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Military and strategic analyst, Major General Fayez Al-Duwairi, ruled out continuing to violate the accepted rules of engagement in the confrontation between the Israeli occupation and Lebanese Hezbollah, despite the mutual escalation during the past hours, pointing out that the occupation Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is still trying to shuffle the cards through that escalation.

The Israeli army announced that it targeted Baalbek in the Bekaa in response to Hezbollah shooting down an Israeli "Hormuz 450" drone with a surface-to-air missile over the Iqlim al-Tuffah area in southern Lebanon, and said that it would continue its operations to defend Israel, including in Lebanese airspace.

Later, Hezbollah announced that it bombed the headquarters of the Golan Division of the Israeli army with dozens of missiles in response to Israeli aircraft targeting its sites in Baalbek, eastern Lebanon.

Al-Duwairi said in an analysis for Al Jazeera that the Israeli drone that was shot down by Hezbollah is sophisticated and has advanced technical specifications, which prompted the occupation army to intensively target the area where it fell to destroy its debris for fear that it would fall into the hands of Hezbollah and benefit from it through reverse engineering.

Al-Duwairi linked the escalation that took place in the last hours to the statements of the Israeli occupation leaders with the possibility of entering into an open war with Hezbollah, which is something that the Lebanese party is aware of and is working to avoid due to the conditions that Lebanon is experiencing and cannot bear to enter into that open war.

Dead horizon

In this context, the military analyst points out that Israel has reached a dead end in the Gaza Strip, where it has not been able to resolve the battle militarily, and Netanyahu has not been able to provide anything tangible that translates the victory process that he promises, which is what drives him to try to shuffle the cards in the north by heading for a military operation. open.

In this context, he believes that it would not be surprising for Netanyahu to do this to take part of the global focus on the situation in the north, and to escape criticism and international pressure regarding the Gaza Strip and the military operation that he intends to carry out in the south in Rafah.

But Al-Duwairi believes at the same time that these developments will not lead to an open escalation as some imagine, and that the rules of engagement will return to what they were, and the approximate depth of the confrontation between the two parties will return, in light of Hezbollah’s awareness of Netanyahu’s goals and its eagerness to miss the opportunity due to the internal situation in the country. Lebanon.

Israel threatens to launch a large-scale military operation to remove the party’s fighters from the border if a diplomatic settlement is not reached in this regard.

Hezbollah began clashing with the Israeli occupation forces across the border shortly after the Palestinian resistance launched the Battle of Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7, and the confrontations resulted in deaths on both sides.

Source: Al Jazeera