Israel vs. Hezbollah - will there be all-out-war in Lebanon? | To the point

violence and more violence and no end in sight a new phase of the war is being declared by both Israel and Hezbollah people on both sides are getting a taste of what that looks and feels like rockets and bombs rained down on both sides hundreds already died in Lebanon tens of thousands of civilians fled south of the country heading north Hezbollah Wants Revenge for Israel's attack on their Commanders and Fighters rigging pages with explosives Israel allegedly killed around a dozen and injured many more that way Hezbollah wants a truce in Gaza before it stops firing

Rockets into Israel and Tel Aviv Answers by attacking Hezbollah positions so that thousands of Israelis can return to their homes in the north without being targeted by hezbollah's Rockets we ask Israel versus Hezbollah will there be all out war in Lebanon [Music] welcome to to the point let me introduce you to my panel today rag bahnam is a journalist from Lebanon Christen hellberg a journalist and analyst on the Middle East and Daniel Dylan Burma a journalist and expert for the Middle East at the Daily Newspaper devel here in Germany a warm welcome uh to all

of you Chris let's start with you is Lebanon becoming the new Gaza well although some of the pictures that we see might remind us of what's going on in Gaza you cannot compare the situation I mean Lebanon is not besieged by Israel Lebanon is not occupied by Israel by Israel so and you cannot completely um say that Hamas and hisbah are the same hisbah is a lot a lot more stronger than Hamas is so it's not as if we are heading to a situation that was similar to Gaza but Gaza is a quma in a

way for Israel uh can it still can Lebanon become a similar problem well I think there could be some similar problems but that depends on how Israel acts now what we're hearing uh these days is that Israel is preparing for a ground offensive in Lebanon I'm not quite sure this is really an imminent scenario but it is a possibility and if Israel goes in that direction it might find itself in a quagmire in Lebanon because that scenario Israeli soldiers moving in and starting a Guerilla Warfare on these troops that's what hisbah has been preparing for

during the past years that's what hasah is uh looking for h r the uh for many Lebanese this already feels like uh like War um what would be the difference will it make a difference I mean of course it can always get much worse but at the moment you're right I mean nobody's calling it a full out War but it is full-out War I mean in one day we saw that on Monday when Israel bombarded the south of Lebanon saying that it's attacking artillery you know of hisbah and in other places of Le we saw

over 500 people dying that's in one day and this is you know we haven't seen that in Lebanon for years since the end of the Civil War in the 1990 this is a massive amount of casualties to fall in one day um so yeah for a lot of lebanes it does feel a war we've seen repeat pictures of this whole Exodus of people from the South hundreds of thousands of people are leaving their homes going to where I mean they don't have shelters like in in Israel in North of Israel they don't have anywhere else

you know to go to like in Israel as well they're just going a lot of them are you know setting up tents on the streets and sleeping on the streets also the difference is we don't have a States in Lebanon strong states that can afford you know give them Alternatives they've opened some schools to them and this means that they had to delay the opening of the schools kids were supposed to go back to school this week so it's really it's a whole humanitarian disaster and not just for the people of the South of Lebanon

has a ripple effect that goes through all of exactly I mean a lot of those you know the population the Shia population in the south of Lebanon is now going to Sunni areas and Christian areas and this is already creating tensions between the people because you know unlike in 2006 where a lot of Lebanese were showing support extreme support to the people of the South now it's really not the same anymore maybe there's one more parallel because I feel that Israel is as they did in Gaza is only seeing a military solution without really having

a political strategy behind it so this is one big parallel that this government of prime minister Nan is really aiming at finishing with their enemies on a military with military means which is not paying off because organizations like Hamas and esbah are not to be finished off only militarily there needs to be a political strategy to deal with them so that's one big parallel that I would see we're going to come to the difference between these these two organizations in a moment but first I want to have a closer look uh at Hezbollah a state

within a state including social welfare and a health system or is it just a terror organization with powerful friends in tan Hezbollah fits both descriptions the day after the Hamas Terror attacks of the 7th of October Hezbollah started firing rockets on Israel but what is Hezbollah really so let's have a closer look the so-called party of God was founded in Lebanon in 1982 by a group of Shiite clerks to fight against Israel's Invasion today hisbah also has seats in the Lebanese Parliament and functions as a deao government in parts of the country running schools and

