Editorial: Without a ceasefire deal for Gaza, the dangers of a drift towards a disastrous regional war will grow
in southern Lebanon on Sunday morning, and the hundreds of drones and rockets launched soon afterwards by Hezbollah, was the biggest exchange of hostilities across Israel’s northern border since the Hamas attacks of 7 October. As Gaza ceasefire negotiations continue to stall, and the appalling Palestinian death toll in that territory40,000, the nightmare scenario of a regional war encompassing Lebanon and involving Hezbollah’s patron, Iran, remains frighteningly possible.
For his part, Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, stated that Israel did not desire an all-out conflict, having acted pre-emptively to destroy around 40 rocket sites. The absence of civilian deaths on either side points to a desire to calibrate levels of escalation while keeping options open. Iran, which has yet to retaliate after theof the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, is also using the language of restraint while guaranteeing that a response will come.
in 2006. But the risk of miscalculation and unintended consequences, as messages are delivered via the medium of explosives, is high.over the 80,000 Israelis displaced from the north by Hezbollah activity, it seems likely that he will make good on his promise that Sunday’s air raids were “not the end of the story”. At what point Iran may judge it necessary to intervene on behalf of its proxy counts as a known unknown., mediated in Cairo by Egypt, Qatar and the US, take on added significance.
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