Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dug in Wednesday on his stance that the security situation in the North must change, amid global opposition to an unusual set of attacks in Lebanon that targeted radios and beepers belonging to the Iranian proxy group Hezbollah. Several members of the terrorist organization were killed in the attacks, and thousands were wounded.
Israel has not taken responsibility for the attacks but is widely presumed to be behind them.
On the night before the attacks, Israel’s security cabinet expanded its war goals to include the return of over 60,000 residents of the northern border communities. They were evacuated last October when the constrained IDF-Hezbollah cross-border war broke out, after Hezbollah launched attack at the North on October 8.
Netanyahu on Wednesday had only one brief public comment on the situation in the North, which has galvanized global attention.
“We will return the residents of the North securely to their homes,” he said in a video statement.
Israel and the US have been at odds over the best way to secure Israel’s northern border, with the Biden administration pushing for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict.
In Cairo, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on all parties to refrain from taking any steps that would escalate the situation and detract from efforts to achieve a Gaza ceasefire, which he said he hoped would also lead to a diplomatic resolution between Israel and Hezbollah.
“It’s imperative that all parties refrain from any actions that could escalate the conflict, we are focused on getting this ceasefire over the finish line,” Blinken said.
Such a deal “would improve the prospects of defusing the situation in northern Israel and southern Lebanon,” he stressed.
US National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby underscored on Wednesday that the United States was not involved in the radio and beeper attacks.
“We want to see the war end, and everything we’ve been doing since the beginning has been designed to prevent the conflict from escalating,” he said.
Hand-held radios used by Hezbollah detonated on Wednesday across Lebanon’s south, in Beirut suburbs and the Bekaa Valley, further stoking tensions with Israel, one day after similar explosions by the group’s pagers.
Lebanon’s health ministry said that 14 people had been killed and 450 injured on Wednesday, while the death toll from Tuesday’s explosions rose to 12, including two children, and nearly 3,000 were injured.
At least one of Wednesday’s blasts took place near a funeral organized by Hezbollah for those killed the previous day, when thousands of pagers used by the group exploded across the country and wounded many of its fighters.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Wednesday that the “center of gravity” of IDF operations was moving northward. “We are at the start of a new phase in the war – it requires courage, determination, and perseverance on our part. It is critical that we operate in close cooperation between the [security] organizations, at all levels.
“Our task is clear – ensuring the safe return of Israel’s northern residents to their homes,” Gallant stated.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned on Wednesday the beeper and radio attacks, which he said appeared to have been prompted by fear that the explosive plans had been exposed.
“What has happened is particularly serious, not only because of the number of victims that it caused, but because of the indications that exist that this was triggered… because there was a risk of this being discovered,” he said.
“Obviously, the logic of making all these devices explode is to do it as a pre-emptive strike before a major military operation,” Guterres stated.
“This event confirms that there is a serious risk of a dramatic escalation in Lebanon, and everything must be done to avoid that escalation,” he added.
Kremlin issues warning
The Kremlin too warned that the attack could become a trigger for a wider regional conflict and called for its perpetrators to be identified in an investigation.
“What happened, whatever it was, certainly leads to an escalation of tension. The region (the Middle East) itself is in an explosive state, and certainly an incident like this, each one of them, has the potential to be a trigger for the situation to spiral out of control,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
“Of course, we believe that a thorough investigation of this incident should be conducted, the causes and circumstances of what happened should be established, and of course, those behind these mass explosions of communications equipment should be identified,” he said.
The conclusions of such an investigation would allow specialists to eliminate the risk of something similar happening in Russia or elsewhere, added Peskov.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said earlier on Wednesday that the attack was an act of hybrid war against Lebanon, in which it said thousands of innocent people had been hurt.
“It appears that the organizers of this hi-tech attack deliberately sought to foment a large-scale armed confrontation in order to provoke a major war in the Middle East,” Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said in a statement.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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