“Possible other actions” –

It is an armed truce between Israel and Hezbollah. After the exchange of hundreds of missiles by both sides, while in Cairo a difficult mediation was being sought to reach a ceasefire and the release of the 109 hostages still held by Hamas, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the leader of the Shiite group continued to threaten further military action. Israel’s preventive attack against Hezbollah in Lebanon, to neutralize the revenge for the killing in Beirut in July of the high commander Fouad Shukr, is not “the end of the story”, Netanyahu stressed, warning the group’s leader Nasrallah and Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei that “this is another step on the road to changing the situation in the north and returning our residents safe and sound to their homes”. Nasrallah, on the other hand, in a long speech broadcast on TV warned that if the result of the attacks “is not sufficient, we will reserve the right to respond another time”. He also accused “the Israeli enemy” of having brought the situation to this level of escalation, because with the murder of Shukr it crossed “all red lines”.

In the Lebanese leader’s version, the ‘Axis of Resistance’, with Iran’s proxies such as the Houthis in Yemen and the Iraqi and Syrian paramilitary groups, considered whether to react all together at the same time, and waited to give negotiations on Gaza a chance. Until the decision to act individually “for considerations that will emerge over time”. “We decided that the target would be military” and “not to target civilians”, Nasrallah claimed, and in particular the target was the Aman military intelligence base and Unit 8200 in Glilot near Tel Aviv. 300 Katyusha missiles were used to “keep busy” the Iron Dome system, while drones went into action. The Israeli raid, which “was an aggression and not a preventive action”, did not target the area of ​​the Islamist group’s operation, which sought to downplay Tel Aviv’s military intervention. Hezbollah has however announced the death of two of its members “on the road to Jerusalem”, an expression used to indicate operatives killed in Israeli attacks. Since the beginning of the war in the Gaza Strip, the number has risen to at least 430. A 21-year-old Israeli soldier who was aboard a Navy ship also died, while two others were wounded. According to a preliminary investigation by the IDF, they were hit by shrapnel from an Iron Dome interceptor missile, while at least two Hezbollah drones were flying over the area. The death toll in Gaza is over 40,400, and among the Palestinians in the Strip and among the relatives of hostages held by Hamas, there is still hope for a ceasefire. The thorny points are in particular the presence of Israeli forces along the Philadelphia corridor, a 14-kilometer buffer zone that separates Egypt from Israel and the Gaza Strip, and the Rafah crossing. “As Israelis, we urge our government to show leadership, take courageous decisions and choose the right and moral path: to sign the agreement and bring all hostages home. The living must be brought home for rehabilitation and the murdered must be given a dignified burial in their homelands,” the Hostage Families Forum told LaPresse, which also called on the international community, the Biden administration and mediators to maintain “maximum pressure on Hamas to sign the agreement, the only way forward to ensure the return of all hostages.”