An uneasy calm returned to Lebanon’s border with Israel on Friday after the militant group Hizbullah responded to the Israeli-Hamas Gaza truce by unilaterally pausing missile firings into Israel, prompting the Israeli army to reciprocate.
A Hizbullah spokesman told Lebanese daily L’Orient-Le Jour, “Of course, we will comply with the truce decreed in Gaza, provided that Israel does not strike south Lebanon. If it does, we are certainly not going to sit idly by.”
This truce eases the risk of hostilities expanding beyond Gaza. The trade-off halted Thursday’s intense exchanges of fire triggered by an Israeli air strike that killed Abbas Raad, son of the head of Hizbullah’s parliamentary bloc Mohammed Raad, who praised his son as a “martyr”.
Hizbullah retaliated by firing dozens of Katyusha rockets at an army base in northern Israel and at Israeli posts along the border. Israeli artillery and war planes struck a dozen Lebanese frontier towns. Tens of thousands have evacuated border communities in both countries, keeping civilian casualties low.
As Hizbullah has said it will resume hostilities once the ceasefire ends, Israeli foreign minister Eli Cohen has warned of war on Lebanon.
“Israel has no interest in opening another front but we cannot tolerate such attacks,” said Mr Cohen.
Commander of the United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon Lt Gen Aroldo Lázaro, has also called for a halt in the “cycle of [cross-border] violence” which he said could have “devastating consequences’” for southern Lebanon.
In advance of the Gaza truce, Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah met Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and jointly with Palestinian Islamic Jihad secretary general Ziad al-Nakhaleh and Hamas politburo member Khalil Al-Hayya, whose Lebanon-based fighters must also abide by the ceasefire.
On Tuesday, Israeli drones killed Hamas commander Khalil Hamid Kharazi and Turkish volunteers Bilal Seyfullah Ozturk and Yakub Erdal, who had joined Hamas’s Lebanon branch. Their presence indicates that the Gaza war could attract recruits from other regional countries and revive dormant fundamentalist groups which were involved in conflicts in Iraq and Syria.
Israel waged full-scale deadly and destructive wars on Lebanon in 1982 and 2006. In recent years, Hizbullah has achieved deterrent power by amassing an arsenal of medium- and long-range rockets and drones that could inflict major damage on northern Israel and strike Israeli ports and Tel Aviv.
Since October 7th, when Israel reported Hamas killed 1,200 and abducted 240 soldiers and civilians, Hizbullah has mounted limited military strikes on northern Israel in an effort to ease pressure on Gaza, where Israel has killed more than 14,500, according to the strip’s health officials.
L’Orient-Le Jour reported that cross-border exchanges have killed 86 Hizbullah fighters and 14 Lebanese civilians, while six Israeli soldiers and three civilians have been slain, according to Israel.
