Israel is embarking on a maximum pressure strategy in Lebanon as it has done in Gaza, hoping that it will succeed in forcing a surrender by the resistance in the former where it has failed in the latter.

According to Amos Harel, an analyst for Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, that country’s intensive airstrikes in Lebanon “looks like a pressure campaign to impose a speedy agreement.”

Israeli media reported on Friday that “a senior Israeli security official” told the families of Israelis being held captive in Gaza that the military will be fighting in Lebanon for another two or three weeks, with the goal “to reach a diplomatic agreement with Hizballah that would allow Israel to secure a hostage deal.”

The strategy is backed by the US, which has provided unconditional support for Israel during its genocide of the Palestinian people, particularly in Gaza, and now for its military offensive in Lebanon.

Miller then said that “I wish that Hamas would come to the table and work with us on a ceasefire” – the implication being that the only such agreement that would be accepted by Washington would be the complete surrender of Hamas.

Amal Saad, an expert on Hizballah, observed that designation of the Lebanese resistance group as a terror organization by the US and other Western powers “has effectively empowered Israel to escalate its campaign of state terrorism in Lebanon,” replicating in that country the “new model” of brutal warfare wrought in Gaza.

The proscription of Hizballah has “given Israel the cover to commit war crimes against the Lebanese people and depopulate Shia areas” of the country, according to Saad.

It has “also granted Israel the license to potentially carry out ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Shia community when it inevitably realizes that its extreme violence is incapable of defeating Hizballah.”

Ayatollah’s speech

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made a historic speech on Friday – part of it directed towards the Palestinian and Lebanese people and delivered in Arabic.

But it also delivered a clear message to Tel Aviv and Washington that there will be no defeat of Hamas and Hizballah.

While “we are all grieving and mourning” following the death of Hasan Nasrallah, the secretary-general of Hizballah killed in a massive attack on Beirut’s southern suburbs last week, “our mourning does not mean being depressed, distressed or losing hope,” Khamenei said.

Unbowed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s thinly veiled threat of regime change in Iran, Khamenei asserted that Israel is in its most precarious position since its establishment.

Operation al-Aqsa Flood – the surprise attack by Hamas on 7 October 2023 – and the year of resistance in Gaza and Lebanon that followed “has bought the usurping entity to the point where its main concern is to preserve its existence,” Khamenei said.

Israel has tried to delink its southern and northern fronts by assassinating Nasrallah and several other founding commanders of Hizballah. The Lebanese resistance group has vowed to keep firing missiles and drones towards Israel until it ends its attacks in Gaza.

Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araqchi, who met with Lebanese leaders in Beirut on Friday, “said Tehran supported efforts for a ceasefire in Lebanon on the condition it would be backed by Hizballah and simultaneous with a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip,” according to Reuters.

Khamenei’s speech, a rare Friday sermon delivered in public at the Imam Khomeini Grand Mosalla mosque in central Tehran, should leave little doubt that Iran will not back down from its key role in the regional resistance.

Iran fired a massive barrage of ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday, forcing the majority of Israel’s population to seek safety in bomb shelters as military bases were hit in the center of the country in retaliation for the strikes that killed Nasrallah.

Khamenei emphasized that countries in the region have a shared interest in defeating the threat posed by Israel, the common enemy of the Palestinian, Lebanese, Iranian, Yemeni and Syrian peoples.

Unity would lead to the defeat of all enemies, Khamenei said, and Iran would fulfill its duties with resolve. Acting with neither hesitation nor haste, Iran will do what is logical, reasonable and correct, he said.

As if to underscore that the regional resistance would not be cowed, a strike from a drone launched from Iraq killed two Israeli soldiers and injured 24 others in the Golan Heights – Syrian territory under Israeli military occupation since 1967 – on Thursday.

Israel is poised to strike Iran following the barrage of ballistic missiles fired from the country on Tuesday. Israeli officials have reportedly told their US counterparts that the country’s attack will be “calibrated,” according to Reuters.

