Lebanon showdown and risk of wider conflict overshadowing Gaza war a year on
Contrary to what Hamas seems to have expected, there has been no reversal of Arab policies towards Israel.
Saturday 05/10/2024
Palestinian children gather at a destroyed vehicle, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. REUTERS
GAZA/ BEIRUT –
Palestinians fear the crisis in Lebanon is diverting the world’s attention from Gaza and diminishing already dim prospects for a ceasefire a year into a war that has shattered the enclave.
An escalation in the conflict between Israel and Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah over the past two weeks, including the assassination of the militant group’s chief, Hassan Nasrallah, has led to intensifying clashes between Israeli and Hezbollah forces inside Lebanon and fuelled fears of a wider regional war.
When Iran launched ballistic missiles at Israel late on Tuesday, provoking an Israeli promise of a “painful” response, some Gazans welcomed the salvo visible in the skies overhead as a sign Tehran was fighting for their cause.
Sami Abu Zuhri, a senior Hamas official, said prospects for a Gaza ceasefire deal, which would see the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza and Palestinians jailed by Israel, were distant before the escalation in Lebanon. A regional conflagration could lead to pressure on Israel to strike a deal in Gaza, he thought.
But with attention swinging to Lebanon, the war in Gaza risked being prolonged, said Ashraf Abouelhoul, managing editor of state-owned newspaper Al-Ahram in Egypt, whose government has helped mediate months of ceasefire negotiations.
“The most dangerous thing isn’t that the media attention is going somewhere else, it is the fact that no one in the world is now talking about a deal or a ceasefire, and that frees Israel’s hand to continue its military offensive and plans in Gaza,” he said.
Inside Gaza there has been no sign of a let-up in Israel’s offensive against Hamas. On Thursday, local medics reported at least 99 Palestinian deaths in the past 24 hours.
Egypt, which has been alarmed by the Israeli offensive on the other side of its border with Gaza and has lost billions of dollars in Suez Canal revenues during the war, is frustrated that its mediation efforts have failed to secure a truce.
US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters that the US remained focused on securing a ceasefire though Hamas had for weeks “refused to engage.”
Hamas officials and Western diplomats said in August that negotiations had stalled due to new Israeli demands to keep troops in Gaza.
“Whereas Israel has been saying since October 7 that military force and putting pressure on Hamas and Hezbollah will help to bring the hostages home we have seen that the exact opposite is true,” said Nomi Bar-Yaacov, an expert on Middle East diplomacy at London-based think-tank Chatham House.
Israel’s escalated campaign against Hezbollah “is putting the ceasefire in Gaza on the back burner, given that the focus is now on trying to dismantle as much of Hezbollah’s military arsenal as possible,” she said.
The showdown in Lebanon has sparked fears of a wider war between Iran and a US-backed Israel.
An official briefed on the Gaza ceasefire talks told Reuters nothing would happen until after the US presidential election on November 5, “because nobody can effectively pressure (Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin) Netanyahu, which is the key impediment to a Gaza ceasefire deal.”
Israel’s killing of Nasrallah last week complicated chances for mediation, two Egyptian security sources said. Egypt’s efforts became limited to containing any further escalation, the sources said.
In Lebanon, nearly 1,900 people have been killed and more than 9,000 wounded in nearly a year of cross-border fighting, with most of the deaths occurring in the past two weeks, according to Lebanese government statistics.
More than a million Lebanese have been forced to flee their homes.
The casualty figures are still a fraction of those in Gaza, where the health ministry says at least 41,788 Palestinians have been killed and 96,794 wounded since October 7 last year.
The Gaza war began after Hamas led a shock incursion into Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostage, according to Israeli tallies.
Contrary to what Hamas seems to have expected, there has been no reversal of Arab policies towards Israel.
While they routinely condemn Israel’s invasion, triggered by Hamas’ unprecedented October 7 attack, Arab nations with diplomatic ties to Israel have yet to make major policy changes.
None of the countries which recognised Israel under the US-brokered Abraham Accords of 2020, has rescinded their peace pacts.
Egypt and Jordan, which signed the peace deals with Israel in 1979 and 1994 respectively, have not reconsidered those agreements, despite accusing Israel of war crimes in Gaza.
Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said the agreement was “covered with dust,” but questioned whether scrapping it would help the kingdom or Palestinians.
Only Saudi Arabia has publicly shifted, halting normalisation talks with Israel unless a Palestinian state is recognised.
Israel’s Gaza offensive has sparked rare protests in a region where autocratic governments usually suppress dissent.
