Pressure Mounting On Hezbollah To Withdraw From Border Area Near Israel

By Worthy News’ George Whitten and Stefan J. Bos

BEIRUT/JERUSALEM (Worthy News) – A key leader of Israel’s military has visited troops stationed near neighboring Lebanon from where Hezbollah fighters have attacked Israel.

Luitenant General Herzi Halevi, the chief-of-staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), met the soldiers just hours after Hezbollah came under pressure to withdraw from the border area.

The leader of a main Christian political party in Lebanon blasted the Iran-backed group for opening a front with Israel to back up its ally Hamas.

Samir Geagea of the Lebanese Forces Party said Hezbollah has harmed Lebanon without making a dent in Israel’s crushing offensive in the Gaza Strip.

He told The Associated Press (AP) news agency that Hezbollah should withdraw from areas along the border with Israel and allow the regular Lebanese army to deploy there.

His comments came as Western diplomats try to broker a de-escalation in the border conflict amid fears of a wider war.

Hezbollah began launching rockets toward Israel on October 8, the day after Hamas fighters stormed into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people and abducting hundreds in an attack that triggered the war in Gaza.

MANY KILLED

Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between combatants and civilians.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to launch an offensive into the southern Gaza city of Rafah despite international calls for restraint as it hosts hundreds of thousands of displaced persons amid vast destruction.

“All the damage that could have happened in Gaza … happened. What was the benefit of military operations that were launched from south Lebanon? Nothing,” Geagea was quoted as saying, referring to the deaths and massive destruction in Lebanon’s border villages.

The near-daily violence has mostly been confined to the area along the border, and international mediators have been scrambling to prevent an all-out war.

The fighting has killed 12 soldiers and 10 civilians in Israel, officials say. More than 350 people have been reportedly killed in Lebanon, including at least 273 Hezbollah fighters and more than 50 civilians.

“No one has the right to control the fate of a country and people on its own,” Geagea reportedly said in his heavily guarded headquarters in the mountain village of Maarab. “Hezbollah is not the government in Lebanon. There is a government in Lebanon in which Hezbollah is represented.”

In addition to its military arm, Hezbollah is a political party. Halevi made clear that Israel would not be intimidated by Hezbollah’s military operations.

OFFENSIVE CONTINUES

“The offensive operation in Gaza will continue with strength,” he told troops in comments clearly meant as a warning to Hezbollah and Iran, its main sponsor.

Halevi stressed that Israel’s “objectives are both to restore security to the communities near the Gaza Strip and to bring the hostages back home securely.”

He told reservists of the IDF’s Eztioni Brigade at Israel’s border area near Lebanon that they “are doing an excellent job of operational defense in the north, and we are preparing for an offensive in the north.”

The military leader referred to the repeated Hezbollah attacks on northern Israel amid the war in Gaza.

He was joined by the head of the Northern Command, Major General Ori Gordin, the commander of the 146th Division, Brigadier General Yisrael Shomer, and other officers, officials said.

The high-level delegation was seen as Israel signaling that it is preparing to fight at multiple fronts as hostility grows within the Arab world.

TOURISM DESTROYED

With clashes ongoing, The Jerusalem Post newspaper wondered why Lebanon had allowed Hezbollah to ruin its tourism industry.

“Beautiful Southern Lebanon could have been a tourist center, like Italy or Greece, but Hezbollah destroyed it,” wrote Seth J. Frantzman in The Jerusalem Post.

The author notes that Britain’s broadcaster BBC “recently reported on southern Lebanon where it said it saw ‘air strike destruction in deserted towns.’”

Frantzman claimed that the “report sought to downplay the role Hezbollah has had in bringing this disaster on southern Lebanon.”

The BBC says it is impartial.

However, “reading between the lines, one can get a sense of how Hezbollah’s thousands of attacks on Israel since it joined the war in support of Hamas on October 8 has harmed civilian life in Lebanon,” Frantzman noticed.

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