hospitals hezbollah's stated goals Remain the destruction of Israel and the expulsion of Western powers from Lebanon Hezbollah receives hundreds of millions of dollars yearly from Iran which also supports the organization with training and weapons many experts say that hisbah is one of the most heavily armed arm Med militant groups in the world according to Israeli estimates the group has around 150,000 rockets and it could have as many as 100,000 Fighters that at least is what hisbah leader Hassan asala claims experts have estimated the number is lower how much has hisbah been weakened yeah that question

uh I'd like to pass on directly how much how weakened is his has that's a very good question I mean we are seeing hisbah firing rockets at Israel and even threatening Israel population centers such as Tel Aviv yesterday with one missile um but to me that still doesn't indicate that Hezbollah is at its full capacity because these rocket launchers that's something they have been preparing for years that's something you only need to push a button for the question really is how much did the pager attacks and the walkie-talkie attacks of uh last week how much

have they um actually frailed the command structures within hisbah this is what remains to be seen I think they could have frailed these command structures considerably think about 3,000 attacks that were conducted through pagia and walkie-talkie explosions think of an organization were probably about 20,000 people are actually fighting so 3,000 to 20,000 that's a considerable damage these pager attacks I'd like to talk about them uh there was some um dispute about uh whether they were strictly speaking legal well it's ongoing I think the legal dispute internationally I mean Israel rightfully claims that it was very

targeted and in comparison to any major rocket fire or attacks like they did in Gaza they didn't had hit too many civilians and it was a targeted attack against hisbah Fighters and hisbah members at the same time these were not weapons these were communication devices that could be anywhere it could be in the supermarket in hospitals at home at the living room of these people children yes so the point is that the idea of these attacks was at the same time attacking and targeting hisbah at the same time as well creating a state of Terror

and I think people in Lebanon now they feel really terrorized by whatever could explode next I mean this feeling is now being um felt by a lot of people and by the civilian population at the same time and we have to I was a little bit shocked by the discourse especially in Germany because people would really celebrate these attacks as you know um so smart and Surgical and saying that you know whoever carries a pager is a legitimate Target and I would argue that you know a nurse or a teacher in one of his b

schools or hospitals would not be a a legitimate Target so we have to differentiate it was well calculated there would be civilian casualties so this is why it's disputed internationally I think uh what are you hearing uh aha weakened is has has is Hezbollah Now by these attacks and is this feeling of Terror really permeating Society in leban I don't know if it's weakened because um as Daniel just said they still have a big arsenal of rockets of missiles of you know that they haven't used yet I mean they tried a couple of days ago

to shoot one of them to T Aviv and you know it didn't get there but uh they still do have a lot of of weaponries that they can use but I think the major issue now of hisbah is uh is a trust issue a trust within the hisbah uh itself the organization itself because it's obviously been infiltrated on a very high level uh the Israelis have a massive amount of information on hisbah I mean after the pag attack and the woki attacks uh they targeted AR Ran's Elite this Elite unit of of hasbalah that's and

they killed one of their you you know you know very important leaders uh okay they did attack them they did have those information and they did attack them in a building that was full of kids and full of other civilians but this also shows that Israel is willing to go that far is is does not care about the civilian casualties and is really going after hisbah so now hisbah is also has a trust trust within it its own members but also needs to regain that trust with its own people because I don't know if their

people still trust them anymore I mean hasb has always told when you talk about their people UHS supporters the Shia population in D in the south of Beirut and also in the south of Lebanon they've always told them we're here to support you you know you can go back to your homes after the 2006 War he told them if I knew that this is was going to cause all this destruction I wouldn't have taken kidnapp those two Israeli soldiers and since then the people thought that they're going to go to the South rebuild their house

houses and be safe but we discovered that this is not you know what's happening and he can't even also I mean we we heard in the report thatal has built hospitals but those hospitals weren't even enough to look after those winded from the pages attack I mean they were bringing the the people who were injured to other hospitals to the American University Hospital in Beirut and to other hospitals in in Christian areas and so on so you know hisbah needs to I don't know what it needs to do but it does definitely has a trust

issue amongst its supporter and definitely amongst itself in in the organization Daniel absolutely I mean the only thing I would uh add to that is uh the bombing of di the very quarter of Beirut which is hisbah Stronghold when I talked to people close to hisbah in the past few months asking them what would be the red line for hisbah they all told me the red line will be if Israel B D that will be a moment where hisbah will be forced uh by the sheer outrage of its own members to respond in full force

and that's not what we're seeing at the moment hisbah is not using its full force in response that was said also when F chaker was assassinated the you know the first high ranking leaders that the Israeli is assassinated and also hisbah didn't respond I mean here you can argue that Iran its main sponsor and creator doesn't want it to respond you know in a way that it will bring the whole region into a war but this is making hisbah definitely lose trust amongst its own supporters and we're seeing the red line moving upwards again and

