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Beirut attacked after Netanyahu’s UN speech shows ‘disdain for international law’: Analyst
Mohamad Bazzi, director of the Centre for Near Eastern Studies at New York University, told Al Jazeera the attack on Beirut is the expansion of Israel’s “brutal tactics that it used in Gaza”.
“Massive bombardment. Massive displacement of civilians. These so-called warnings that are sent out to people an hour or two before the massive aerial bombardment. These warnings that are intended to get people out in a panic and spread panic through the streets and through all of Beirut and Lebanon,” Bazzi told Al Jazeera.
It timing of the attack is also deeply significant, coming after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a defiant speech to the UN, which he accused of being a “swamp of anti-Semitic bile” and said Israel’s attacks on Lebanon would continue.
“The timing shouldn’t be lost on anyone of this tremendously huge attack on Dahiyeh today, happening soon after Netanyahu spoke at the UN General Assembly. It just showed tremendous disdain for international law and the UN,” Bazzi said.
Israeli blitz on Beirut designed to bomb Lebanon’s ‘population into submission’: Analyst
Beirut-based Lara Bitar, editor-in-chief of The Public Source publication, said the attacks on Lebanon’s capital have been indiscriminate and designed to “terrorise the Lebanese population into submission”.
“It’s been a relentless night of indiscriminate bombings not only targeting Beirut’s southern suburbs but targeting many different parts of the country, including the Bekaa, the Chouf, of course, the southern parts of the country,” Bitar told Al Jazeera.
“This is intended to terrorise the Lebanese population into submission and to force the resistance group Hezbollah to abandon the Palestinian people in Gaza who have been facing a genocide over the past 11 months as the world looks on, as the world watches and the world does absolutely nothing,” Bitar said.
“This is the goal of these indiscriminate bombing campaigns that are targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure,” she said.
“Over the past two weeks, we’ve seen ambulances targeted and roads to hospitals. If Gaza is anything to look [towards] to guide us, this is expected to deteriorate very severely and to become, potentially, a catastrophe,” she added.
Lebanese civil defence teams conduct search and rescue operations following the Israeli attacks in the southern area of the capital Beirut, Lebanon, on Friday night
EU foreign affairs chief laments that ‘nobody’ can ‘stop’ Netanyahu
Speaking to journalists at the UN General Assembly, Josep Borrell said Prime Minister Netanyahu had made clear that Israel won’t “stop until Hezbollah is destroyed”.
“If the interpretation of being destroyed is the same as with Hamas, then we are going to go for a long war,” Borrell lamented. “What we do is to put all diplomatic pressure to a ceasefire, but nobody seems to be able to stop Netanyahu, neither in Gaza nor in the West Bank,” he said.
Borrell said he backed a US- and France-led ceasefire proposal for a 21-day ceasefire in Lebanon, which Israel has so far ignored as it carries out a deadly bombing campaign that has killed more than 700 people since Monday.
Israeli strikes targeted residential buildings, not Hezbollah ‘command centre’
More from Beirut-based journalist Lara Bitar, editor-in-chief of The Public Source publication, who spoke to Al Jazeera earlier:
“There is no such thing as a Hezbollah ‘command centre’. There is also no such thing as a Hezbollah headquarters. Hezbollah doesn’t have bureaus and offices where they meet that are known.”
“These are residential buildings. Six or seven multistorey buildings were targeted and these buildings were inhabited by civilians who might or might not be affiliated to the party. But for the most part, they are civilians.”
“When these air strikes take place, they impact, obviously, not just the building that is targeted but all of the surroundings. So you can imagine the death toll every time one of these strikes takes place.”
