War in the Middle East
Israel is fighting on several fronts
Vehicles in Markaba, Lebanon, have been destroyed in an Israeli airstrike. photo
© Ali Hashisho/XinHua/dpa
Israel’s army is still involved in heavy fighting with Hamas, not only in the Gaza Strip. Hezbollah in Lebanon is also increasingly putting pressure on Israel’s military. Is the conflict escalating? An overview.
While Israel’s army commands the combat units in the south of the The Gaza Strip has been further strengthened and has put its soldiers on the border with Lebanon on “very high” alert because of the threatening increase in Hezbollah attacks.
In the south of Gaza, the fight against the Islamist Hamas is now “in several key areas” and the operation has been expanded in the city of Khan Yunis, army spokesman Daniel Hagari said on Wednesday evening. “We have deployed another brigade to this area today and continue to operate there with new methods of warfare above and below ground,” he said, referring to Hamas’ tunnel network.
Concern about escalation in the Middle East
Meanwhile, growing tensions between Israel and the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon are raising concerns about further escalation in the Middle East. In view of the significantly increasing attacks by the pro-Iranian Shiite militia from Lebanon, the army is now at a “very high level of readiness,” Israel’s Chief of General Staff Herzi Halevi said on Wednesday, according to an official statement, during a visit to the army command in northern Israel. “Today we approved a number of plans for various contingencies and we must be prepared to strike if necessary,” Halevi said.
Report: Blinken travels to the Middle East again
In view of the increasingly threatening situation in the Middle East, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is traveling to the region again at the end of next week, according to information from the news portal “Axios”. It was said that he was visiting Israel for the fifth time since the beginning of the Gaza war. There was initially no official confirmation of this.
Hezbollah’s heaviest rocket fire to date
Hezbollah, which is allied with Iran, claimed new rocket attacks on Israel on Wednesday. According to the newspaper “The Times of Israel”, it was the heaviest shelling of northern Israeli cities since the beginning of the Gaza war. Israeli police said several buildings were damaged in the border town of Kiriat Shmona. People were therefore not injured. On the same day, three people died in Israeli attacks on Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon, including a Hezbollah fighter, reported the Lebanese news agency NNA. It is the worst escalation since the second Lebanon war in 2006.
“So far the campaign here has been carried out correctly and carefully, and it must continue to be so,” said Israel’s chief of staff. “Our first task is to restore the security and sense of security of the residents in the north, and that will take time,” said army spokesman Hagari. At the beginning of the Gaza war, the Israeli authorities brought tens of thousands of residents in the north into the interior for security reasons. Hezbollah is considered to be much more armed than Hamas in Gaza.
WHO: Tens of thousands are seeking protection in clinics in Gaza
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), tens of thousands of civilians are now seeking protection from the war in the few hospitals that are still functioning. 50,000 people crowded together in Shifa Hospital in the city of Gaza and 14,000 in Al-Amal Hospital in the southern Gaza Strip, the WHO said on X on Wednesday. She called on a team on site. The numbers could not initially be independently verified.
The delegation, together with representatives of the UN children’s fund Unicef and another organization, was able to bring relief supplies to the hospitals, according to the statement. On the way to the hospitals, the WHO team observed tens of thousands of people fleeing the fierce Israeli attacks on foot, on mules or in cars. In the hospitals, WHO employees would have had to climb over patients and those seeking protection who were camped everywhere.
“This forced mass movement of people will lead to more overcrowding and an increased risk of infectious diseases, making the distribution of humanitarian assistance even more difficult,” the statement quoted a WHO official on the ground as saying.
Erdogan compares Netanyahu to Hitler
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan again attacked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the actions in Gaza, comparing him to Adolf Hitler. “We’ve seen Israel’s Nazi camps in stadiums, haven’t we? What is that? How are you different from Hitler?” Erdogan said on Wednesday. He did not explain what he meant exactly, but videos purporting to show Palestinian prisoners in a stadium in the Gaza Strip have been circulating on social media in recent days.
Israel strongly opposed Erdogan’s statements. “His words are deeply offensive to every Jew around the world,” President Izchak Herzog said on Wednesday evening. Erdogan violated the memory of millions of Jews who were murdered by the Nazis.
The Gaza war was triggered by the worst massacre in Israel’s history, carried out by terrorists from Hamas and other extremist groups on October 7th in Israel near the border with Gaza. On the Israeli side, more than 1,200 people were killed. Israel responded with massive air strikes and a ground offensive. According to the Hamas-controlled health authority, at least 21,110 people have been killed so far. The numbers cannot currently be independently verified.
What is important today
Israel’s army is expanding its ground offensive in southern Gaza. Meanwhile, tensions are rising on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.