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Israel has expanded the objectives of its year-long campaign in Gaza to include the northern front with Hizbollah, increasing fears of an escalation of its conflict with the Lebanese militant group.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet voted early on Tuesday to add “returning the residents of the north securely to their homes”, Netanyahu’s office said. “Israel will continue to act to implement this objective.”
The decision is seen by analysts as a statement of intent, marking a shift in priorities for the Israel Defense Forces amid the ongoing war against Hamas militants in Gaza.
It comes amid escalating cross-border fire between Israel and Hizbollah in recent weeks, and growing public anger over the Netanyahu government’s inability to solve the crisis on a front that had been seen as secondary to the Gaza campaign.
Hizbollah began firing into northern Israel a day after Hamas’s October 7 attack from Gaza, triggering a low-level war of attrition between Israeli forces and the Iran-backed group. More than 60,000 northern Israeli and about 100,000 southern Lebanese residents have been displaced from their homes for months.
During the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday Netanyahu issued his most strongly worded comments so far on Hizbollah, saying he was attentive to the “anguish” of Israel’s northern residents and vowing that “the current situation will not continue”.
US President Joe Biden has for months been trying to broker a diplomatic solution to the Israel-Hizbollah crisis, with special envoy Amos Hochstein again travelling to Israel this week.
Those efforts have faltered amid Hizbollah’s stated intention to continue firing at Israel as long as the Gaza war continues. Simultaneous diplomatic attempts to broker a deal that would halt the fighting in Gaza and return the Israeli hostages seized on October 7 have also stalled.
After meeting Hochstein in Jerusalem on Monday, Netanyahu said what was required was a “fundamental change in the security situation in the north” in order to safely return the displaced Israeli residents.
In his own meeting with Hochstein on Monday, Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant appeared to go a step further, telling the US envoy that “the possibility for an agreement [with Hizbollah] is running out”.
“Therefore the only way left to ensure the return of Israel’s northern communities to their homes will be via military action,” Gallant added.
US officials have since late last year worked to contain the hostilities between Israel and Hizbollah amid deep concerns that the Gaza conflict could escalate into a full-blown regional war, possibly including Iran. Hizbollah is considered to be the most heavily armed non-state actor in the world, with more than 150,000 missiles and rockets in its arsenal, according to Israeli intelligence estimates.
Multiple Israeli media reports said Netanyahu on Tuesday was seeking to sack Gallant and replace him with Gideon Sa’ar, a rightwing opposition politician and former senior minister who had fallen out with the prime minister several years ago.
Gallant and Netanyahu are barely on speaking terms, according to people with knowledge of their relationship, and differ strongly about the need for Israel to accept a ceasefire-for-hostage deal in Gaza.
Gallant, alongside most other security chiefs, has urged Netanyahu to agree a deal, return the 101 remaining Israeli hostages still in captivity and wind down the campaign in the besieged enclave — not least in order to test the diplomatic route to resolve the conflict with Hizbollah.
But Netanyahu has refused to end the Gaza war and continues to insist on “total victory” over Hamas.
Netanyahu’s office on Tuesday said reports surrounding the negotiations with Sa’ar were “not true”, but did not deny that talks were taking place in a bid to replace Gallant.
Sa’ar, now the head of the New Hope faction, had been part of Netanyahu’s emergency wartime government for the first six months of the conflict. He resigned in protest in March amid recriminations that the military strategy in Gaza was not aggressive enough and that he had not been included in the inner war cabinet dictating policy.
A former justice and interior minister from Netanyahu’s rightwing Likud party, Sa’ar split from the party in 2020 over personal differences with Netanyahu.
Sa’ar said an attempt to sack Gallant early last year was “an act of madness, indicating a complete lack of judgment” by the prime minister.
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