THE OTHER LOOMING MIDDLE EAST WAR

The terror group Hezbollah is making northern Israel uninhabitable

Across northern Israel, once thriving towns are now empty after their residents were evacuated.

More than 60,000 people are homeless; like the occupants of the southern border with Gaza, many have spent months in hotels, unable to continue normal life.

Prime land belonging to communities along the Israeli side of the Lebanese border has be-come a conflict zone; 30,000 acres of land are out of use. These include orchards of fruit-bearing trees, vineyards and farms, where animals cannot be properly looked after.

Hezbollah effectively controls a vast swathe of Israeli territory, without having crossed over it

The homes and personal property belonging to many of the tens of thousands of Israelis have been destroyed, leaving their owners as refugees in their own country. As several Israe-li commentators have said, Hezbollah effectively controls a vast swathe of Israeli territory along the Lebanese border…without having even crossed over it.

The day after Hamas’s vicious slaughter on 7 October, its ‘big brother’ terror organisation, Hezbollah, began firing missiles into Israel. There have been some minor skirmishes at various points along the border, but the bulk of the attacks have been by missile.

These airborne barrages have been killing and injuring soldiers and civilians, as well as setting fire to acres of farmland. In return, Israeli forces have been carrying out targeted strikes on terrorist bases, as well as pinpointing terrorist commanders.

But the Western media have concentrated on Israel’s war against the other Islamist terror group, Hamas, in Gaza.

In fact, Hezbollah is seen as one of the most heavily armed and well-trained unofficial armies in the Middle East today, which all function politically, ideologically, financially, logistically, and militarily courtesy of the Iranian regime in Tehran.

Hezbollah claims to have thousands of combatants – many highly trained in other conflicts including Syria and Afghanistan – plus tens of thousands it can call on from across Lebanon in any future open conflict with Israel. Turkey has also been moving armaments to Syria and fighters have been coming from Afghanistan and Pakistan.

It will be a conflict that makes the current devastating fighting in Gaza look like an afternoon picnic

The Israeli government must weigh up the consequences of an all-out attack on Hezbollah. Will opening up a second front in the north draw Iran into open warfare with Israel?

Will it mean the Houthis in Yemen increasing their attacks on Israel’s southern flank? Will it draw in Islamists in Syria and Iraq?

What will Russia and China do? What will Turkey do? Will the Christian, Druze and Sunni populations of Lebanon really come together and risk another civil war to remove Hezbollah from destroying the country?

The homes and personal property belonging to many of the tens of thousands of Israelis have been destroyed

Will the current US administration offer tangible support to Israel in what will be a conflict that makes the current devastating fighting in Gaza look like an afternoon picnic? These questions, and many more, the Prime Minister and his government must wrestle with every day.

But maybe the ultimate question is: what is the God of Israel doing in all of this…what are his intentions?

WHAT IS HEZBOLLAH?

Hezbollah is a Shi’ite Islamist political party and paramilitary organisation that was founded in 1982 to fight the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

Israel had invaded Lebanon in response to attacks from the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), which had based itself in southern Lebanon. Israel was mostly successful in dealing with the PLO, but in the process, Hezbollah rose to prominence as the main terrorist resistance movement for Lebanon’s Shi’ite community.

Hezbollah is credited with being one of the first Islamic terrorist groups in the Middle East to use tactical suicide bombings. Its infamous Tyre truck bombings, its bombing of the USA embassy in Beirut in early 1983, and the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing – which killed over 300 French soldiers and USA marines – were models adopted by other terror groups for their own purposes.

It was supposed to have disarmed and disbanded

This type of attack continued against Israel and the South Lebanon Army throughout the 1980s and 1990s, until Israel withdrew from Lebanon in May 2000. This was ten years after the end of the 16-year Lebanese Civil War, after which Hezbollah – along with all the other factions involved in the fighting – was supposed to have disarmed and disbanded.

Initially, under Syrian patronage, but followed long-term by Iran, Hezbollah was allowed to maintain its arsenal, and control the Shia areas in southern Lebanon along the border with Israel. The part the terrorist organisation played in Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2000 gained it a great deal of respect within Lebanon, as well as in the wider Arab and Islamic world.

UNIFIL and the Lebanese Army failed abysmally to enforce Resolution 1701

At the end of the 2006 war with Lebanon, UN Resolution 1701 was passed requiring Israeli forces to withdraw from the country, and all combatants on the Lebanese side of the border to disarm and withdraw to a demarcation line north of the Litani River (approximately 18 miles from the border with Israel). A UN-sponsored monitoring force (UNIFIL) was created to then supposedly keep the peace in the demilitarised corridor.

Israel did withdraw, but UNIFIL and the Lebanese Army (LAF) failed abysmally to enforce Resolution 1701. Meanwhile Hezbollah gradually took over the day-to-day running of Lebanon as a shadow government that is actually more effective in running most aspects of the economic basket case that is today’s Lebanon.

Robin Benson has reported on current events in Israel for many years and appears regularly on Revelation TV’s ‘Politics Today’ and ‘Middle East Report’. He also hosts online prayer meetings for Israel (currently Monday and Wednesday evenings) and issues weekly prayer bulletins.

Contact: shekinahlegacyprayer@icloud.com

US IS HEZBOLLAH’S NEXT TARGET

After it was revealed that Iran funded the “grassroots” pro-Hamas demonstrations on college campuses across the US over the past nine months, a senior Hezbollah official clarified their real aims on television, which has been translated from Arabic courtesy of media watchdog MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute):

“This war is not with Israel; Israel is merely a tool. The primary battle, the real war, is with America”.

IRAN PLANNED A MULTI-FRONT WAR AGAINST ISRAEL

Hamas’s terror invasion was only one element within a multi-front attack planned by Tehran, according to leaked remarks by Israeli PM Netanyahu.

“We discovered during the IDF operation in Gaza that [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar simply opened fire too early — that Iran is planning to put us in a stranglehold of its proxies — to invade us, from Gaza, Lebanon, Judea and Samaria, Jordan,” he said.

Netanyahu made the remarks when meeting with the bereaved families of female observation soldiers massacred at the Nahal Oz base nine months ago.

At least some of his remarks during the meeting were secretly recorded and leaked to the media, with Hebrew-language news outlet Channel 12 publishing portions of his comments.

The attack would include “simultaneous ground invasions and massive missile fire. Hundreds of thousands of missiles rockets, drones,” Netanyahu continued.

“And [attacks] from Iran itself, which it already fired,” he added, referencing Iran’s unprecedented aerial assault in April, which included hundreds of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and explosive drones.

Netanyahu clarified that Iranian threats to “wipe Israel from the world map” are not rhetorical – they should be interpreted as Iran’s literal goal.