The unusually brutal attack by Hamas on October 7 last year against Israel caused a shock among Israelis and called into question the self-awareness of the inviolability of the Jewish state on which it rests. The question of the nation's survival in a hostile environment crept into the public space and into people's homes, a doubt that undermines the foundations on which Israel was built from nothing after the Second World War. It was clear that the answer would be inexorable.
A year later, the Israeli army is fighting on six fronts: in Lebanon, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Syria, Yemen and Iran. And with the attack on the soldiers of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL - United Nations Interim Force In Lebanon), another red line was crossed in the latest escalation of old conflicts in the Middle East.
The attacks on the blue helmets were targeted because they stand in the way of Israeli military plans directed against Hezbollah. First, Israeli tanks opened fire on the guard tower of the main headquarters of the military forces, on Friday two soldiers from Sri Lanka were injured, on Sunday two Israeli tanks broke through the gate of the UNIFIL base on the demarcation line, fired smoke bombs and injured 15 blue helmets. It is sheer luck that not a single peacekeeper was killed in those actions by the Israeli army.
Netanyahu ignores the UN
The Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, without any hesitation called on the Secretary General of the UN, Antonio Guterres, to immediately withdraw the peacekeeping troops, because Hezbollah is using them as human shields. Therefore, one member of the UN demands the chairman of the world organization to change the mandate of the peacekeeping troops because it no longer suits her. In principle: we are sorry that the peacekeepers were injured, but we will not stop, and you see what you will do.
At the same time, Netanyahu does not pay any attention to the fact that UNIFIL was unanimously assigned a mandate by the Security Council to monitor the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah and observe military movements on both sides; it does not take into account that the targeted attack on the blue helmets is a serious violation of international law; and that, by the way, the UN Secretary General does not have any authority to change the mandate of the international peacekeeping forces, which number 10.000 soldiers in Lebanon, writes the German "Spiegel", which sees Netanyahu's statements as a "declaration of war on the world order".
This is also the conclusion from Israel's behavior in recent months towards the institutions that are supposed to preserve the peaceful world order.
On Sunday, Israel's Foreign Minister Israel Katz confirmed that Guterres is prohibited from entering the Jewish state, that he is persona non grata.
Not relying on the judgments of the International Court of Justice
Israel also ignores the recommendation of the International Court of Justice that it must pay more attention to the protection of civilians in the Gaza Strip and allow more humanitarian aid to pass through; of course, it does not take into account the fact that this Court has ruled on several occasions that the Israeli "occupation" of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is in progress, which grossly violates international law, and that Israeli forces should withdraw from there.
Since October 7, Israel has declared anyone who tries to stand in the way of its total showdown with Hamas and Hezbollah as an enemy, and there is no end in sight.
The Israeli parliament, the Knesset, also declared the Palestinian humanitarian organization UNRWA a terrorist organization, putting it on the same level as Hamas. That organization is the most important aorta for feeding the approximately two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, writes "Spiegel".
The cycle of war violence
Seen from Israel, things look different: the country is under attack and has every right to defend itself. Both Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran have in their doctrine the destruction of the Jewish state.
The climax of this new round of Israel's confrontation with the enemies that attacked it, launched after October 7, 2023, has not yet been reached - the Israeli military's response to the massive Iranian missile attack that followed the Israelis' liquidation of Lebanon's Shiite militia leader Hassan is yet to come. Nasrallah, after they carried out a spectacular action of activating pager-bombs that were carried by thousands of Hezbollah members..., then Iran will respond in retaliation of Israel…
Meanwhile, it's Sunday. "swarm of drones" launched by Hezbollah broke through the Israeli missile shield "Iron Dome", killing four soldiers and wounding over 60 people in a military base in the north of Israel. It was the single deadliest attack on Israeli territory since October 7 last year.
One gets the impression that all these current individual confrontations lead to a total war of a nuclear power with regional enemies. While anti-Semitism in the world is growing due to the large number of Palestinian civilian casualties and criticism of Netanyahu's policies in European countries is becoming louder, the US and Great Britain are still ready to provide Israel with the necessary military aid. The United Nations and the Western parliamentary democracies, to whose political space Israel belongs, rather helplessly watch the increasing war tensions in the Middle East.
