Hezbollah fired more than 100 rockets into Israel, some of which targeted the southern part of the country. Israel struck back with hundreds of air strikes in Lebanon.
It's probably too late for either side to pull back now. Israel appears bound and determined to drive the terrorists from the border with Lebanon in Northern Israel where their almost daily attacks have made life intolerable for many citizens. while Hezbollah can't back down. More than 60,000 Israelis have been evacuated from their homes since early October due to the constant Hezbollah rocket attacks.
The terrorists are exactly where Israel wants them. Hezbollah is reeling after the dual pager and walkie-talkie attacks earlier last week as well as Israel's devastating air strikes on Beirut that killed Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil, leader of the crack Radwan Force and operational commander of the entire military arm of the terrorists. Hezbollah doesn't want an all-out war after being crippled so badly.
Israel isn't giving them a choice.
“We admit that we are pained. We are humans. But as we are pained — you will also be pained,” Hezbollah’s deputy leader Naim Kassem said. He also warned of unexpected attacks “from outside the box,” pointing to rockets fired deep into Southern Israel.
"No country can accept the wanton rocketing of its cities. We can’t accept it either,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Indeed, Hezbollah has been firing rockets into Northern Israel for years.
On cue, the White House is playing its usual delusional game, believing they can put the war genie back in the bottle. National Security spokesman John Kirby claimed that the U.S. was “involved in extensive and quite assertive diplomacy.” He added: “We want to make sure that we can continue to do everything we can to try to prevent this from becoming an all-out war there with Hezbollah across that Lebanese border.”
Tell Biden to go back to sleep, John. No one is listening to the U.S.
Biden wants to maintain the fiction that everything was fine until Israel went after Hamas after October 7.
The U.S. has been pushing for a diplomatic solution that would have Hezbollah agree to voluntarily move its force several miles off the Israeli border and back toward a line agreed to after their 2006 war. That agreement is enforced by United Nations peacekeepers, who have been unable to keep Hezbollah out.
Israeli officials said those talks are hitting a dead end, and time is running out to find a solution other than war to stop Hezbollah’s cross-border attacks.
The line agreed to after the 2006 war was just north of the Litani River, about 18 miles from Israel's border. I'm sure that Prime Minister Netanyahu is thinking that Hezbollah should be a lot farther away than that. Hezbollah's stockpile of rockets includes about 75,000 "Soviet Grad 122 mm multiple rocket launchers with an effective range of up to 32 miles. A Grad launcher typically has 40 barrels which must be reloaded after each volley," according to The Jewish Press.
That makes the Litani River line useless to Israel's security. Netanyahu is almost certainly looking to double that distance from Israel's border which means this time, Israel will be looking to carve out a zone inside Lebanon that Hezbollah will not be able to cross.
“We cannot leave the north the way it is,” Nir Barkat, Israel’s economy minister, said in an interview. “I don’t think that Hezbollah will volunteer to move to the north. So there’s another part of the war ahead of us.”
Israel’s strategic shift is geared toward shaking up a cross-border conflict that has been costly to both sides but has no clear diplomatic off ramp. Hezbollah has pledged to continue attacking Israel until the fighting ends in Gaza, but cease-fire talks have been fruitless for months and are currently stalled. Hezbollah began firing rockets across the border shortly after the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks that sparked the war in Gaza.
“With the region on the brink of an imminent catastrophe, it cannot be overstated enough: there is NO military solution that will make either side safer,” Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the U.N. envoy for Lebanon, said in an X post.
I call BS on that. If Israel can push Hezbollah back from its border with Lebanon another 20-30 miles, Israeli citizens in Northern Israel will be a lot safer.