again and again and that uh entails the risk of uh things spiraling out of control at some point but at the same time all these leaders can be replaced you know all the fighters can be replaced the question is how effective will this strategy be to only go militarily against hisb hisb really tries to connect the whole fight now to Gaza to the war in Gaza that it says has to end for them to stop sending Rockets while at the same time what the Israeli government is trying to do is to disconnect the two subjects

what they're really trying to do is to put so much pressure on hisbah for them to agree finally to withdraw to north of Lani River 30 kilometers away from the border by only uh giving them you know the stop stopping the assault and stopping the the the firing bringing hisbah in this position to no longer act for or demand the the um ceasefire for Gaza which is this is really the calculation because what what Nan wants is really he wants to finish off he wants to stop this threat from the north no matter what's going

on in G he wants to separate the two issues and this is exactly what hisbah has been trying to avoid they want to connect it because it's their fight I mean they're saying it's kind of their fight they try to make it like this I think is Israel controlling the timing at least uh with these pager attacks uh and Hezbollah now is on the back foot and has to react so uh is is this uh a a rehabilitation of the security forces of Israel and and and be is this a successful from the Israeli point

of view a successful strategy well um that's a very interesting point and um that's also point where I would slightly differ with um there are reports as one uh very plausible report to me which might be based on intelligence sources which came out right after the pedra attacks which basically said um these Pedra attacks and walkie-talkie attacks were actually devised and planned for the case of an allout War to be the first step in an allout war in order to destroy the communications and command structures of hisbah we didn't actually want to do it now

but we were forced to do it because uh these preparations were close to be uh discovered by his um and that's why we had to do it now and I think that's more or less credible because a it is an excellent preparation for um for an imminent War but we're not seeing be Israel leading this war in full force now this is not full force 500 civilians dying in one day and bombing killing civilians regardless if you know there are kids in the place where they're as terrible as all of that is most unfortunately I

have to say it is not the worst thing that could happen it is against international law as well it is but we could also see carpet bombings in day we could see uh the Israel Defense Forces South absolutely so you know what can happen and I'm not saying that what is happening now is good but I think it's not yet the worst case scenario that we're seeing and those pager attacks were a preparation for the worst case scenarios so yes Israel is trying to instrument aliz that as a victory for uh its own security apparatus

whose ability has been called into question lately um but I'm not sure as how calculated that stop step of escalation is and I think and then I'll be and then I'll be finished um I think the biggest problem on the Israeli side here is that they're moving closer to an extremely dangerous and brutal War without actually having a plan an in uh the medium run yeah I think the the access strategy is not so much the problem and here I would differ with you I think in uh Lebanon there is a clear goal that can

hardly be achieved with um with political means there's um beyond the imminent question of Israeli citizens moving back into the north of the country and in order to facilitate that and uh make that possible to move Hezbollah away from the border I think more essential um security interest of Israel uh viav Hezbollah is destroying its missile capability well this more than 150,000 missiles and that's a core security dilemma of the region let's excuse me for interrupting there U very interesting um discussion but let's have a look at the other side let's have a look at

Israel for a moment because for Israel the recent escalation does create a dangerous second front in its fight against its many sworn enemies but Israel seems oblivious to the risks even seems to be seeking the confrontation at all costs explosives planted in Hezbollah members pages and walkie-talkies presumably by Israeli intelligence followed by extensive air strikes it seems that Israel has entered a new phase in its conflict with hisbah prime minister Netanyahu has declared that the goal of the war is the safe return of Israeli residents 6 th000 Israelis have had to leave their homes Israel

wants to force hisbah to withdraw from the border areas to the north side of the Lani River for those who have not yet understood I want to clarify Israel's policy we do not wait for a threat we anticipate it anywhere in any Arena at any time we eliminate senior officials we eliminate terrorists we eliminate missiles and there's more to come but it's still unclear whether this strategy will work for the people in the country's North the intensification of the conflict is having far-reaching consequences streets are empty and hospitals have been evacuated and yet it is

uncertain if hisbah will give in despite the heavy blows dealt to its leadership could Lebanon also be facing the threat of a ground offensive yeah let's pick up right there uh can this whole operation be be successful without a ground offensive well the ground offensive is something that netan in the past always wanted to avoid basically looking back at the history of the occupation Israeli occupation South Lebanon and how their withdrawal in 2000 was leading to a major uh victory for hisbah that was basically the basic they were celebrated as Heroes all over the region

