he added.
“So they may just try to obliterate as many civilians as possible in Lebanon, but as we've seen in Gaza, that is not an effective strategy for defeating resistance. They've been doing that in the most horrific manner for 12 months. And even the Israeli military has admitted that they're not capable of destroying Hamas. So all of this is going to lead to a lot of bloodshed on both sides, not just on the Lebanese side, but it isn't going to ever result in Hezbollah retreating to the north of the Litani River.”
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. Hezbollah also said that they targeted Israel’s Ramat David Airbase near Haifa. The IDF did not confirm the target of the militant group’s strikes, but said they had “struck deeper than usual into Israeli territory”.
The IDF said that about 150 rockets, missiles and other projectiles were fired onto its territory overnight on Saturday and early Sunday, BBC reported. The report added that thousands of Israelis took cover in bomb shelters as a result, which resulted in damaging homes near Haifa.
“...the military arm of Hezbollah struck deeper into Israel than it has at any point in the last 11 months. It struck north of Haifa. It aimed at the major military base, the Ramat David Airbase, which it hasn't struck before. It aimed at the Rafael factories, a very important military contractor in Israel. And there are reports that some missiles fell outside of Tel Aviv,” the analyst explained.
“So they're seeing the situation getting worse. The wait and see approach is, I think, strengthening the conviction in a lot of Israelis who departed the country on a provisional basis that they don't want to return to this mess. And a number of them have already given up and that number is growing.”
The US is sending a “small number of additional troops” to the Middle East in response to the increase in fighting between Hezbollah and Israel, AP News reported citing the Pentagon. Currently, the US has about 40,000 troops in the region. And on Monday, the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman, two Navy destroyers and a cruiser were deployed to the Sixth Fleet area in Europe as part of a regularly scheduled deployment. However, it opens up the possibility for the US to keep both the Truman and the USS Abraham Lincoln in the region in preparation for further conflicts.
“...even if they succeed in dragging the US military into this conflict, it still isn't going to result in Hezbollah being driven north of the Litani River. If they send 10 or 20,000 Marines - I don't believe the US would go that far, but let's say in an extreme case, they lose their minds [...] I still think that the result will be that Hezbollah will prevail,” the analyst explained. “It won't be defeated. It will take heavy losses, for sure. But it is not going to be driven by either the US or the Israelis or both of them acting together from south of Lebanon.”
“This is very, very difficult terrain. I've been there five times in the last year and right up to the Israeli border on each occasion. It is very mountainous terrain. It is known intimately well by Hezbollah. They have been preparing for years for this conflict. They have elaborate networks of tunnels. They have combat experience from the brutal Syrian civil war and they have a much better missile arsenal than they ever possessed,” Lascaris said. “So you'd have to be delusional to believe that even with the assistance of American ground forces, you're going to evict Hezbollah from its stronghold."
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 including children, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry. The attacks 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.
“When analyzing the pager detonations from a legal standpoint, it becomes clear that Israel's killing spree in Lebanon this week lies somewhere between a war crime and an act of terrorism,” wrote Mohamad Hasan Sweidan, a researcher and writer for The Cradle. “Israel’s pager bombing has also sparked global concerns about the security of international supply chains."
"If Israel has indeed begun weaponizing civilian devices through third parties in other countries, this raises the terrifying prospect that supply chains once thought to be safe could be compromised at any time.”
“...even though the media is sticking to the party line and there are even depraved lunatics inside the Democratic Party who are saying they support this terrorist attack - I think that this is perhaps a bridge too far, not because of the humanitarian inclinations of the capitalist class in the US. But because of the fact that this is going to do some serious damage to their business model, potentially,” Lascaris explained. “So, we'll see, but it may well be that Israel just earned itself a lot of enemies who were formerly on its side.”
“People there are waking up to the reality that the Israeli military cannot defend them from the hostile forces that have accumulated all around this tiny little country. And they've accumulated not because they are antisemitic, they've accumulated because they're fed up with being abused by the US and its proxies in the region,” said the analyst.
“...unfortunately, it happens to be true, I wish it weren't, that a majority of Israeli Jews have been brainwashed into thinking that the Palestinian people are savages and they've been dehumanized and they can't coexist with them peacefully,” he added. “So, if they're confronted with the choice of having to either live with them as equals or leave, they'll leave.”