Nearly 500 people have been killed as Israel strikes Hezbollah sites in Lebanon. The air strikes have left more than 1,600 people wounded, as residents in the south and east are urged to evacuate. FRANCE 24's Sharon Gaffney speaks to Mesrob Kassemdjian, a teaching fellow at the Department of Politics and International Studies at SOAS, University of London. He says that Hezbollah's response could overwhelm Israel's defences, including the Iron Dome missile system.
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00:00Welcome to Apropos, the death toll has risen to at least 492 following a day of Israeli
00:09bombardment in Lebanon.
00:11The dead include 35 children.
00:13The airstrikes have left more than 1,600 people wounded as residents in southern and eastern
00:19parts of the country are urged to evacuate ahead of a widening offensive against Hezbollah.
00:24Thousands of people are trying to make their way north.
00:28In a recorded message to Lebanese civilians, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
00:32urged people to get out of harm's way.
00:34Siobhan Silk has the latest.
00:38Schools in targeted areas were closed to protect the pupils.
00:43Now some in safer zones are opening their doors to the thousands of civilians fleeing
00:48southern Lebanon as Israel warns of more strikes to come.
00:53We're part of the minority who managed to leave, but there are still many, many others
00:57in the south, including my siblings and their families.
01:00God willing, I hope they'll make it out.
01:03A constant stream of people is heading northwards to seek shelter.
01:07Like these residents of Saidon, 40 kilometres south of Beirut, they're packing as many people
01:12as they can into any available vehicle to make the slow journey on jammed roads.
01:23We won't run away, of course we won't run away.
01:25But for the sake of the children, and there's a house where my parents are, it's going to be destroyed.
01:32The fear of an escalating conflict has been brewing for the past year, during which there
01:37have been near daily exchanges of fire on the Lebanon-Israel border.
01:41But now Hezbollah is aiming rockets further into Israel while Israeli strikes have hit
01:46the Lebanese capital.
01:51On Monday alone, Israel hit hundreds of targets across a wide area, the most intense and deadliest
01:57day of bombardments yet.
01:59With both sides vowing to retaliate against the other's actions, some Lebanese people
02:03believe all-out war is inevitable and feel powerless.
02:09I say this is the beginning of the war, definitely the beginning of the war.
02:13May God guide us.
02:14If they want war, what can we do?
02:16It was imposed on us, we can't do anything.
02:18And we hope for no war.
02:22But the government of Lebanon is already calling it a war.
02:25An Israeli war of extermination aimed at levelling Lebanese villages and towns.
02:34To discuss, we're joined now by Mesrob Kazmedji, a Teaching Fellow at the Department of Politics
02:40and International Studies at SOAS University of London.
02:44Thank you so much for being with us on the programme this evening, Mesrob.
02:48What exactly is Israel trying to achieve by scaling up these attacks on Lebanon, nearly
02:53500 people dead in one day alone?
02:57Well, Israel has said that it is aiming to stop the missiles coming in from southern
03:03Lebanon into northern Israel in order to allow them to resettle the Israelis in the north
03:10back, who have been forced to leave their home around about 80,000 to 100,000 people
03:15since the beginning of the conflict in Gaza in October.
03:20But in order to do so, they are going to need to push Hezbollah back to across the Litani
03:25River in Lebanon, which is not going to be easy for them, which might require a land
03:32invasion.
03:33And if so, it's going to be, you know, they're going to be met with stiff resistance by Hezbollah,
03:40which is already deployed in the area.
03:43Yeah, because Hezbollah's leader, he's dared Israel to invade southern Lebanon.
03:48Will Israel invade, though?
03:50Where would that lead?
03:51Does it even have the capacity to do so, given the situation in Gaza and also in the West Bank?
03:56This is an interesting question.
03:59We don't really know.
04:00Israel may think that they have the capability to do so.
04:03Have they overestimated their capabilities?
04:05Only time will tell.
04:07Hezbollah seems to think that they have the ability to withstand any Israeli assault
04:11as they have done in 2006.
04:13But again, have they misjudged their capabilities vis-a-vis Israel?
04:18Only time will tell.
04:19But what is for sure is that they will enact a heavy cost for any Israeli soldiers trying
04:24to get into Lebanon.
04:27Hezbollah is a guerrilla organization.
04:29They have, well, they're a complex sub-state actor with a social wing, a political wing
04:33and a paramilitary wing.
04:35But all things together, they are a resistance organization and they follow a kind of guerrilla
04:40warfare style, or modus operandi, which means that their units can operate, once they are
04:49deployed and in position, can operate independently of one another.
04:53They don't necessarily require the same level of logistics and communication that a conventional
05:01armed forces would require.
05:03On top of that, they have specialized forces, which includes sniper units, missile, missile
05:11artillery crews, demolition experts, which will, you know, which have all been trained
05:17for four years and are ready to, you know, to fulfill their, their mission if need be.
05:26Likewise, Hezbollah would be able to retaliate with, with missiles deep into Israel.
05:32In 2006, they already showed that they could fire missiles far deeper than anybody ever
05:36expected into Israel.
05:38Now we know that they have the capability to strike at any target in Israel from the
05:42north all the way down to the south, most southern city of Eilat.
05:45Likewise, today the missiles have, on top of a greater range, also a greater yield.
05:51We're not talking about rockets that can destroy a car.
05:54We're talking about missiles which can destroy an entire building.
05:59And finally, these are now guided missile systems, which means that not only can they
06:05hit any part of Israel, but they can hit strategic targets in Israel, military, but also critical
06:11civilian infrastructure such as roads and airfields and, and for example, bridges.
