Dubai: Several airlines on Monday suspended flights to Beirut and some countries told their citizens to leave Lebanon as world powers sought to prevent Israel and Hezbollah’s conflict turning into a full-blown war after a rocket attack killed a dozen young people in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Israeli ministers late on Sunday authorised Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defence chief to decide on the “manner and timing” of a response to the rocket strike, and which Israel and the US blamed on Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
“The State of Israel won’t and can’t let this go by. Our response will yet come, and it will be harsh,” Netanyahu said on Monday while visiting the site of the attack, the town of Majdal Shams.
Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdullah Bou Habib said a flurry of diplomatic activity has sought to contain the anticipated Israeli response.
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The White House said on Monday it is “confident” that a wider war between Israel and Hezbollah can be avoided. “Nobody wants a broader war, and I’m confident that we’ll be able to avoid such an outcome,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said in a call with reporters.
US and Israeli officials had conversations at "multiple levels" over the weekend following the attack and the risk of a full-blown conflict is "exaggerated," Kirby said.
"We all heard about this 'all-out war' at multiple points over the last 10 months, those predictions were exaggerated then, quite frankly, we think they're exaggerated now."
Amid rising tensions, several airlines have suspended flights to Beirut.
Lufthansa, along with its subsidiaries Swiss International and Eurowings, Air France and Transavia will halt Beirut services until August 6, while Greece’s Aegean Airlines has cancelled some flights.
Leading UAE carriers, however, said that their operations to Beirut remain unaffected.
US, Italy and Germany called on its citizens in Lebanon to leave quickly.
'Limited but significant action'
Israeli news outlets reported the government was seeking a “limited but significant” action that would send a strong message to Hezbollah but not spiral out of control. So far, Israel’s military has not called up extra reservists or put the north of the country on an increased state of alert.
AFP quoting a source said Hezbollah has evacuated positions in south and east Lebanon.
“Hezbollah has evacuated some positions in the south and in the Bekaa valley that it thinks could be a target for Israel,” the source close to the group told AFP, requesting anonymity as they were not authorised to speak to the media.
Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah claims the group has 100,000 fighters, though other estimates suggest the number is less than half that. Israel demands Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force withdraw from the border to allow tens of thousands of Israelis displaced from northern towns and villages to return home.
According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Hezbollah possesses a large arsenal of mostly small, portable, and unguided surface-to-surface artillery rockets. The US and Israel estimate that Hezbollah and other militant groups in Lebanon have around 150,000 missiles and rockets. The group is also developing precision-guided missiles.
Hezbollah has previously used drones against Israel and, in 2006, struck an Israeli warship with a surface-to-sea missile. Its arsenal includes assault rifles, heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, roadside bombs, and more. During the current conflict, Hezbollah has frequently deployed Russian-made Kornet anti-tank missiles and, less often, Burkan rockets, which Nasrallah claims can carry warheads weighing between 300 kilograms (660 pounds) and 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds).
WHAT ARE ISRAEL’S MILITARY CAPABILITIES?
Israel’s military has long been supported by the United States, with $3.3 billion in annual funding, plus $500 million toward missile defence technology.
Israel is one of the best-armed nations in the wider Middle East. Its air force includes the advanced American F-35 fighter jet, missile defence batteries including the American-made Patriot, the Iron Dome rocket-defence system and a pair of missile-defence systems developed with the US, the Arrow and David’s Sling.
Israel has armoured personnel carriers and tanks, and a fleet of drones and other technology available to support any street-to-street battles.
Israel has armoured personnel carriers and tanks, and a fleet of drones and other technology available to support any street-to-street battles.
Israel has some 170,000 troops typically on active duty and has called up some 360,000 reservists for the war — three-fourths of its estimated capacity, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a British think tank. With the war now in its fifth month, many of those reservists have returned home.
Israel has also long maintained an undeclared nuclear weapons programme.
“There must be a retaliation,” said Amos Yadlin, a retired air force general and former chief of military intelligence, was quoted by Bloomberg as saying. “But that doesn’t mean it has to take place when anticipated. There’s nothing wrong with keeping Hezbollah in a state of alert for days or even weeks.”
Hezbollah has a strong presence in east Lebanon’s Bekaa valley, which borders Syria, and in south Lebanon, where it has been launching near daily attacks on Israeli positions since October in support of ally Hamas.
The cross-border exchanges of fire have largely been limited to the border area, but Israel has repeatedly struck deep inside Lebanon, including overnight.
Hezbollah is also deployed in Syria, where for years it has been fighting in support of President Bashar Al Assad in his country’s civil war.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, said pro-Iran groups and Hezbollah-affiliated militants have “evacuated their positions” south of the capital and in the Damascus countryside, as well as in parts of the Syrian-controlled Golan Heights, in anticipation of “potential Israeli airstrikes”.
Hezbollah had already abandoned positions in Syria in early June after Israeli raids, according to the Britain-based Observatory, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria. -- With inputs from agencies.
