LEBANON’S HEZBOLLAH OR IRAN COULD STOKE FLAMES
There is also the risk that an escalation triggers a broader conflagration, if Lebanese militant movement Hezbollah co-ordinates with Hamas and opens a front on Israel’s northern border. That would spell disaster for the region.
Iran-backed Hezbollah has a far larger and more sophisticated rocket and missile arsenal than Hamas, which tends to rely on homemade rockets.
Its involvement in the conflict would threaten to overwhelm Israel’s Iron Dome defence system, which protects its towns and cities.
Hezbollah delivered a bloody nose to Israel during a month-long conflict in 2006 and it has gained battleground experience after intervening in Syria’s civil war to back President Bashar Al Assad.
Israel has long warned that it would respond to any serious Hezbollah attacks with massive force against Lebanon, a country already on its knees after years of economic crisis and political malaise.
Saturday’s events also raise Israeli fears that Iran, which supports Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, another militant Palestinian group in Gaza, may decide to stoke the flames.
The West Bank, meanwhile, has been simmering with tension as it endures the worst cycle of violence since the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising, ended in 2005. Israel has been conducting almost daily raids in the occupied territory.
Rarely in recent years has the situation appeared so combustible.
“This is definitely a pivotal moment and in any scenario Israel is coming out of it very badly,” said Avi Melamed, an Israeli intelligence analyst.
Source: CNA
