Tag Archives: Hezbollah

Britain, Gaza, Government, Israel, Middle East, Politics, Society, United States

A region in flames

MIDDLE EAST

Intro: One year on from the 7 October attacks, the region is slipping deeper into war. The conflict continues to destroy countless lives. The scenes from Gaza since that fateful day have haunted millions around the world and the crisis is being felt with increasing intensity in Lebanon and the West Bank

THE last twelve months has been a period of slaughter and destruction for the Middle East. Far from any awakening from this nightmare, the region is slipping deeper into war. Israel is planning a “significant and serious” retaliation against Iran for its missile attack. The cycle of retribution is spinning faster, with the conflagration feared growing closer. Once more, civilians are paying the price.

On 7 October 2023, more than 1,200 men, women, and children were killed at a family festival in Israel by Hamas fighters who had crossed from Gaza: the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, in the country built to guarantee their safety. Another 250 – the youngest nine months old – were taken hostage. Though around half were subsequently released, many have yet to return home. Others never will.

The ensuing Israeli onslaught on Gaza has killed almost 43,000 Palestinians; most were women and children, including hundreds of infants. The chilling abbreviation WCNSF – wounded child, no surviving family – has become commonplace. The survivors are displaced, hungry, and desperate, and the humanitarian catastrophe grows as Israel pursues its war in the wasteland. The last year has also been the deadliest for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. Already 2,000 people are dead in Lebanon.

Israel was embraced with sympathy in the wake of the Hamas attacks. Its right to defend itself does not permit it to trample the laws of war. Ministers and politicians have openly expressed – in the words of prominent Israelis – “the discourse of annihilation, expulsion, and revenge”. That speaks of the impact of permanent occupation; this story did not begin twelve months ago. Benjamin Netanyahu’s determination to remain prime minister, and the zealotry of his political partners, have prevailed over the lives of Israeli hostages as well as Palestinians.

Hezbollah’s leaders too lie dead. The fear of another 7 October is understandably strengthened when Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, praises “a legitimate act”. But Israel’s tactical success to date against Hamas and Hezbollah is not the same as a strategic triumph. Military victory is a mirage. Israeli citizens are under immediate threat from an expanded war and the destruction of other homes and families is no foundation for their long-term, sustainable security.

Israel is now increasingly isolated, not because outsiders did not register the horror of 7 October, but because they cannot ignore the grave suffering of Palestinians. Netanyahu and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, stand accused of crimes against humanity at the international criminal court. The international court of justice has ruled that Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories is illegal, calling for immediate withdrawal and reparations, and in January ordered it to ensure no genocidal acts are committed in Gaza. While the US continues to ship arms to an ally that ignores its warnings, others are recoiling.

The release of hostages and a ceasefire in Gaza – and now Lebanon too – become only more urgent as the months pass. Power-hungry men of hatred have pursued a war in which innocent men, women, and children across the region have died. Ending it requires diplomacy addressing not only the immediate crisis but long-term security needs, including a fair settlement for Palestinians.

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Government, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Middle East, Politics, United Nations, United States

Israel widens the war. Iran could soon be the arch enemy

MIDDLE EAST

NOT since the Saxon nobility were wiped out in the Battle of Hastings, including King Harold and his brothers, almost 1,000 years ago, has one side annihilated the leadership of its arch enemy so suddenly and thoroughly.

First the Israelis killed, blinded, and maimed thousands of middle-ranking Hezbollah fighters, by triggering explosions in their pages and walkie-talkies.

Then, in the last few days, in a series of surgical strikes – precise as they were powerful – Israel’s air force dropped up to 16 bunker-busting bombs onto the underground lair where Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was huddled with his top brass.

They must have believed they were safe in their reinforced concrete hideaway, but for so many essential figures to be gathered in one place displayed reckless hubris which was ruthlessly punished.

Around 20 senior militia commanders were killed, including the security head of the organisation, Ibrahim Hussein Jazini, and Nasrallah’s closest confidante, Samir Tawfiq Dib. Nabil Qaouk, a key figure in Hezbollah’s central council, was killed in a separate air attack.

By any sane rationale, the war between Israel and Hezbollah should be over. But fanatics are neither sane nor rational.

This is a fighting force whose lower ranks are obsessed with martyrdom. They have been comprehensively defeated, but that does not mean they will surrender.

Until now, the Islamist militia was rigidly disciplined, with Nasrallah wielding supreme control. But with the decapitation of their leadership and the destruction of their communications network, the minions of Hezbollah will have nothing to guide them but their own maniacal – and perhaps suicidal – initiatives.

As much as half their stockpiles of rockets, shells, and artillery has been destroyed, but there is still a mass of weapons at the disposal of local commanders eager to burnish their own combat reputations and leadership ambitions.

Israeli prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu will probably feel he has no choice but to order a ground invasion of southern Lebanon to stamp out the smouldering remains of Hezbollah. But that is a high-risk strategy for three reasons.

Firstly, Israeli casualties will be higher. In the featureless plains of Gaza, their enemy has nowhere to hide. But in the hilly terrain of Lebanon, it can dart in and out of cover and wreak havoc with its armour-penetrating missiles.

Secondly, a ground invasion will create a huge refugee crisis. In the past week alone, some 80,000 civilians have fled Lebanon for makeshift camps in Syria. The Lebanese prime minister Najib Mikati has warned up to a million people could be displaced.

This exodus could be the perfect cover for Hezbollah’s scattered remnants to spread insurgency across Europe. Unable to attack Israel, some might prefer to increase international pressure by exporting misery and violence to Israel’s supporters – with Britain chief among them.