Arab governments that have moved closer to Israel have “their own reasons … which are all still applicable,” said Hussein Ibish, an analyst at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.
“None of them are considering reneging on that based on the wars,” he said.
A young Palestinian man sits next to a mural that he painted on the rooftop of a destroyed house in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, to show his solidarity with the people of Gaza and Lebanon. AFP
Contrary to what Hamas seems to have expected, there has been no reversal of Arab policies towards Israel.
Saturday 05/10/2024
Palestinian children gather at a destroyed vehicle, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. REUTERS
GAZA/ BEIRUT –
Palestinians fear the crisis in Lebanon is diverting the world’s attention from Gaza and diminishing already dim prospects for a ceasefire a year into a war that has shattered the enclave.
An escalation in the conflict between Israel and Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah over the past two weeks, including the assassination of the militant group’s chief, Hassan Nasrallah, has led to intensifying clashes between Israeli and Hezbollah forces inside Lebanon and fuelled fears of a wider regional war.
When Iran launched ballistic missiles at Israel late on Tuesday, provoking an Israeli promise of a “painful” response, some Gazans welcomed the salvo visible in the skies overhead as a sign Tehran was fighting for their cause.
Sami Abu Zuhri, a senior Hamas official, said prospects for a Gaza ceasefire deal, which would see the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza and Palestinians jailed by Israel, were distant before the escalation in Lebanon. A regional conflagration could lead to pressure on Israel to strike a deal in Gaza, he thought.
But with attention swinging to Lebanon, the war in Gaza risked being prolonged, said Ashraf Abouelhoul, managing editor of state-owned newspaper Al-Ahram in Egypt, whose government has helped mediate months of ceasefire negotiations.
“The most dangerous thing isn’t that the media attention is going somewhere else, it is the fact that no one in the world is now talking about a deal or a ceasefire, and that frees Israel’s hand to continue its military offensive and plans in Gaza,” he said.
Inside Gaza there has been no sign of a let-up in Israel’s offensive against Hamas. On Thursday, local medics reported at least 99 Palestinian deaths in the past 24 hours.
Egypt, which has been alarmed by the Israeli offensive on the other side of its border with Gaza and has lost billions of dollars in Suez Canal revenues during the war, is frustrated that its mediation efforts have failed to secure a truce.
US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters that the US remained focused on securing a ceasefire though Hamas had for weeks “refused to engage.”
Hamas officials and Western diplomats said in August that negotiations had stalled due to new Israeli demands to keep troops in Gaza.
“Whereas Israel has been saying since October 7 that military force and putting pressure on Hamas and Hezbollah will help to bring the hostages home we have seen that the exact opposite is true,” said Nomi Bar-Yaacov, an expert on Middle East diplomacy at London-based think-tank Chatham House.
Israel’s escalated campaign against Hezbollah “is putting the ceasefire in Gaza on the back burner, given that the focus is now on trying to dismantle as much of Hezbollah’s military arsenal as possible,” she said.
The showdown in Lebanon has sparked fears of a wider war between Iran and a US-backed Israel.
An official briefed on the Gaza ceasefire talks told Reuters nothing would happen until after the US presidential election on November 5, “because nobody can effectively pressure (Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin) Netanyahu, which is the key impediment to a Gaza ceasefire deal.”
Israel’s killing of Nasrallah last week complicated chances for mediation, two Egyptian security sources said. Egypt’s efforts became limited to containing any further escalation, the sources said.
In Lebanon, nearly 1,900 people have been killed and more than 9,000 wounded in nearly a year of cross-border fighting, with most of the deaths occurring in the past two weeks, according to Lebanese government statistics.
More than a million Lebanese have been forced to flee their homes.
The casualty figures are still a fraction of those in Gaza, where the health ministry says at least 41,788 Palestinians have been killed and 96,794 wounded since October 7 last year.
The Gaza war began after Hamas led a shock incursion into Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostage, according to Israeli tallies.
Contrary to what Hamas seems to have expected, there has been no reversal of Arab policies towards Israel.
While they routinely condemn Israel’s invasion, triggered by Hamas’ unprecedented October 7 attack, Arab nations with diplomatic ties to Israel have yet to make major policy changes.
None of the countries which recognised Israel under the US-brokered Abraham Accords of 2020, has rescinded their peace pacts.
Egypt and Jordan, which signed the peace deals with Israel in 1979 and 1994 respectively, have not reconsidered those agreements, despite accusing Israel of war crimes in Gaza.
Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said the agreement was “covered with dust,” but questioned whether scrapping it would help the kingdom or Palestinians.
