Pedro González
Journalist
So focused were eyes on the war in Gaza that little attention was paid to the daily harassment by the pro-Iranian Hezbollah militia of Israeli towns located near Israel’s border with Lebanon and Syria.
The cadence of missiles from the Party of God – that is what Hezbollah, led by Ayatollah Hassan Nasrallah, stands for – has been increasing since the beginning of the year, while Israel responded by warning that if it decided to respond it would do so with enormous force, leaving in the air that the destruction to which it would subject the south of battered Lebanon could equal, and even surpass, the rubble it is turning into the martyred Gaza Strip.
Israel on Friday began to make good on its threat by intensifying its retaliatory bombardment of the Shiite militia, in the most lethal operation carried out by Israel in the past three years. The attack focused particularly on a missile depot and nearby training center, both located in the vicinity of Aleppo’s international airport, once one of Syria’s urban jewels and a major source of its tourism revenue.
The bombing, which resulted in at least 42 deaths, including 36 Syrian military personnel and 6 Hezbollah militiamen, in addition to many dozens of wounded, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, also spread to weapons factories in Al Safira and other military facilities in Kafr Joum.
This was actually the 29th Israeli retaliatory operation so far this year, but its scope and number of casualties far exceeds those carried out previously.
The factories attacked, although nominally belonging to the Syrian Armed Forces, were under the control of militias and advisors sent, supported and financed by Iran, which has not openly admitted this control, not even over Hamas, since the massacre unleashed by the latter on October 7, the terrorist operation which resulted in 1,200 dead, more than 3,000 wounded and 240 kidnapped, of whom some 123, dead or alive, are still imprisoned in the Gaza subway. Predictably, this Israeli counter-attack raises the temperature throughout the Middle East and brings us closer to the feared spillover of the Gaza war to undefined, but frighteningly wide limits.
The operation, clearly decided by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, loosens the pressure exerted on him and his government both by the families of those still kidnapped and by the numerous Israeli and international institutions that support them, and also counteracts the demands of the United States that it should not launch its announced final operation on Rafah, south of Gaza, “if it did not have a well-defined plan for the evacuation of the Palestinian population confined there that would prevent the mass death of civilians”.
It also excites Iran itself, which it never tires of blaming for the tension in the entire region, demanding that the entire international community act “before it is too late”. In this regard, the Iranian theocratic regime’s foreign affairs spokesman, Nasser Kanaani, in turn accused Israel “of trying to extend the war [in Gaza] in a blatant and desperate operation”.
More nuanced but no less accusatory were the statements of the Russian diplomatic spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, who described the bombardments as “categorically unacceptable”, with potentially very dangerous consequences for the entire region.
Such declarations have not made a dent in the Israeli war cabinet, whose Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, replied that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) “will expand its offensive against Hezbollah, moving from mere defense [of its borders] to its pursuit, so that we will annihilate all those niches from which it operates, both in Beirut and Damascus and those further afield”.
Israeli intelligence has identified more than 4,500 Hezbollah targets spread across both Lebanon and Syria. Of these, it had already struck 1,200 since the start of the Gaza war.
No sooner had Gallant’s announcement been made than the United States reiterated that it would maintain the flow of arms supplies to Israel, a support which shows that, whatever the differences between President Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu, the iron US-Israeli alliance will remain intact.
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