Lebanon on verge of war with Israel as Hezbollah looks to exploit ‘sensitive and destructive’ Gaza crisis
You would need a large piece of paper to list every national crisis faced by the people of Lebanon over the past 50 years.
This multi-religious nation has long struggled to make itself work, with political disagreements ending in violent confrontation – and a 15-year civil war.
The current situation offers few reasons to feel cheerful as a caretaker government tries to navigate a disastrous economic crisis.
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Yet people have something else to worry about with the threat of all-out war with Israel now looming on its southern border.
The country’s most powerful faction, the Shiite group Hezbollah, is currently engaged in a tit-for-tat battle with the Israelis, largely being fought within several kilometres of their shared border.
But this limited conflict could quickly change with the leader of Iran-backed Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, backing militant group Hamas in the month-long war in Gaza.
In a speech broadcast last week, Nasrallah warned “all options are open”.
Speaking to NBC News on Tuesday, he again said Hezbollah were “ready for all possibilities”.
The key question here in Lebanon is both simple and complex. Do the people of Lebanon favour a fully-fledged war with Israel?
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Crucially, everyone knows how destructive a war would be because Lebanon has been through it before.
In 2006, Hezbollah and Israel fought a calamitous 33-day war which displaced a million people in Lebanon. Large parts of south Beirut were levelled by Israeli bombing.
Former Prime Minister, Fouad Siniora, was credited with leading the negotiations which resolved that conflict and in an exclusive interview with Sky News, he told us that Lebanon cannot handle another war.
“In the past 50 years Lebanon suffered from six Israeli invasions in 1969 in 78 in 82, in 93, 96 and 2006. How much conflict can this country take? I cannot [take it].
“Now Lebanon suffers from a series of major crises that go hand in hand with each other. We have a political crisis, we can’t agree on electing a new president, we can’t rejuvenate our institutions and we have a grave economic crisis… this is why I have made myself clear. We cannot get involved in this war.”
Fouad Siniora said Lebanon suffered from six Israeli invasions, and asked ‘how much conflict can this country take?’
Like many Lebanese however, the former prime minister is deeply angry about the Israeli invasion of Gaza – and the failure of the international community to intervene.
He chose to express his feelings with this question: “Assume that there are 500 cats dying from a disease of something in Gaza.
“Tell me how the international community would react? But we are talking about 2.2 million people being massacred and what are we doing with them? If they were cats, I think that international community would come and save them.”
And it is here that Mr Siniora finds himself in agreement with Hezbollah, who say the situation faced by Palestinians in Gaza is unacceptable.
Read more:
What is Hezbollah and how powerful is its military?
Analysis: War between Israel and Hezbollah would be far more dangerous than current conflict
Kassem Kassir: ‘What is happening cannot be tolerated’
We spoke to Kassem Kassir, a figure widely considered to be close to Hezbollah’s leadership.
“I want peace [with Israel]. We all want peace, but there will be no peace [in the region] without peace in Gaza.
“What is happening cannot be tolerated. The question should be asked the other way around: ‘Is it possible to remain silent about what is happening in Gaza?'”
The anger and frustration expressed by Mr Siniora and Hezbollah’s leadership are shared and remarkably similar.
Where the two parties diverge is in terms of what to do about it. The former prime minister says the international community has to stop the war – and to do it quickly.
“There is a situation that has to be addressed otherwise nobody can stop the situation from engulfing many other countries and many other players – that’s why the matter is so urgent, sensitive and [potentially] destructive.”
Kassir suggested Hezbollah views the exasperation and indignation of Lebanon as something to be exploited
Hezbollah views the exasperation and indignation in a different way. In a divided country, such emotions are an asset to be exploited according to Mr Kassir.
“Hezbollah takes into account the presence of supportive public opinion. The more Israel continued the massacres, the closer the people came to the idea of accepting war… every day that the war expands inside Gaza, the Lebanese people get closer to accepting the war.”
This is an important revelation, and it gets us closer to Hezbollah’s strategic thinking.
With a military wing that can fight – but cannot defeat – the Israelis, their leaders are looking for a groundswell of support in Lebanon and the region.
Without it, people like Nasrallah will worry about the destructive consequences that will follow a major clash.
“There are 5 million people in Lebanon, half of whom may support the Palestinians, but there are a billion Arabs in the region who are ready to enter the war and support Gaza,” says Kassir.
“We will [make the] sacrifice when the right time comes. The party will not remain silent any longer and the entire region will enter the war, including Egypt and Jordan.
“It will be a historic moment.”
Donald Trump has agreed to send “top of the line weapons” to NATO to support Ukraine – and threatened Russia with “severe” tariffs if it doesn’t agree to end the war.
Speaking with NATO secretary general Mark Rutte during a meeting at the White House, the US president said: “We’ve made a deal today where we are going to be sending them weapons, and they’re going to be paying for them.
