Tuesday September 24, 2024 The Jewish State has bombed dozens of Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon using Israeli army fighter jets, causing the destruction of 1600 structures of the Islamic political-military organization and at least 558 confirmed victims in addition to approximately 26,000 displaced peoplewith the Israeli army having Evacuation order renewed for Lebanese citizens. The aim of the operation was to kill Ibrahim Qubaisi, a Hezbollah commander, who, according to initial reports, appears to have been shot dead along with other leading Hezbollah figures. As predicted by the most pessimistic commentators, the creeping conflict on Israel’s northern borders is increasingly turning into a open war which risks destabilizing the entire Middle Eastern region.
The general context of the clashes between Israel and Lebanon
Already in the aftermath of the Hamas attack on the Jewish State, October 7, 2023a new dangerous war front had opened in the north of the country, on the border between Israel and Lebanon, where the Shiite militia of the Hezbollah (which in Arabic means “Party of God”) had begun launching intermittent missile attacks in order to ease the pressure their Israeli counterparts were under in Gaza. Hamas and other Palestinian armed militancy groups. Although almost a year has passed since then, the situation has never returned to normal and, on the contrary, the creeping conflict has progressively degenerated into a open war.
The air raids of the last few days
According to the data of the Ministry of Health of Lebanonmore than 558 people have lost their lives and 1,835 others have been injured in the last 24 hours during which the Israeli Air Force carried out more than 1600 raids dropping 2000 bombs. Of course the numbers are constantly updated because the crisis is not at all on the verge of being resolved and indeed it does not seem that the contenders are willing to back down. Hezbollah’s reaction to the Israeli air and intelligence offensive has so far been described as “mild”. At the moment it is not clear what the plans of Hezbollah and its Iranian allies are, even if the Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian He said that his country: “while continuing to support Hezbollah, does not want a generalized war.”
The military escalation of September 2024
From October 2023 to July 2024, Israel has adopted the well-documented and proven policy towards Hezbollah modus operandi which provides the usual mix of political assassinations and air strikes (more or less surgical) already used numerous times in the past against the enemy of the moment. The peak of this campaign was reached on July 30, 2024 with the elimination in Beirut of Fuad Shukrleader of the military wing of the Lebanese political-terrorist movement. The failure of Hezbollah and Iran to react to this targeted killing (as well as to that of the political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh) seems to have had the effect of emboldening the Israeli leadership, which opted for an escalation of the military initiative starting from the beginning of September (not to mention the brilliant sabotage operation carried out by the Mossad through the tampering with the pagers which we have already spoken about in the recent past).
