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No ground offensive on horizon, but Israeli attacks in Lebanon an escalation
It doesn’t seem that an Israeli ground offensive in Lebanon is in the immediate future. But these latest strikes are being presented as an escalation.
According to the Israeli statements, we heard from the prime minister saying, “Look, I told you, at the beginning of this war, Israel is going to change the face of the Middle East, and you didn’t believe me, but we are changing the face of the Middle East, and the American president shares my vision.”
And if you take a look around, you see Israel using fire, using air strikes, shaking the ground from under people across the region: in Lebanon, in Gaza, in Yemen.
Israel has a free hand, and it doesn’t feel restrained even by the US oversight mechanism.
In Lebanon, in particular, it is going to discuss what it views as Hezbollah rearming and regrouping. It has made it very clear that unless Hezbollah disarms, unless the Lebanese government strips the party of its arms, then it will move in and do it itself.
One killed, 9 wounded in Israeli air raids on southern Lebanon
A Lebanese man has been killed and eight others wounded in Toura, a town in southern Lebanon’s Tyre district, where Israeli warplanes struck residential areas, according to the National News Agency (NNA).
Another man was wounded in Israeli attacks on Tayr Debba, also in Tyre, according to NNA.
The towns of Taybeh and Aita al-Jabal were also struck.
As we’ve been reporting, Israel earlier announced a “wave of strikes” across southern Lebanon, claiming it was targeting Hezbollah sites despite a ceasefire agreed with the group last November.
People and a rescuer stand at the site of an Israeli air strike that targeted the southern Lebanese village of Tayr Debba on November 6
UNIFIL says ramped up Israeli attacks on Lebanon ‘threaten civilians’
The UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon has called on Israel to immediately stop its attacks in the area after today’s intensified assault on several southern towns.
UNIFIL said in a statement that the bombardment violates UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel and tasked the peacekeepers with serving as an observation force in the area.
“They come as the Lebanese Armed Forces are undertaking operations to control unauthorized weapons and infrastructure in the south Litani area,” UNIFIL said of Israel’s strikes.
“Any military action, especially on such a destructive scale, threatens the safety of civilians and undermines the progress being made toward a political and diplomatic solution.”
It also called on Lebanese actors “to refrain from any response that could inflame the situation further”.