“This is billions of dollars worth of military equipment which is going to be purchased from the United States,” he added, “going to NATO, and that’s going to be quickly distributed to the battlefield.”
Weapons being sent include surface-to-air Patriot missile systems and batteries, which Ukraine has asked for to defend itself from Russian air strikes.
Pic: Reuters
Mr Trump also said he was “very unhappy” with Russia, and threatened “severe tariffs” of “about 100%” if there isn’t a deal to end the war in Ukraine within 50 days.
The White House added that the US would put “secondary sanctions” on countries that buy oil from Russia if an agreement was not reached.
It comes after weeks of frustration from Mr Trump against Vladimir Putin’s refusal to agree to an end to the conflict, with the Russian leader telling the US president he would “not back down” from Moscow’s goals in Ukraine at the start of the month.
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Trump says Putin ‘talks nice and then bombs everybody’
During the briefing on Monday, Mr Trump said he had held calls with Mr Putin where he would think “that was a nice phone call,” but then “missiles are launched into Kyiv or some other city, and that happens three or four times”.
“I don’t want to say he’s an assassin, but he’s a tough guy,” he added.
Earlier this year, Mr Trump told Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy “you’re gambling with World War Three” in a fiery White House meeting, and suggested Ukraine started the war against Russia as he sought to negotiate an end to the conflict.
After Mr Trump’s briefing, Russian senator Konstantin Kosachev said on Telegram: “If this is all that Trump had in mind to say about Ukraine today, then all the steam has gone out.”
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Meanwhile, Mr Zelenskyy met with US special envoy Keith Kellogg in Kyiv, where they “discussed the path to peace” by “strengthening Ukraine’s air defence, joint production, and procurement of defence weapons in collaboration with Europe”.
He thanked both the envoy for the visit and Mr Trump “for the important signals of support and the positive decisions for both our countries”.
At least 30 people have been killed in the Syrian city of Sweida in clashes between local military groups and tribes, according to Syria’s interior ministry.
Officials say initial figures suggest around 100 people have also been injured in the city, where the Druze faith is one of the major religious groups.
The interior ministry said its forces will directly intervene to resolve the conflict, which the Reuters news agency said involved fighting between Druze gunmen and Bedouin Sunni tribes.
It marks the latest episode of sectarian violence in Syria, where fears among minority groups have increased since Islamist-led rebels toppled President Bashar al Assad in December, installing their own government and security forces.
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In March, Sky’s Stuart Ramsay described escalating violence within Syria
The violence reportedly erupted after a wave of kidnappings, including the abduction of a Druze merchant on Friday on the highway linking Damascus to Sweida.
Last April, Sunni militia clashed with armed Druze residents of Jaramana, southeast of Damascus, and fighting later spread to another district near the capital.
But this is the first time the fighting has been reported inside the city of Sweida itself, the provincial capital of the mostly Druze province.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reports the fighting was centred in the Maqwas neighbourhood east of Sweida and villages on the western and northern outskirts of the city.
It adds that Syria’s Ministry of Defence has deployed military convoys to the area.
Western nations, including the US and UK, have been increasingly moving towards normalising relations with Syria.
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UK aims to build relationship with Syria
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Read more from Sky News:
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Concerns among minority groups have intensified following the killing of hundreds of Alawites in March, in apparent retaliation for an earlier attack carried out by Assad loyalists.
That was the deadliest sectarian flare-up in years in Syria, where a 14-year civil war ended with Assad fleeing to Russia after his government was overthrown by rebel forces.
The city of Sweida is in southern Syria, about 24 miles (38km) north of the border with Jordan.
The man convicted of the murder of British student Meredith Kercher has been charged with sexual assault against an ex-girlfriend.
Rudy Guede, 38, was the only person who was definitively convicted of the murder of 21-year-old Ms Kercher in Perugia, Italy, back in 2007.
He will be standing trial again in November after an ex-girlfriend filed a police report in the summer of 2023 accusing Guede of mistreatment, personal injury and sexual violence.
Guede, from the Ivory Coast, was released from prison for the murder of Leeds University student Ms Kercher in 2021, after having served about 13 years of a 16-year sentence.
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Since last year – when this investigation was still ongoing – Guede has been under a “special surveillance” regime, Sky News understands, meaning he was banned from having any contact with the woman behind the sexual assault allegations, including via social media, and had to inform police any time he left his city of residence, Viterbo, as ruled by a Rome court.
Guede has been serving a restraining order and fitted with an electronic ankle tag.
The Kercher murder case, in the university city of Perugia, was the subject of international attention.
Ms Kercher, a 21-year-old British exchange student, was found murdered in the flat she shared with her American roommate, Amanda Knox.
The Briton’s throat had been cut and she had been stabbed 47 times.
(L-R) Raffaele Sollecito, Meredith Kercher and Amanda Knox. File pic: AP
Ms Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were placed under suspicion.
Both were initially convicted of murder, but Italy’s highest court overturned their convictions, acquitting them in 2015.
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