Many in Lebanon Now Blaming Hezbollah After Its Members Are Targeted in a Second Communications Device Attack

Is there strategic thinking behind Wednesday’s second deadly attack wave targeting Hezbollah in Lebanon, or is it just a spectacular, tactical success? As the world, including many Israelis, ponder that question, more and more people in Lebanon are beginning to focus their anger on Hezbollah. Nine people were killed and over 300 injured in Wednesday’s widespread explosions involving two-way communications devices, the Lebanese health ministry said Wednesday. Among the dead and injured were attendees of a Beirut funeral for a Hezbollah bigwig who was killed a day earlier, when a total of 12 people were killed and about 2,800 injured by Hezbollah pagers that exploded simultaneously across the country. “What happened today to Hezbollah can be classified as the most fantastic pre-emptive strike in modern history,” a widely followed Syrian journalist with a program on Al Jazeera, Fitzal al-Qassem, wrote Wednesday. “It can be compared to Israel’s pre-emptive strike on the Egyptian air force before the Six-Day War.” Israel is indicating that even Wednesday’s attack on the heart of Hezbollah’s ability to communicate is far from a final chapter. “Our center of gravity is moving to the north,” the Israeli defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said while visiting the border with Lebanon. “This is a new phase of this war.”Several Israel Defense Force divisions that have been operating in Gaza are now assigned to the north. “We have many capabilities that we haven’t used yet,” the IDF chief of staff, Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, said, adding that “for every step we take, we prepare two steps ahead.” Israel might find it difficult, though, to raise the level of its war effort against Hezbollah, as America fears a major Mideast escalation before the November election. Mr. Gallant reportedly updated Secretary Austin that “something new” was about to occur when the two spoke minutes before Tuesday’s afternoon beeper attack. Mr. Gallant declined to detail the nature of any coming operation.Washington officials were adamant that they had nothing to do with the attacks on Hezbollah communication devices, about which Israel is declining to comment. Washington is working on a Gaza cease-fire deal and the release of hostages, and “we are trying to prevent a second front from opening up in Lebanon,” the national security agency spokesman, John Kirby, said Wednesday. Yet, Hezbollah long ago opened that second front — on October 8. Nearly a year later, will this week’s two-day strike in Lebanon prove to be a game changer? “I don’t know. Like anyone here in the north, I’m waiting to hear the jets,” the founder of the northern Israel-based Alma research center, Sarit Zehavi, tells the Sun.“This is a very important operation, but next we must eliminate the Hezbollah missile and rocket threat,” she adds. Despite the major blows to the Iranian proxy, many Israelis are wondering if it would actually allow the more than 80,000 evacuated northerners to finally return home. While likely short of a decisive blow, the damage to Hezbollah is significant. If the organization’s troops, or what is left of them, choose to strike Israel again, Mr. Qassem writes, its wounded will not even find “one free bed in the hospitals in Lebanon.” The country’s health system is overwhelmed. Hezbollah is now the butt of a joke across much of the Arab world. Once considered the only army with the capacity to defeat Israel, it now is portrayed in caricatures and parody memes as a hapless group of ne’er-do-wells. The group’s chief, Hassan Nasrallah, has scheduled a statement on Thursday, but some are now wondering if he will dare to deliver it amid the growing chaos and fear. Wednesday’s second attack wave targeted two-way radio devices that Hezbollah is using to replace the pagers that exploded on Tuesday. The walkie-talkies, which reportedly contained exploding batteries, seemed to be more lethal than Tuesday’s beepers, resulting in additional non-combatant casualties. The Wednesday attack added confusion and horror across Lebanon. Average Lebanese civilians now find it “dangerous to stand anywhere near Hezbollah operatives,” the military correspondent for Kan television, Itay Blumenthal, says. They are increasingly directing their anger and frustrations at Hezbollah, which many accuse of turning the country into a deadly battlefield where Lebanese, including many who do not support the war against Israel, get hurt.Civilians fear confronting well-armed Hezbollah members directly. Yet, some Lebanese, including in the Shiite stronghold, find ways to demonstrate their frustration. On Wednesday, two vans of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon were forced to flee following an attack by an angry mob at the southern city of Tyre. Unifil was reinforced in the aftermath of the Hezbollah war against Israel in 2006, and was mandated to ensure that no armed militias are present between the Litani River and the Israeli border. The UN force, however, proved no match for the well-armed Hezbollah, which is now the dominant power in southern Lebanon. While both Israelis and Lebanese consider the UN a non-factor in enforcing its own resolutions, Secretary-General Guterres was quick to express “deep alarm” over the attacks on Hezbollah operatives. He “urges all concerned actors to exercise maximum restraint to avert any further escalation,” the UN chief’s spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said in a statement.

Many in Lebanon Now Blaming Hezbollah After Its Members Are Targeted in a Second Communications Device Attack

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