Ministers receiving satellite phones out of fear of communication collapse. Hezbollah evacuates its headquarters. Biden enraged. Halevi warns: ready to fight far away
By: Davide Frattini – Corriere della Sera
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JERUSALEM – All ministers are given satellite phones because the chaos scenario overlaps with that of fear, and the command for the Internal Front fears that the target of the attack ordered by Iran could be the telecommunications network. All ministers will be able to connect to listen more than to speak; in the end, decisions are made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, the Minister of Defense. Bibi – as speculated by analysts – would like to dismiss Gallant by now, but he had tried a year and a half ago, thousands of Israelis had taken to the streets to protest, and Gallant had been removed only in words. The cohabitation continues and is increasingly difficult even with Herzi Halevi, the Chief of Staff.
The doubts of the military and intelligence services concern the role played by Netanyahu in the negotiations to reach a ceasefire in Gaza in exchange for the release of the last 115 hostages: during a meeting Thursday afternoon, they would have implored him to accept the agreement on the table, and the Prime Minister – as reported by the news – would have shouted “you are terrible negotiators.” He decided in any case to send David Barnea, the head of Mossad, to Cairo to meet with the other mediators. This is what Joe Biden asked him that same evening – as written by the digital magazine Axios – in a “tense” phone call witnessed by Vice President Kamala Harris. The US President reportedly ordered Netanyahu “to stop escalating tensions and move towards a ceasefire agreement.”
On the twelfth floor of the white cube on the outskirts of Tel Aviv – the Kirya, the Israeli Pentagon – there is agreement on the response to the attack decided by Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, and threatened by Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah. General Halevi warns: “Anyone who decides to strike us should know that we will respond forcefully and are ready to fight far away.” Perhaps even to Tehran. To Beirut. The signals from the military and the government suggest that this time the IDF will not wait a week before retaliating, as they did for the hundreds of drones and missiles launched by the Pasdaran on April 13.
Thus the Lebanese paramilitaries – as reported by Arab media – would have evacuated the headquarters, high-level officers, and the most important materials from the areas in the South of the capital that represent the stronghold of the Shiite organization sponsored and armed by Iran. The killing of Fuad Shukr, the commander-in-chief, with a missile on Tuesday night has shaken Hezbollah’s certainties about the penetrability of its network. The coordinated assault between Iran and regional allies – according to the broadcaster Sky News Arabia – could come between August 12 and 13, the hours this year when Jews commemorate the destruction of the first and second Temples in Jerusalem.
Words of vengeance have been spoken by Hamas leaders who attended the burial ceremony for Ismail Haniyeh in Doha, the leader assassinated Wednesday in Tehran: “To the Israelis, we say that they are sinking in the mud and the end is near.” For the first time since his death – he was born and raised in Gaza but had been living in luxury offered by Qatar for a couple of years – the militants launched about twenty rockets from the Strip, where the Palestinians killed in 301 days are nearly 40 thousand. Khaled Meshal was also at the funeral and could be his successor, effectively taking on the role he had left behind. Meanwhile, the army announces that it has targeted Rawi Mushtaha, the man closest to Yaya Sinwar, the head of all leaders in the Strip and the planner of the massacres of last October 7 in Israeli villages.