Only Saudi Arabia has publicly shifted, halting normalisation talks with Israel unless a Palestinian state is recognised.
Israel’s Gaza offensive has sparked rare protests in a region where autocratic governments usually suppress dissent.
Arab governments that have moved closer to Israel have “their own reasons … which are all still applicable,” said Hussein Ibish, an analyst at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.
“None of them are considering reneging on that based on the wars,” he said.
A young Palestinian man sits next to a mural that he painted on the rooftop of a destroyed house in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, to show his solidarity with the people of Gaza and Lebanon. AFP
Joel Gunter
Reporting from Beirut
At least four hospitals in Lebanon announced on Friday that they were suspending work because of Israeli strikes, while a Hezbollah-affiliated health organisation said that 11 paramedics had been killed in the past 24 hours.
The four closures capped two weeks of Israeli strikes on hospitals and healthcare workers in Lebanon that have shuttered at least 37 facilities and killed dozens of medical staff, according to the World Health Organisation.
Late on Friday night, the Israeli army issued a statement alleging that Hezbollah was using medical vehicles to transport fighters and weapons, warning that it would strike any vehicle it suspected of being used for military purposes.
Hospital staff in southern Lebanon told the BBC that health facilities treating wounded civilians had been hit with direct Israeli strikes. The BBC has approached the IDF for comment.
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Dr Mounes Kalakish, director of the Marjayoun governmental hospital in southern Lebanon, told the BBC that the hospital had no choice but to close on Friday after an airstrike hit two ambulances at the hospital’s entrance way on Friday, killing seven paramedics.
“The nurses and doctors were terrified,” he said. “We tried to calm them and carry on working, but it was not possible.”
The emergency director of the hospital, Dr Shoshana Mazraani, said she was sitting at the front of the building when the strike happened. She said that she heard the cries of the paramedics who were hit and ran towards the damaged ambulances, but was warned to stay back by colleagues fearful of a follow up strike.
The Marjayoun hospital had already been hanging on by a thread, Dr Mazraani said, with a core team of just 20 doctors remaining from the centre’s usual 120 staff. The closure on Friday was a “tragedy for the region”, she said.
“We serve a huge population here, many villages. We had 45 inpatient beds, all now empty. We were the only hospital providing dialysis in the region, for example. We have had to turn away emergency patients and tell others to leave.”
Rita Suleiman, the nursing director at the Saint Therese hospital, on the edge of Beirut’s southern suburbs, told the BBC that the hospital had also struggled on after being badly damaged by a strike on Friday but was later forced to suspend all services.
Other hospitals were carrying on with severely limited services. Dr Mohammed Hamadeh, director of the Tebnine hospital, told the BBC on Friday a nearby strike had rocked the building.
“The blast was very close,” he said. “We are still trying to operate but we cannot leave the confines of the hospital because it is too dangerous.”
A healthcare centre in central Beirut was hit on Thursday
Late on Friday night, the Salah Ghandour hospital in Bint Jbeil announced it had closed after being “violently shelled”, following an order from the Israeli army to evacuate.
The Israeli army said it was targeting a mosque adjacent to the hospital which it claimed was being used by Hezbollah fighters.
The strikes on healthcare facilities have not been limited to the south of Lebanon. Israel hit a medical centre in central Beirut on Thursday belonging to the Hezbollah-linked Islamic Health Organisation, killing nine and wounding 14. The Israeli army said the strike targeted "terror assets".
The Lebanese Red Cross said on Thursday that four of its paramedics were wounded in a strike on a convoy evacuating patients, despite the organisation co-ordinating with the Israeli army.
Gabriel Karlsson, country manager in Beirut for the British Red Cross, told the BBC: "Health and aid workers must be able to help those in need without fearing for their own safety. Teams from the Red Cross and Red Crescent are a lifeline, supporting communities tirelessly - they must be protected.”
World Health Organisation director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Thursday that 28 healthcare workers had been killed in Lebanon over the previous 24 hours, and many other healthcare staff were no longer reporting for work because of the strikes.
Dr Kalakish, the director of the Marjayoun hospital, told the BBC that prior to the strike that closed his hospital it was already operating with no anaesthesiologist or other specialists.
Some staff had fled the bombardment for their own safety, he said, while others had been prevented from reaching the hospital because of air strikes on nearby roads.
Lebanon's Health Minister Firass Abiad said on Thursday that 97 rescue workers had been killed since Hezbollah and Israel began fighting last October.
More than 40 of those – paramedics and firefighters – were in just three days this past week, he said.
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