Netanyahu's widening war

ISRAELI Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has put the world on notice that he is conducting an all-out war with Hezbollah, the Shiite armed militant organization with whom the Israeli security forces have been exchanging bombing attacks across the Israel-Lebanon border. Hezbollah commenced its attacks right on the day after the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel "in solidarity with the Palestinian people." The group has told the public it will continue its attacks until Israel ends its war against Hamas. Israel's security forces, in retaliation, have actually made four times more bombing attacks against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.

This means that Netanyahu is poised to conduct a two-front all-out war. It is doubtful whether Netanyahu will ever succeed in totally eliminating Hamas, for, as a leader of his security forces has said, Hamas is a political party and an idea. But Netanyahu's war has bombed virtually all of Gaza into ruins and apparently has killed quite a number of Hamas operatives so that Israel's security forces can now focus on Hezbollah. Since its inception in the early 1980s after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Hezbollah, like Hamas, has dedicated itself to the destruction of the state of Israel and the Jews who migrated to Israel since 1948. Since then, it has grown by leaps and bounds into what it is today: the most formidable armed militant, non-state group in the world. Experts have observed that Hezbollah is even stronger than the armed forces of the state of Lebanon.