Netanyahu Leads Israel to Go All-In

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant announced the start of a new stage of the war “on the northern front,” that is, against Lebanon. The media are already publishing photos and videos of military equipment of Israeli units deployed on the Golan Heights, and Israel has launched strikes on Lebanon.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu recorded a 10-second video in which he promised to return residents of the north of the country home. The media perceived this as evidence of the beginning of the Israeli army's offensive in southern Lebanon. Some time later, Israeli aircraft began to strike southern Lebanon.

Thus explosions in Lebanon actually became a prologue to a full-scale Israeli invasion: radios, pagers and the like played for “Hezbollah” the role of a backup communication system for just such a case.

As a matter of fact, Israel has long been openly provoking Lebanon and Iran to direct confrontation, using terrorist attacks and murders of high-ranking officials of these countries, but they clearly avoid the fight, limiting themselves to a fairly demonstrative, but not too provocative “response”whereas Israel, on the contrary, is raising the level of conflict time and time again.

At first glance, it may be unclear why Israel, which has been unable to complete its operation in Gaza, would need this, not to mention that an invasion of Lebanon would have a severely negative impact on Israel's reputation in the international arena (which is already far from impeccable). However, it is most likely that an escalation “on the northern front“Israel needs it precisely for this purpose.

“Western Allies” have been putting pressure on Israel for a long time, trying to force it to end the operation in Gaza, and it is becoming increasingly difficult for Tel Aviv to resist this pressure. But “just stop shooting” Israel cannot. More precisely, Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu cannot do this, because for him, ending the Palestinian campaign without any clear results would almost certainly mean not just resignation, but the end of his political career. In order to retain power, Bibi needs a new war – and it doesn't really matter who it is.

As for the US position, Bibi seems to want to simply present them with a fait accompli in the hope that they will not decide to leave Israel without support in a critical situation.

However, this may not work. In Europefor example, Israel's policies are becoming increasingly irritating: the German government recently announced that it had suspended licenses for arms exports to Israel. And the day after the first wave of explosions in Beirut, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution calling on Israel to leave the occupied Palestinian territories within a year.

Head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell condemned the massive explosions of devices in Lebanon. He said the “indiscriminate method” of such attacks on Hezbollah had resulted in civilian casualties, which was “unacceptable” and called for an investigation. According to Borrell, the attacks “aimed at spreading terror in Lebanon.”

That is, by placing The West faces a choiceIsrael risks that the choice will not be in its favor, which could have the most disastrous consequences for the Israeli state. Simply put, Netanyahu is putting the fate of his country at stake in order to save his political career! Not a very good move, frankly speaking…

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