Monday briefing: How Hezbollah is fuelling fears of a new front in the Israel-Hamas war

It’s been another remorseless weekend for the people of Gaza. On Saturday night, an Israeli air strike at the Al-Maghazi refugee camp killed at least 45 people, the Hamas-run health ministry claimed, while the head of the Al-Aqsa hospital put the toll at 52; Israel says it is investigating the incident. And late on Sunday, a series of huge explosions lit up the sky over the territory – strikes which Israeli media reports suggested were a precursor to an advance on Gaza City within the next 48 hours.

About 120 miles north, exchanges across Israel’s border with Lebanon continued at a much lower intensity – but with a momentum of their own. Lebanese state media said that three children and their grandmother were killed in an Israeli air strike, an incident that prompted retaliatory rocket strikes on the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona. Those ongoing border skirmishes have fuelled fears of a new front involving a far more powerful regional actor than Hamas: Hezbollah.

Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, gave a speech on Friday which seemed to fall short of a threat of imminent escalation – but incidents like yesterday’s suggest how events could spin out of control. If that were to happen, it would come with a risk of a wider conflict drawing in Iran and the United States. For today’s newsletter, I spoke with the Guardian’s Peter Beaumont, who has been reporting from the border, about what to take from Nasrallah’s speech, and the risks of a new front in the war opening up – even if nobody wants it to.

Source » theguardian.com