"North Winds" in the face of open war

Whoever believes that the war waged against the Lebanese Hezbollah is linked to its ideological, religious, national and principled position of standing by the Palestinian resistance, and opening the northern support front for it since the second day of the battle of October 7, 2023, is delusional and lives outside of reality and time. Israel and America, along with the colonial Western powers, since the liberation of southern Lebanon in May 2000, and the subsequent victory over the Israeli army in July 2006, this alliance has come to view Hezbollah as the main force that poses an existential threat to Israel, America's advanced base in the region, and the protector and defender of its interests in the region. Therefore, plans have begun to be developed and strategies drawn up for how to get rid of the Lebanese Hezbollah, whether through pressures and economic and financial sanctions on Lebanon and the security and political vacuum, all the way to pushing it into the labyrinths of strife and sectarian and civil wars. As well as "demonizing" the party and besieging it on the Arab and regional levels, through America's allies from the Arabs of official Arab normalization. Israel realizes that inflicting a military defeat on Hezbollah with its own capabilities is not possible, and therefore it has been working constantly and continuously to have America, Western countries, and many countries of the official Arab regime present in a battle or war with the axis of resistance, and has made it the title of "demonization" and "incitement" that threatens security, stability, and the thrones of Arab regimes in the region. We have seen how Israel, whose leaders Netanyahu, Galant, Gantz, Ben-Gvir, and Smotrich boasted that Israel is not the fifty-first star on the American flag, and that Israel alone is capable of attacking and defeating Iran, came the night of April 14-15, the night of the Iranian response with ballistic missiles and drones on Israel, its depth, its military bases, and its airports, in response to the targeting of its consulate in Damascus, where Israel entered a state of hysteria, and asked America and Western countries to provide it with protection, as America worked to establish an official American-Western-Arab alliance, which constitutes a protective shield for it from Iran's missiles and drones.

Moving on to the plans, programs and strategies to eliminate Hezbollah, destroy its military and armament capabilities, subjugate it and turn it into a marginal force, not only in Lebanon but also on the regional level, we find that the plan to bring down Hezbollah with a knockout blow was made public on the 17th and 18th of this month, where America, which possesses high technical, military, espionage and technological capabilities, in cooperation with the Israeli Mossad, booby-trapped the pagers used by employees in the party’s civilian institutions, hospitals, schools, shopping malls, companies and others, in addition to members of the party. The booby-trapping operation, which resulted in dozens of martyrs and nearly 3,000 wounded over the course of two days, was aimed at delivering a knockout blow to Hezbollah and bringing it down. The party did not recover from this wide-scale security breach until America, using F-15 and F-35 aircraft, under the name of Israel, launched a strike against the party by assassinating a group of Radwan leaders, most notably the leaders Ibrahim Aqil, the leader and founder of the Radwan unit, and his companion Ahmed Wahbi. Therefore, the goal was to strike the party’s incubator environment and its military and leadership structure, in order to create a state of chaos and confusion, and an inability to control and dominate at the leadership level, as well as to stop the process of communication and coordination between the party’s branches. This was preceded by another strike in late July with the assassination of the leader Fouad Shukr in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

Netanyahu and his generals, who focus on security dazzle and achieving tactical accomplishments based on assassinations, massacres, and targeting civilians, structures, and civil institutions, announced the transfer of the battle from the Gaza Strip with all its weight to the northern front, in order to return the displaced people of the northern settlements, and to sever the relationship between the Lebanese support front and the Gaza Strip front. He said that he was going to change the face of the Middle East and change the security and military situation on the northern front, and to push Hezbollah 22 km north of the Litani.

Nasrallah and his deputy Naim Qassem said clearly, despite all the blows that the party, its incubator environment and its military structure received, there is no severing of the relationship with the Gaza Strip front, and no return of the settlers to their settlements except by a political agreement, and after stopping the aggression on the Gaza Strip. These blows did not and will not bring down Hezbollah, and will not deter it from carrying out its jihadist role. His deputy Qassem said, “We have entered the stage of open war and strategic gradualism, and Hezbollah responded to the assassination of Commander Fouad Shukr with the Arbaeen operation that targeted a strategic facility for military intelligence, Unit (8200), the espionage, assassinations and liquidations unit. This blow dealt a strong blow to Netanyahu and his government, and told him clearly that the party is determined and insistent on following its approach and choice until the goal of the support operation is achieved. Netanyahu, who went out to the large-scale military operation in the north, the fiery escalation, and launched more than 1,400 random air strikes against civilians and their property and all civilian structures in the south, the Bekaa, Baalbek and northern Lebanon, those raids that It left more than 2,500 martyrs and wounded, and its goals are not only limited to returning the displaced people from the northern settlements and severing the relationship between the Lebanese and Gaza Strip fronts, and restoring its prisoners in the Gaza Strip, but there are major strategic goals for America and Israel that go far beyond that, goals related to America’s strategic interests in the region, its military, security and intelligence presence in Iraq, its military occupation bases in eastern Syria, which plunder Syrian oil, gas and Syrian wealth, and preventing the formation of the new world order and the advancement of Russia and China to fill the vacuum in the region.

Therefore, the American-Israeli plan that Biden spoke about is to reach a mutual displacement balance, allowing the return of the displaced from the northern settlements, who are an economic and social dilemma for Israel, in exchange for the return of the displaced from the south, who stand behind the resistance and do not cry and complain. Therefore, this operation, "North Winds", aims to transform the issue of the displacement of the residents of the villages and towns of southern Lebanon, not only from the resistance environment, but also from the ordinary residents, so that the issue of the displaced becomes a national issue, beyond the party's capacity in terms of absorption, housing and covering the costs, so that the Lebanese state can exert pressure on Hezbollah to stop the support front and sever the relationship with the Gaza Strip front. The party, which Galant boasted that he had eliminated half of its missile capabilities and attacked hundreds of party targets, and that Nasrallah remained alone, launched new batches of missiles more modern than the missiles he had launched at military bases, the Ramat David military industrial complexes, and the Rafael Military Electronics factories, and with wider ranges, but targeting military and air bases and installations. The missiles reached settlements in the West Bank and a military base in Megiddo, and reached Nazareth, Afula, and Acre, sending clear messages to Netanyahu that the euphoria of tactical victories and security dazzle will not return the displaced people of the northern settlements, but will increase the number of displaced people, exacerbate Netanyahu’s economic crisis, and paralyze his home front, airports, and ports to a great extent. Netanyahu, who is surrounded by the generals, after the war expands and he sinks into a long, attritional war that he does not want, and after his economic crises deepen and the number of displaced people increases, and the inability to achieve what he promised the settlers, the differences between the military and security establishments and the political establishment will explode again, and this will be accompanied by internal and international pressure. It is a war that, so far, can be described as an open war with time limits and open to all possibilities, but it is not the major war in which all limits, controls and red lines fall.

Hezbollah’s responses by targeting strategic military, security and intelligence installations in the “Israeli depth,” especially Haifa and its surroundings, pave the way for more displacement and establishing a stronger balance in the displacement itself, but it is a displacement that carries a political title that pushes the Israeli leadership towards one of three doors: bombing the Lebanese depth and receiving a similar response with its surprises, or activating the ground front and discovering what awaits the occupation army then, or returning to square one represented by an agreement on Gaza that ends the war until the shooting stops on the Lebanese front and the displaced return.