06:17These kinds of strikes would come as part of a prolonged rocket barrage and potentially
06:24drone swarms, which could overwhelm the Israeli Iron Dome system and leave Israel open to
06:30some critical hits in its territory.
06:33So the, the, the, the conflict will enact a heavy toll, not only for Lebanon, but also
06:39for Israel.
06:41Of course, Israel is aware of this.
06:44However, one wonders whether the Israeli government is heeding the warnings of their military
06:50establishment or if they are, have been overtaken by the kind of religious zeal and ideological
07:00extremism, which seems to be present within the coalition or Netanyahu's coalition government,
07:08which may be forcing it for political calculations to escalate this conflict in Lebanon because
07:13they think that they can win.
07:15But again, this remains to be seen because they may have not have learned their lessons
07:20from their initial invasion of Lebanon in 1982, which led to their withdrawal without
07:25any political concessions via Lebanon, not even recognizing Israel as a state in order
07:30to, for Israel to leave.
07:32So they could, there, there could be a replay of this or the 2006 war where Israel was unable
07:37to achieve any of its military objectives in Lebanon, which at the time were to retrieve
07:42its two captured soldiers, stop missile attack into Northern Israel, disarm and dismantle
07:49Hezbollah and take a buffer zone to the Latani.
07:53These very extreme ambitious goals were not met.
07:57And actually the Israelis were, um, they criticized their own military establishment for not coming
08:02up with realistic goals at the time.
08:04Now the goals are a little less.
08:06They want the buffer zone to the Latani.
08:08They want the rocket strikes to end and they want to end Hezbollah's presence in the South,
08:12but they're not talking about total disarmament.
08:14And then these goals may be, may prove to be a, um, a step too far for them.
08:22Um, Mesra, we're, we're nearly a year into the war in Gaza.
08:26How would, you've described Hezbollah's capabilities there, but how do they compare to Hamas?
08:33Hezbollah is much more powerful than Hamas, particularly because you have to consider
08:38that Hamas is operating in Gaza, which is about 372 kilometers squared.
08:44Lebanon is 10,452 kilometers.
08:47And whereas Gaza is a kind of slope to a beach, um, Lebanon is a mountainous territory and,
08:55and these mountains are ideally suited to guerrilla warfare.
08:58So they're full of tunnels, uh, like in Gaza, but you know, the even, I would imagine even
09:03more sophisticated tunnels in, in, in Lebanon.
09:06And they are far better armed than Hamas with far greater, uh, number of missiles.
09:13And I, I also suspect a higher quality of missiles.
09:16So it would, it would be, um, much harder for, for Israel to, to even enter Lebanon,
09:22let alone to maintain an occupation.
09:24Remember as a guerrilla force, Hezbollah only needs to survive this conflict in order to
09:29claim victory.
09:30In 2006, they claimed a divine victory for Israel not being able to achieve its goals
09:35in Lebanon.
09:36These kinds of conflicts are not, um, graded by how many people die on either side.
09:42Israel always has less casualties than, than its opponents, but that does not necessarily
09:46mean that it has won the war.
09:49Um, it's important to realize that groups like Hezbollah, you know, it's not a country,
09:54it's a sub-state actor.
09:55So it has different, um, interests to countries or different, different properties to states.
10:02As a sub-state actor, its primary goal is to survive.
10:06The goal for a sub-state actor is, um, measured by growth, both recruitment, but also material.
10:13Uh, and in order to achieve said growth, they need to stay politically relevant.
10:20They have given themselves the self-designated role as a Islamic resistance organization,
10:25which is designed to protect Lebanon, liberate Lebanon, protect Lebanon, and also to support
10:30the liberation of Palestine.
10:32If Israel attacks Lebanon as it is doing, it gives Hezbollah a chance to retaliate.
10:38These retaliations allow it to perform its self-designated role as a resistance organization,
10:43which allows for greater mobilization and recruitment, and also for it to extract more
10:47financial support from, um, Iran or Tehran.
10:52Well, speaking of Tehran, it's, it's accusing Israel of seeking a wider regional war here.
10:58The question was put to people in Lebanon in that report we saw a little bit earlier.
11:03Is an all-out war at this stage inevitable?
11:06Well, I don't know about inevitable, but, but Iran is right to point out that, you know,
11:12Israel is already fighting in Gaza.
11:14They are already conducting counter-terrorist or search and destroy operations in the West
11:19Bank.
11:20If they have a, if they start, if the war with Lebanon escalates, that's already a three-front
11:24war.
11:25It's essential for a conflict to also break out on the Golan front, forcing Israel into
11:30a four-way war.
11:32In the Golan, you could expect to see groups, um, from the range of the axis of resistance
11:38from Iraqi sub-state actors, but also even groups as far off of Afghanistan and Pakistan,
11:45which are coming to support, um, in this case, the axis of resistance in the front in the
11:51Golan.
11:52So there is the chance.
11:54And if America gets involved, Iran could get involved, and we would see not just the
11:57forefront war in Israel, but a region-wide war of attrition, um, which, which could be
12:04a very long and protracted war.
12:06And that would, that, that would cost everyone dearly.
12:09It would end up to be an existential fight for Israel's existence, actually.
12:13And this is something that Netanyahu himself is highlighting.
12:16Mesrob, thank you so much for your time on the program.
12:19That's Mesrob Kazemidjan, Teaching Fellow at the Department of Politics and International
12:23Studies at SOAS University of London.
12:27Well that is it from us for now.
12:28Up next, it's Eye on Africa.