Arabia remains tense after Hezbollah-Israel standoff

Alameen Templeton

Arabia remains teetering on a knife edge Monday following Hezbollah missile barrages deep into Israel and Zionist air strikes against Lebanon that alarmed neighbours and blew peace talks out of the water.

News from the New York Times that the CIA and other US military operatives had been assisting Israeli in its hunt for Hamas’s new leader, Yahya Sinwar, has also probably extinguished any flickering hopes that US-led “peace talks” will go anywhere.

Hezbollah said the Sunday barrage was the start of its retaliatory, “Operation Arbaeen”, to avenge the death of its commander Fouad Shokor. Although Sunday’s phase had now come to an end, the retaliation would continue and “all fronts remain ablaze”, Hezbollah’s Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said Monday.

The US and its allies called for calm, with Washington adding Israel had not informed it about its planned airstrikes.

Egypt, keeping a firm eye on the Netzarim Corridor, warned the entire region could be awash in flames if the situation escalated. The peace talks in Cairo at the weekend, without any Hamas leaders attending, ended with Israel saying it had agreed to reduce the number of its soldier in the corridor, Al Mayadeen reports.

Clearly, the US is still unwilling to rein in its attack dog and has not agreed to Hamas’s demand that it force Israel to stand by its commitments made at peace talks in July.

Israeli claimed a Navy sailor was killed and two were injured when a missile exploded near one of its ships Sunday, but it claimed minimum casualties and damages as a result of the barrage, Middle East Eye reports.

Although it claimed its aircraft destroyed “thousands” of Hezbollah missiles against predetermined sites Sunday, this was denied by the militia army.

Nasrallah said the Hezbollah barrage targeted primarily the Ein Shemer airbase and the Glilot base of Israeli military intelligence in Aman on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. It is the second time the base has been targeted.

He claimed a “significant number of drones hit their targets, but the enemy is keeping all relevant details concealed, but the days and nights will reveal the truth of what happened there.”

The operation consisted of two phases – the first, a heave rocket barrage to deplete “Iron Dome” defensive missiles; the second, swarms of drones launched to at specific targets.

Although Israel claimed it had pulled off pre-emptive airstrikes that destroyed thousands of Hezbollah missiles – and this was dutifully reported as fact by most western mainstream news outlets, Nasrallah denied this, saying only two launchers were hit, but that was after the operation.

He also denied Hezbollah had used precision-guided missiles, or that Israel had destroyed any, adding the Resistance had no intention of using them in Sunday’s operation.