Israel is ready to invade southern Lebanon and react to Hezbollah’s response, say Tel Aviv’s military and political leaders, accelerating a devastating war. And they also seem ready to pay a high price, as it will weigh on others. In this sense, the words that the Israeli Minister for Religious Affairs, Michael Malchieli, entrusted the other day to Channel 14: His ministry, he said, is busy preparing for war, including mass burials.
While Israeli ministers are stirring things up, indirect negotiations between Hezbollah and Tel Aviv are reportedly continuing, but there are few lights at the end of the tunnel. White House envoy Amos Hochstein warned the Lebanese authorities that, in the event of an open conflict, Washington will support Israel.
HE WARNED also that any pauses in the offensive against Gaza would allow the Israeli army to focus on the northern front, although Hezbollah reiterated – again on Wednesday with its leader Nasrallah – that the ceasefire in the Strip would stop the Shiite missiles, because the movement is well aware – as Beirut is – that an invasion to the south would be a disaster for an already tormented Lebanon.
Yesterday at the border was another day of fire, on both sides. On Lebanese territory, an Israeli drone attack killed a civilian who was traveling to the town of Srifa. Hezbollah, for its part, launched around 25 rockets towards Zar’it, causing no casualties but damage to some houses.
Israeli fire also rained down on Gaza for the 258th consecutive day. Bombings on the Nuseirat refugee camp (where two women were killed and, according to the army, one of the leaders of the Hamas Nukhba unit that took part in the October 7 attack was killed), on Gaza City and on Deir al Balah. Heavy fighting between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian fighters has occurred in Rafah, whose southern and western areas have been under enormous pressure from Israeli tanks and fighter jets for days. The worst clashes, Palestinian journalists reported yesterday, took place in the al-Shabura refugee camp.
«In Rafah – writes journalist Hind Khoudary – Israeli forces leveled agricultural land in the east and blew up houses. In the south and west, intense clashes are ongoing between Palestinian fighters and Israeli soldiers. The people in the tents are trapped, they cannot escape.”
The toll updated yesterday by the Gaza Ministry of Health gave an account of 37,431 Palestinians killed since October 7, in addition to over 85,600 injured and at least 10,000 missing under the rubble and probably dead.
It is in this context that yesterday the groups of experts and special rapporteurs of the United Nations once again spoke out, as they now do regularly, against the Israeli offensive, to send a warning to Tel Aviv’s allied countries but above all to the arms manufacturing companies : Sending military equipment and spare parts to the Israeli army could make them complicit in violating international law “even if (sales) are made on the basis of existing export licenses.”
IN ISRAEL things are no better at home. Again yesterday, thousands of people demonstrated against Prime Minister Netanyahu by blocking one of the country’s main highways, Route 6, with tires set on fire. The police arrested five of them.
A repression that is not paying off at the moment: if the majority of Israelis agree with the continuation of the offensive against Gaza, an important part of public opinion has been demonstrating for weeks calling for new elections, the removal of Netanyahu and an exchange agreement with Hamas, to bring back home to the approximately 120 hostages still in the hands of Hamas and other Palestinian groups. Of these, it is difficult to say how many are still alive given the carpet bombing of the entire Strip. He tries Wall Street Journal, which cites US sources: there are fewer than 50 Israelis still alive in Gaza. A huge number that makes the government tremble.
HOW COULD IT shake the internal investigation of the Israeli army, cited yesterday by the news site N12: a large number of casualties on October 7 (around 1,100 Israelis, civilians and soldiers, were killed) were caused by friendly fire. We don’t talk about numbers, we talk about “large numbers” and “multiple incidents of our forces shooting at our forces”, such as the grenades thrown at the houses of Kibbutz Beeri because, says the investigation, General Hiram ordered to “enter inside, even at the cost of civilian casualties”.
Pending the publication of the investigation perhaps in mid-July, Channel 12 it also reports excerpts relating to the victims among the soldiers: «The friendly fire led to the death and wounding of an unspecified number of soldiers who were hesitant to face» Hamas.
