“The enemies look at us and we look at them. If we suffer, they will also suffer,” Hasan Nasralah, leader of Hizbollah, launched today in the first bars of his long-awaited speech. And he ended with a direct warning to Israel: there will be war “without limits and without restrictions” if it continues its escalation and extends the offensive to Lebanon.
Hizbollah's speech was expected after yesterday's drone assassination of Hamas' number two in Beirut. And also for the death of at least 100 people just a few hours earlier in Kerman, Iran, during events in memory of the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Qasem Soleimani, assassinated in 2020 by a US drone.
There was fear of a new escalation of the conflict in Lebanon, taking a major leap with respect to the skirmishes that occur daily between the Israeli Army and the pro-Iranian militia on the border. But for the moment it's not going any further. Nasrallah has wanted to insist that Israel must face hostilities in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Iraq, and the Palestinian territories, but has denied that the massacre carried out by Hamas on October 7 was guided from outside Gaza and that each movement is autonomous.
Israel, for its part, if after the attack in the south of Beirut it limited itself to saying that it is “prepared for all scenarios, focused on fighting Hamas,” today it added that it will attack Hamas leaders “no matter where.” And the Army also expressed from early this morning that it was on alert for any scenario that could arise.
The messages about a hypothetical ceasefire, meanwhile, remain frozen. The ministers most to the right of Prime Minister Beniamin Netanyahu's cabinet, among them the Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, and the Minister of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich, have once again insisted today on depopulating the strip to also make possible the return of the Jewish settlers. Egypt has withdrawn from the mediation following the attack in Beirut and Egyptian sources cite that Hamas and Islamic Jihad have previously reported that they were suspending any negotiations.
It is difficult to imagine right now a negotiated solution to the conflict in Gaza despite the fact that it already causes more than 22,000 deaths. The EU High Representative for foreign policy, Josep Borrell, launched today in Lisbon that the international community will have to impose a solution now because the two parties "will never be able to reach an agreement."
