‘From lion's roar to cat’s meow’: Israeli media, officials decry Tel Aviv’s latest failure in Lebanon
Hezbollah's capabilities remain nearly intact after over a month of Israeli attacks and ground operations, showing that Tel Aviv’s goal of dismantling the resistance and creating a buffer zone has failed
Residents of Israel's northern settlements and opposition leaders erupted in anger over what they describe as a ceasefire “imposed” on Israel by Washington, following a 45-day war which failed to achieve any of Tel Aviv's stated goals inside Lebanon.
Moshe Davidovich of the Forum of Front-Line Communities in the north said the truce was “paid in blood, in destroyed homes and in dismantled communities here.”
“A ceasefire that does not include lethal enforcement against Hezbollah for every violation and a buffer zone free of terror up to the Litani River is not a political achievement; it is a sentence to wait for the next massacre. The residents of the north are not statistics in an international public relations show,” he added.
David Azoulay, mayor of Metula and member of the Yisrael Beytenu party, said he felt “betrayed once again.”
“The fact that it is the president of the US who is the one announcing a ceasefire only highlights how disconnected the prime minister of Israel is from the people, and from the reality of the residents of the north. Your basic duty as prime minister of Israel is to provide security to the citizens of the state. In practice, you fail at this time after time,” he added, addressing Netanyahu.
Officials from the northern settlements expressed the same sentiment at the end of the 2024 war, saying Hezbollah had not been deterred despite government statements at the time.
The Israeli opposition also strongly criticized the ceasefire.
“This is not the first time the promises of this government have come crashing down on the ground of reality,” said former premier and head of the Yesh Atid opposition party, Yair Lapid.
“The fighting in Lebanon can finish only in one way: removing the threat to the northern communities permanently. This will no longer happen in this government; we will do it in the next government,” Lapid added.
https://x.com/MayadeenEnglish/status/2044898469614067855?s=20
Avigdor Lieberman, former defense minister and chair of the Yisrael Beytenu party, called the truce “an unbearable reality.”
The 10-day ceasefire announced by Trump on Thursday was reached as a result of heavy pressure from Iran, which conditioned its participation in a new round of talks with the US on a full ceasefire in Lebanon.
This came despite the Lebanese government's abrupt rejection of being part of the ceasefire announced between Washington and Tehran earlier this month.
At the start of the war and ground operation in Lebanon, Israeli officials vowed to “dismantle” Hezbollah and establish a “defensive buffer zone” from the Israeli border all the way to the Litani River.
Yet the resistance military’s capabilities were unaffected, and the Israeli army failed to take control of Bint Jbeil, Khiam, and other southern towns.
Nevertheless, Israeli forces remain positioned in the south, and Hezbollah has warned that its hands are “on the trigger,” while urging residents not to return until the situation is safe.
“Israel ended the war with its tail between its legs,” Maariv newspaper’s military correspondent Avi Ashkenazi wrote on Friday. “The war did indeed begin with the roar of a lion,” he went on to say, lamenting that the campaign ended up “sounding like a cat’s meow.”
Hezbollah’s rockets were falling on Nahariya and Carmiel shortly before the ceasefire took effect.
On Thursday night, an Iranian source told Lebanese news outlet Al Mayadeen that Iran set a “final” deadline for attacks on Lebanon to end.
According to Ashkenazi, on Thursday, "Iran received full recognition from the US that it is the homeowner in Lebanon, that Tehran is the same as Beirut.”
“Israel did indeed link Hezbollah to Iran, but after the ceasefire in Iran, it was Israel that tried to separate the sectors … The Americans confirmed that Iran is Lebanon's patron and everything must go through it.”
“The Israeli government can negotiate peace with the Lebanese government. But the residents of the north and the majority of the Israeli public understand that this is nothing more than a spin, a poor grip of a political echelon that does not know how to market the fact that it has failed,” he concluded.
Comments
Post a Comment