Experts interviewed by the news agency said that Israel would likely avoid highly sensitive targets like oil facilities and nuclear sites so as to avoid an “escalated Iranian response including the potential targeting of the oil production sites of US allies in the region.”

Daily attacks on Gaza shelters

While Iran and Israel teeter on the precipice of open war, Tel Aviv’s use of heavy bombs in densely populated areas of Lebanon and Gaza continue unabated.

At least 29 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes across Gaza on Friday, according to health authorities in the territory.

On Thursday, the UN human rights office called on Israel “to immediately end the pattern of strikes in Gaza on buildings acting as shelters” for displaced Palestinians.

“Such attacks have become an almost daily event,” the UN office said, with at least six schools hit in the previous 72 hours, “resulting in tens of fatalities, including women and children.”

“In September alone, our office recorded at least 14 schools struck in Gaza by the Israeli military, and in August one school attack every other day,” the UN stated.

Such blatant violations of the laws of war, normalized over the past year in Gaza – during which time nearly 42,000 Palestinians in the territory are confirmed to have been killed – are now being perpetrated by Israel in Lebanon.

More than three dozen people were killed and 151 injured in the 24 hours prior, the Lebanese government said on Friday, bringing the total number of fatalities in the country to more than 2,000.

More than 100 children had been killed in Lebanon over the past week and a half, the UN children’s agency UNICEF said on Friday.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on Friday that it “remains concerned about the safety and well-being of civilians as Lebanon experiences a surge in airstrikes and displacement orders.”

Israel targeted the Masnaa border crossing between Syria and Lebanon, “a major axis for relief supplies coming into the country and used by families fleeing to Syria in search of safety,” according to OCHA.

“It is imperative that all civilians be allowed to flee to safer areas, and that they be protected whether they stay or leave,” OCHA added.

At least four hospitals in Lebanon suspended work due to Israeli attacks, the AFP news agency reported on Friday.

Health workers killed in Lebanon

On Thursday, Imran Riza, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator in Lebanon, said that at least 73 health workers had lost their lives in escalated attacks in southern Lebanon.

“In the past 24 hours, 28 health workers have been killed,” Riza added, “underscoring the alarming escalation of violence and its devastating impact on those providing life-saving care.”

On Wednesday, Israel bombed a relief center in central Beirut in “another dangerous escalation,” Riza said, resulting “in the deaths of paramedics, civil defense and relief officers who were actively assisting displaced and affected communities.”

Riza said that such attacks “are serious violations of international humanitarian law, undermining humanitarian efforts and threatening the safety of those providing life-saving assistance.”

Following the killing of healthcare workers in Beirut overnight Wednesday, Josep Borrell, the EU foreign policy chief, said “I condemn this violation of IHL [international humanitarian law].”

But condemnations will do little to protect paramedics and other health workers targeted by Israel in Lebanon, especially as Matthew Miller, the US State Department spokesperson, gave Israel the benefit of the doubt when it comes to its attacks on hospitals during a press briefing on Thursday:

Rabih Issah, a commissioner with a medical organization active in south Lebanon, said paramedics have received phone calls “with a voice speaking Arabic on the other end, warning them to evacuate their medical centers,” according to The Guardian.

Ghassan Abu Sitta, a British-Palestinian plastic surgeon who worked in Gaza during the first weeks of the genocide, told the UK publication that Israel was repeating in Lebanon what it had done in Gaza.

“He said he was concerned that damaging the health system in south Lebanon is part of an Israeli strategy to clear areas along the Lebanon-Israel border of its inhabitants,” The Guardian reported.

Months earlier, Human Rights Watch published a report stating it had documented the use of American weapons in Israel’s unlawful attacks on aid workers in Lebanon.

The organization said at the time that the US “should immediately suspend arms sales and military assistance to Israel” and called on Lebanon to pursue war crimes investigations at the International Criminal Court.

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