Death, displacement and discord: Hundreds killed in escalating Israel and Hezbollah violence

Southern Lebanon is under attack. Its citizens warned to leave and move away from areas where Hezbollah may be storing its weapons.

Israel says it will stop at nothing to return its citizens to the north and the intensifying attacks are part of the strategy to do that.

Hezbollah do have launch positions and depots across the south and elsewhere in Lebanon.Of course, exactly where is not something they make public. And, of course, exactly where they plan to strike is not something Israel will make public.

There have and will be extensive civilian casualties on both sides as a result of the strikes and there will be huge displacement. In the south already we are hearing of more than 250 dead and hundreds injured. That figure includes women, children and medical teams. For sure that will rise.

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So far neither Israel nor Hezbollah have deployed their full force, both threaten they will. But to what end?

Hezbollah’s short term goal is a ceasefire in Gaza and long term the destruction of the state of Israel.

Israel’s goal in any term is security and the destruction of Hezbollah. They can have all the technology or killer toys they want but history teaches the battles between the two achieve none of their goals.

Even if this ends up being the biggest war between Israel and Lebanon it will achieve little more than the others. There will be further death, further displacement and discord but both will survived to do further harm.

The policy of escalate to descalate will again be exposed as folly. No player in this region has bombed its way to peace before and won’t now.

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