Israeli forces advance further into Lebanon
In its fight against the Hezbollah militia the Israeli army has advanced further into southern Lebanon, capturing the strategically and symbolically important Beaufort Castle and raising the Israeli flag there for the first time in 26 years. The foreign ministers of Germany, France and the UK have criticised the advance and called on both Israel and Hezbollah to cease hostilities.
Netanyahu’s race against Trump
The Israeli prime minister wants to take decisive action before US President Donald Trump strikes a deal with Iran and his hands are tied, The Sunday Times comments:
“This military action serves several purposes. It improves Israel's position on the ground, so when the music stops - and Trump tells him to stop - the IDF has the maximum strategic advantage against Hezbollah. The buffer zone has been redrawn - preventing a diplomatic settlement from freezing what he clearly saw as an unacceptable status quo. The military action also makes a diplomatic settlement harder to reach, and helpfully shores up Netanyahu's position with his hard-right coalition partners.”
Plans to annex southern Lebanon
Israel is pursuing a plan of expansion, Naftemporiki explains:
“In southern Lebanon we are witnessing the destruction of Tyre, one of the most important cities of our shared Mediterranean civilisation. The Israeli army has ordered the evacuation of 125,000 residents, which constitutes among other things a violation of international law and a war crime. The Israeli Air Force is carrying out strikes across southern Lebanon. ... The Arabic-speaking spokesman for the Israeli army is sending the same message to dozens of villages on a daily basis: 'For your own safety, leave your homes immediately and head north'. Netanyahu claims to be attacking Hezbollah positions in Lebanon, but in reality he merely wants to depopulate an entire region so that he can later annex it as part of the plan for a 'Greater Israel'.”
Better to strengthen the Lebanese army
There is another way to combat Hezbollah, writes Susanne Knaul, the taz's former Middle East correspondent:
“Israel has allies in Beirut in the fight against Hezbollah. Prime Minister Nawaf Salam would be only too happy to secure the state's sovereignty by disarming the terrorist militia and then resume the recently initiated peace negotiations with Israel. Similarly, President Joseph Aoun, himself a former commander-in-chief of the Lebanese Armed Forces, announced upon taking office last year that the state should have a monopoly on the use of weapons. The Lebanese Army should be enabled to take on this mission. It must be equipped and trained so that it has a chance of negotiating the terms of disarmament with Hezbollah on an equal footing.”