Israel Shows Its Cards to Hezbollah With Nearly 500 Dead in Deadliest Day in Lebanon: ‘We Are Searching Every House’

Tens of thousands of Lebanese take his words very seriously.

Roads leading into the capital, Beirut, collapsed during the day, and hotel rooms were scarce. The word most used by witnesses was “chaos.” The weak Lebanese government, caught in the crossfire between Iran’s best-armed tentacle in the Middle East and its most powerful neighbor, has its hands tied and can barely ease the tension. It has activated a national emergency plan. It has set up hundreds of schools and other shelters to accommodate displaced compatriots.

In Tel Aviv, political and military statements do not suggest that the maneuvers against the terrorist organization, intensified last week with individual attacks on its communications, will end anytime soon. “Today is a very important day,” said the Israeli defense minister. Yoav Gallant. “We have decommissioned tens of thousands of rockets and precision munitions. “What Hezbollah has created over two decades, since the Second Lebanon War, is being destroyed by the Israel Defense Forces.”

Explosions were recorded, as in the Gaza Strip, in many urban areas. If this is the case, the spokesman for the military corps said, Daniel HagariThis is because they are looking for the enemy’s weapons “in every house.”

The doubt at the moment concerns the plan of Israel and Hezbollah for the coming days.

For eleven months, Shiite militiamen have been bombing the border areas of Israel, just a few steps away, taking advantage of the fact that their enemy was busy fighting Hamas in Gaza, forcing the indefinite displacement of hundreds of thousands of Israelis.

In recent days, their rockets and missiles have reached the outskirts of Haifa, the third most populous city in the Hebrew country. The measures that each of them will take now remain in suspense. Analysts are doubtful. They do not know whether Israel intends to punish harshly to force Hezbollah to back down and negotiate or whether it is instead opening the way to a ground incursion, as in Gaza, to eliminate the threat. What no one doubts is that Hezbollah’s refusal to continue attacking Israel would accelerate the second scenario, to the great detriment of the Lebanese, given the military superiority of Netanyahu’s troops.

Some voices point out the mistakes made by the militias. “Hezbollah has been bombing northern Israel for a year as if the depopulation of Kiryat Shmona were an end in itself,” writes Gregg Calstrom, correspondent for The economist in the Middle East. “He has achieved none of his strategic objectives, neither in easing military pressure on Gaza nor in forcing Israel to ceasefire.” “Today,” he continues, “he finds himself in a predictable situation, since he has neither the support of his Lebanese compatriots nor that of his Iranian masters for an all-out war with Israel.”

So far, in fact, there has been a resounding silence at the top of Hezbollah. The Iranian president, Massoud Pezeshkianlower your voice.”“We do not want to be the cause of instability in the Middle East,” he said, “because its consequences would be irreversible.” Even is in New York, once again opening the door to a nuclear deal with the West. The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterresexpressed “concern” and demanded a ceasefire.

The United States, knowing that this will not happen overnight, is preparing for all scenarios. It will send more troops to the region, where it is already estimated to have deployed some 40,000 soldiers, while its diplomacy explores new avenues to persuade its ally of the advantages of minimizing the risk of a full-scale war, more dangerous than the one opened in Gaza.