Shredded Lebanese and Hezbollah flags tower over a destroyed boardwalk where a panoramic view of Israel\u2019s Upper Galilee stretches out for miles. <\/p>\n
\u201cBuses (of people) used to come here just to see the Holy Land,\u201d says Lt. Col. Juan Garcia Martinez, part of Spain\u2019s peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon. <\/p>\n
Craters pepper the roads and debris covers the sidewalks. Apart from a few Christian-majority villages that have largely been spared Israeli fire, the area is full of ghost towns \u2014 a mirror image of the northern-region of Israel where tens of thousands of residents have fled the fighting. <\/p>\n
More than 30,000 people have been displaced from the Lebanese area in the immediate perimeter of the 49-mile border, according to local authorities. Only one school remains functioning. More than 300 people \u2014 mostly fighters \u2014 have died in Israeli strikes. Eight civilians have been killed in Hezbollah attacks in northern Israel since last October. There have been Israeli soldier deaths in the cross-fire\u00a0though the IDF has not provided an official tally. <\/p>\n
A flare-up ensued, more intense than the usual daily exchange of fire, and more consequential due to a possible Iranian retaliatory attack on Israel expected as soon as this weekend. <\/p>\n
Hezbollah \u2014 the most powerful non-state actor in the region \u2014 coordinates closely with Iran. Mohammad Reza Zahidi, one of two high-ranking Iranian commanders killed in the April 1 airstrike on Tehran\u2019s consulate in Damascus, was a key intermediary between Iran\u2019s revolutionary guards and Hezbollah. <\/p>\n
Iran has vowed to avenge the deaths. That raised the specter of a conflict regional in scope and possibly catastrophic in its aftermath. <\/p>\n
Speculation swirled about whether Hezbollah would take part in Iran\u2019s expected attack. But a Lebanese source familiar with the matter ruled this out. The attack will be \u201cpurely Iranian,\u201d the source said. <\/p>\n
US intelligence appears to tally with this. The US has observed Iran moving military assets around inside its own country, including drones and cruise missiles, signaling a possible attack on Israeli targets from inside its territory, according to two people familiar with US intelligence. <\/p>\n
The US expects Iran to carry out direct strikes against targets inside Israel, according to a senior administration official and a source familiar with the intelligence. <\/p>\n
On Friday, Iran\u2019s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei appeared before a crowd wielding a rifle as he reiterated vows of revenge. Israel has been in a heightened state of alert since April 1. The widespread apprehension prompted officials there to urge people to refrain from stocking up on food, generators and medicine, as the country braces for the response. <\/p>\n
Still, US officials expect Iran\u2019s attack to be calibrated to avoid a regional war. Meanwhile, Iran will seek to reassert itself as a regional force to be reckoned with, analysts say. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe broader objective for Iran seems to be one of de-escalation,\u201d wrote Sina Toosi, a DC-based Iran analyst and senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, in a post on X, \u201cTehran\u2019s strategy aims to incrementally increase the repercussions for Israeli aggression, thereby deterring future incidents without escalating to an all-out war.\u201d <\/p>\n
Iran has sought to walk that tightrope since it first entered the fray of the Iran-Hamas war in October. Its paramilitary partners \u2014 including Hezbollah and Yemen\u2019s Houthis who have repeatedly struck a key Red Sea shipping route \u2014\u00a0link their battles to the war in Gaza. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe repeat, if it ends in Gaza, then it ends here,\u201d Nasrallah said in a speech last week. <\/p>\n
Yet the conflict in Lebanon increases in complexity the longer Israel\u2019s offensive in Gaza goes on. <\/p>\n
When warnings about a possible Iranian attack reached fever pitch on Friday night, Hezbollah launched a barrage of rockets at Israel\u2019s Upper Galilee, producing slew of intercepts from Israel\u2019s anti-missile Iron Dome system. <\/p>\n
It provided a glimpse of how Hezbollah might attempt to overwhelm Israel\u2019s defensive systems as Iran conducts its expected attack. <\/p>\n
The flighting on the Lebanon-Israel border has also re-opened long festering issues over the frontier, known as the blue line. <\/p>\n
Over the last six months, negotiations over the armistice line between Lebanon and Israel \u2013 imposed by the United Nations in 2000 after Hezbollah forced out a 22-year Israeli occupation \u2013 have been revived. Meanwhile, Western leaders have mounted pressure on Lebanon\u2019s government to pull Hezbollah from the border area. <\/p>\n
Hezbollah\u2019s supporters say this is far-fetched, and, at best,\u00a0 unenforceable. But this diplomatic can of worms could protract the conflict in Lebanon. <\/p>\n
From one of Spain\u2019s bases near the demarcation line, there is a clear view of a microcosm of Lebanon\u2019s long-standing border issues with Israel. <\/p>\n
A verdant green field sowed with mines separates the base from the town of al-Ghajar. The blue line can be seen cutting through the town and splitting it in two. During the Israel-Lebanon war of 2006, Israel occupied the rest of the village \u2014 a UN watchtower marks the tip of the Israeli-occupied territory. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe are soldiers. We have to constantly adapt to the changing situation,\u201d said Captain Hector Alonso from a viewing point overseeing Ghajar.\u00a0Asked if Alonso\u2019s unit was prepared for the growing danger of the present moment, he said: \u201cWe are prepared.\u201d <\/p>\n\n
Shredded Lebanese and Hezbollah flags tower over a destroyed boardwalk where a panoramic view of Israel\u2019s Upper Galilee stretches out for miles. \u201cBuses (of people) used to come here just to see the Holy Land,\u201d says Lt. Col. Juan Garcia Martinez, part of Spain\u2019s peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon. Craters pepper the roads and debris <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":17956,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-17955","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}