On 28 September, 20,000 Palestinians marched to the Gaza‐Israel border and seven of them were killed by Israeli bullets. Such confrontations are now becoming an almost daily occurrence. The march began as a civil-society movement born of the mounting economic and political frustrations over the Israeli blockade of the territory that has made life in Gaza ’poor, nasty, brutish and short’.
Initially, it also had anti-Hamas overtones because of the organisation’s misgovernance of Gaza and its inability to reach an agreement with the Palestinian Authority that is in nominal control of parts of the West Bank. However, over time it has become a movement organised and orchestrated by Hamas itself. That has made the situation highly combustible, with senior Israeli officials threatening a full-scale invasion of Gaza as happened in 2014. It may lead to a Palestinian eruption in the West Bank as well.
Gaza isn’t the only front on which Israel could be engaged in a war. Another major military confrontation is looming between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu disclosed in his address to the UN General Assembly on 27 September that Israeli intelligence had unearthed evidence that Hezbollah is building a missile site near the Hariri International Airport in Beirut and a storage facility underneath a soccer stadium nearby.
According to Israeli sources, those projects are part of a joint effort with Iran to upgrade Hezbollah’s missile capacity so that it becomes an increasing threat to targets deep within Israel. In his speech at the UN, Netanyahu threatened Hezbollah explicitly: ’I have a message for Hezbollah today: Israel knows what you’re doing. Israel knows where you’re doing it. And Israel will not let you get away with it.’ It sounded almost like a clarion call to combat, for any Israeli attack on these sites is bound to bring about severe retaliation by Hezbollah that could lead to an all-out war like the one witnessed in 2006.