'Israel will engineer a broader war'

October 04, 2024  10:07
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Just as the Biden administration implored Benjamin Netanyahu to cease fire and bring succor to the millions crushed by the brutal Israeli occupation of Gaza, Israel opened a new front in Lebanon.

After its drubbing-of-sorts (for the unvanquished Israeli Defence Forces) in 2006 at Hezbollah's hands, the Israeli military and intelligence establishments have viewed the Iran-sponsored Shia Hezbollah militia as its primary adversary in its immediate neighbourhood; Hamas was seen as a nuisance, but a force the Israelis thought they could control.

October 7, 2023 altered that perception, perhaps for always.

With Hamas' leadership in Gaza killed -- barring its top leader Yahya Sinwar and a few others -- the generals and spooks in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv decided it was now time to target Hezbollah and teach the Iranian proxy and its masters in Tehran a lesson.

First came the detonation of pagers all over Lebanon -- perhaps the second most audacious intelligence operation this century (the CIA homing in on Osama bin Laden in Abbotabad, Pakistan, must surely rank first) -- pagers reportedly sold by a native of Wayanad in Bulgaria!Then, using its deep penetration of Hebollah ranks, Israel then began to annihilate the militia's leadership.

Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah's assassination last Friday, September 27, 2024, defies the understanding of those who studied the secretive Hezbollah secretary general for years. Rarely seen in public, Nasrallah was paranoid about his security. In his 32 years as Hezbollah's leader, he rarely surfaced, making his long public speeches to his flock from some safe house.

Why then in the midst of Israel's brutal bombing campaign did he venture out of his lair and who leaked the information that he was in the building to the Israelis? Was it an Iranian informant, in Mossad's pay, as one newspaper claimed?

And how did Israeli bombers swiftly cross over to Lebanon -- as soon as Netanyahu had okayed the kill from his New York hotel -- without being detected by Lebanese military radar and before Nasarallah could be moved out of the way of the 2,000 pound bombs that obliterated the building and the underground bunkers where the Hezbollah boss was meeting with his aides?

Iran's barrage of 138 missiles fired at Israel on Tuesday, October 1, 2024 as a response to Nasrallah's killing has clouded further the fog of war.

What happens next? Will Netanyahu, anxious to erase the stigma of sleeping on the job this time last year and eager to restore his standing with Israeli voters, push for a war with Iran, a conflict that will almost certainly drag America into the conflict?

To unravel the current conundrum in the Middle East, Rediff.com's Nikhil Lakshman turned to Dr Hussein Ibish, the Lebanese born senior resident scholar at the Washington, DC-based Arab Gulf States Institute and author of the recent book Why Ending the Occupation and Peace with Israel is Still the Palestinian National Goal.

Read the interview here. 
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