so I think it's something that they want to avoid unless they feel they really have to go in to destroy all these military facilities in the south isbah is waiting for just that for that for them it would be the fight that they have been preparing for and waiting for for a long time so from that calculation this would be a wrong step the whole question is whether you can really Force hisbah to not you know attack they consider themselves to be defending Lebanon to be a resistance movement they are part of the AIS of

resistance so in the end everything will be settled on uh through um diplomatic needs I mean in the end they will sit down and it will the big question is how to implement the res resolution 1701 that forces hisbah to withdraw who could take over in the south of Lebanon this has is not possible because of a weak libanese government that's true but in the end the question is with military means you can never reign in these organizations so the bigger picture here is that Israel Israel has an alternative I would argue it had it

could have Partners in the region to control and to confront Iran which is at the very back of all these threats from an Israeli point of view but this government Netanyahu is not calculating like this he wants to stay in power he has to do what his radical Partners his radical ministers Messianic ministers ask him to do which is occupying Gaza which is annexation of so what he needs to do is to form a coalition with the West with the region with country like Saudi Arabia Qatar uh the United Arab Emirates which is something that

was on the table now for months from the Biden Administration this is where everybody has been working on whereas this Israeli government is refusing to walk down that diplomatic Road I would like to come back to what you mentioned the Lebanese government I mean it we're only talking about Hezbollah we're never talking about Lebanon as a as a country and and its government what can the Lebanese government do or is it too intertwined with Hezbollah well the Lebanese government at the moment is a caretaker government it's not even government we don't have a president I

mean this is the major issue in Lebanon the weaker the state becomes the stronger hasbalah becomes so unlike in 2006 when you know the war with Israel lasted one month month and ended up with uh the resolution 1701 we had a strong government then for adura was you know very vocal um and you know the International Community trusted us and we had the support of the Arab countries as well the gulf countries chucked a lot of money in Lebanon for reconstruction efforts uh the Saudis put money in the central bank to stabilize the economy uh

but since then a lot of this changed now Lebanon is isolated U on a on an Arabic level because of hezbollah's interference in the region since then I mean it's interference in smling in Yemen supporting the huis the its interference mainly in Syria I mean they've been you know sided with Bashar Assad and killing all those Syrian who are opposed to Bashar Assad and this has caused you know a lot of the Arab people to not support hisbah at the moment and the fact that the Lebanese government now is a caretaker government and is weak

by definition U of course it makes everything worse you feel like you know there's no one in charge uh in Lebanon and hasbalah holds and has been holding you know the decisions of peace and War in his hand um against the will of most of the Lebanese at the moment but you know and we don't see an alternative like we we have been telling hasb a lot of Lebanese have been telling hisbah we do not want to be involved in this since the 8th of October when hisbah decided to stop firing rockets at Israel despite

the will of everyone else in the country you know and and now we're at this point and the government is paralyzed really so how can um how can we put a stop to all this is the recent initiative uh this this joint declaration that we've just seen this week um a step in the right direction and will it will it have any effect yeah I think it is a step in the right direction um this us sponsored um initiative that uh both France uh the UK and also Germany are supporting um and we're actually seeing

rather encouraging re reactions to that from Israel at least Dan donon Israel's uh un Ambassador um has said that Israel is looking for a diplomatic solution uh we might not take these uh statements at face value but if you know Dan Danon and the way he usually uh presents himself to the public as a Firebrand uh Diplomat I think it's meaningful that he reacts in that way and I think the reason for that is first of all that Israel knows about the cost of going into allout war with a ground offensive and secondly I think

that like most parties in the Middle East Israel would like to know who is going to rule in the white house for the next four years before making major decisions and major steps right we have one minute left very briefly you think this crisis and all war there can be avoided very briefly please I think it can be avoided and I feel Israel would have an alternative that with this government is not very viable so I'm afraid that the whole Gaza point will only come to an end when we see the the result of the

American elections it needs to stop where it started in Gaza Natan has to accept that he has to end the war in Gaza and allow the Palestinians to have their own State finally nasas did say that if this war stops we will stop I think it can be averted by this but the security dilemma that hasb poses with Israel on the other side that will remain thank you very much to my panel that's it for today from uh to the point if you watch us uh on uh YouTube please make sure to leave us your

comment down here in the comment section I'm Gad alus here in Berlin from me and the whole to the point team thanks for watching [Music]