Thirdly, perhaps ominously, the sheer effectiveness of Israel’s megaton assassinations is likely to accelerate the Iranian nuclear weapons programme.

Israel has already shown it has no compunction about killing enemies on Iranian soil, with the elimination in July of the Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh. Now, the knowledge that no underground bunker is safe will galvanise Iran’s leaders. While under huge internal pressure to retaliate against Israel directly, they fear the consequences – be they their own assassinations, or airstrikes against their nuclear facilities.

The mullahs will not want to provoke such an attack, especially as they are only weeks away from producing enough enriched uranium to make a nuclear bomb, according to the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.

They are likely to conclude it makes more sense to challenge Israel using its proxy militias, such as the Houthis in Yemen, whose rocket attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea are designed to strangle Israel economically.

For Iran to create a viable nuclear weapon, it will also need a detonator – not an easy piece of technology to build. But this project, too, could be near completion, possibly with North Korean help.

If Iran does successfully test an atom bomb, international efforts to avert nuclear war will become increasingly hysterical. The UN Security Council could attempt to persuade Iran to freeze its nuclear programme in return for a ceasefire, but this would have little chance of success without the cooperation of the US, who might take the view there is no way to put the nuclear genie back in the bottle once a test has been conducted.

It appears that Israel has won a spectacular tactical victory over Hezbollah. But the main strategic enemy could soon be a nuclear-armed Iran. Armageddon beckons for one side – or both.

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Government, History, Intelligence, Israel, Lebanon, Middle East, Technology

Hezbollah’s indignant fury

MIDDLE EAST

THE terrifying attacks this week on thousands of pagers operated by Hezbollah across Lebanon is being perceived as the Pearl Harbour of the 21st century.

When the Japanese Navy Air Service bombed Pearl Harbour in 1941, their aim was to knock out America’s air power in the Pacific and prevent the US from joining the Second World War.

But, as history shows, they achieved precisely the opposite. Roused to indignant anger, the American public were instantly committed to the Allied cause – and Japan found itself facing a new and mighty enemy.

The operation carried out against Hezbollah and the Lebanese was spectacular on its own merits (despite the wickedness of the attacks) – with at least nine fatalities and more than 3,000 seriously injured.

Yet its wider significance is certain to resonate in the months and years to come.

If Israel, like Imperial Japan before it, thought this massive attack would serve to dissuade Hezbollah’s fighters from entering a full-scale war with the Jewish state, many should fear they will be disappointed.

Already the Islamists will be plotting their revenge – and Israeli PM Benyamin Netanyahu has been locked in talks at his defence ministry’s HQ in Tel Aviv over how to respond to a potential escalation.

Critically, however, many will be asking how did Israel actually achieve this?

There are several competing theories. The Israelis could have planted old-fashioned booby traps in the thousands of pagers – which are said to have been delivered to Hezbollah fighters only in recent days.

More likely, is that the pagers were pre-loaded with a sophisticated computer virus that caused them to deliberately overheat, resulting in their lithium batteries catching fire.

This is a known risk of the batteries used in many electronic devices – and is part of the reason why airlines refuse to let passengers carry laptops in their checked luggage.

In whatever way Israel carried out the operation, it’s ironic that Hezbollah’s militants only recently swapped mobile phones for pagers in the belief that they were more secure.

Famously, mobiles carry GPS software that allows the devices – and therefore their users – to be tracked anywhere in the world.

A few weeks ago, Hamas’s political chief Ismail Haniyeh was hunted to a guesthouse in the Iranian capital of Tehran – and eliminated. Experts believe his assassination was possible only because his phone was being tracked.

The truth is that Israel excels at precisely this kind of warfare. Decades of facing down hostile neighbours that vastly outnumber its own citizens has led to the embattled Middle East developing a fearsome array of sophisticated military tools, from nuclear missiles and tanks to cyber-weapons.

Combined with this is the ruthlessness of its famed secret intelligence agency, Mossad, in tracking down and eliminating its enemies, from the perpetrators of the Munich Olympics massacre onwards. As we have seen, Mossad always gets its man – or men – in the end.

So, what comes next? If reports are right, and one in 30 of Hezbollah’s fighters have indeed been put out of action due to the pager attack, that will present a severe impediment to the group’s operational capability. The leadership will also be asking questions about how to communicate securely with its fighters in future.

With Hezbollah’s military organisation disrupted, the Israelis might decide to invade a portion of southern Lebanon to create a “buffer zone” that could protect civilians in northern Israel from rocket attacks.

Some experts will have concerns about this “contained” approach. For all the brutal ingeniousness of the pager attack, the consequences for regional security could be dire.

Instead, the pager operation is far more likely to be the prelude to another all-out Israel-Lebanon War – with grim consequences for world peace and stability.

Hezbollah’s allies, Iran and Syria, will inevitably be anxious and worried that Israeli intelligence could do the same to them. But even those Arab countries with diplomatic relations with Israel, such as Egypt and Jordan, must now be asking themselves how safe they really are – and whether or not their communication networks are secure. This will weaken Israel’s ability to build friendships in the region.

And there could be consequences for us, too. Western democracies will already be assessing what this novel form of warfare means for them – and how they might be able to copy Israel’s methods.

History teaches us that no new military technique remains a monopoly of its inventor for long. How long before Putin or Xi Jinping works out how to make millions of iPhones around the world burst into flames in the pockets of their foes?

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