Palestine, Iran, Lebanon alliance resurges again against Israel
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – Over the Passover weekend, missile barrages from Palestinian, Lebanese and Iranian groups provided evidence for a resurrected alliance against Israel’s government. That is far from the only threat to the country.
According to the Wall Street Journal, 34 rockets were fired into Israel over the holidays in the largest such attack since the 2006 war with Lebanon.
The nominal cause for the attack was Israel’s closure of the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, a holy site for Muslims. However, the coordinated assault was weeks in the making.
Ismail Qaani, a commander of the Quds Forces, a special Iranian military division, began holding meetings at the start of Ramadan, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Talks were held in Syria with Palestinian leaders. Iran reportedly alleged it had information on Israeli plans to strike against Hamas and Islamic Jihad, two Palestinian resistance groups.
Last week, Qaani met with representatives from the two groups, as well as Hizbullah, a Lebanese militia-cum-political party, at the Iranian embassy in Beirut.
According to the Economist, Hizbullah and Hamas leaders met independently in Beirut on April 9. Strikes from Hizbullah-controlled southern Lebanon, Iranian-controlled southern Syria, and Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip on Israel followed over the next five days.
The attacks in themselves accomplished little, but they do point to a resurgent alliance between Iran, Lebanon’s Hizbullah, the Syrian government, and armed Islamist Palestinian groups.
A recent North Press report highlighted the recent rapprochement between the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Hamas, two clients of Tehran, after over a decade of severed ties.
Israel finds itself regionally isolated after several years of enticing Middle East governments with Israeli investment opportunities and an anti-Iran alliance. Under the Trump administration, Israel had achieved some semblance of a détente with a number of Arab countries. These deals were never popular with the Arab public, but promised to reward their ruling classes. Recent rapprochements between Saudi Arabia and Iran, as well as a number of states with al-Assad, another of Israel’s foes, however, seem to have tipped the scales in the other direction.
Yesterday, April 14, several websites of Israeli banks and other institutions were targeted in coordinated Denial-of-Service-attacks. The cyber-aggressors called themselves ‘Anonymous Sudan’. Sudan’s junta was notably one of the signatories to Trump’s Israel rapprochement scheme, though whether the group is actually Sudanese is anyone’s guess.
The Israeli government under Benjamin Netanyahu, the country’s most right-wing in its history, is also embattled at home. Anti-Palestinian pogroms in the West Bank and a failing Palestinian Authority are increasingly radicalizing Palestine’s youth.
Israel’s Jews are up in arms as well, as Netanyahu has attempted to pass a judicial reform which critics say puts any semblance of democracy in the country at risk. Even as their enemies are uniting, Israelis have no doubt that their prime minister is the true existential threat.