Israel launches deepest airstrikes yet on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon

The Telegraph, February 14, 2024

Event

Israeli fighter jets launched the deepest airstrikes yet on Lebanon, reigniting fears of regional war. The series of deadly strikes, amid months of cross-border violence, came after rockets from Hezbollah killed a woman in a town in northern Israel not previously affected by daily border clashes. One woman was killed and eight more people were injured as 20 rockets targeted the city of Safed and other areas in the north, according to first responders. Safed, which is 13 kilometres from the Lebanese border and hosts an important IDF base, has largely been unaffected by exchange of fire between Israel and Hezbollah since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel. The city has not received evacuation orders unlike swathes of northern Israel. The escalation by the Iranian-backed group came just a few days after Iran’s foreign minister visited Lebanon for talks, and a day after Hezbollah’s leader vowed to continue rocket attacks until the war in Gaza stops.

Comment

On Wednesday afternoon Israel responded to Hezbollah attacks by targeting a dozen villages deep in southern Lebanon departing from a previous tactic of only hitting Hezbollah assets close to the border. Some Israeli politicians are calling on the government to treat Hezbollah’s attacks as a declaration of war and say Israel should respond in kind. Hezbollah are mentioned in two key prophetical passages.

Psalm 83 and Joel 3. Psalm 83 says the ”inhabitants of Tyre” (stronghold area of Hezbollah) will be part of a confederacy of people who want to destroy Israel. But they themselves are destroyed. In Joel 3 God asks

“what have you to do with me O Tyre and Zidon?”

God then says he will repay them for what they have done. A few verses later we have all nations being drawn to battle in Israel. Hezbollah’s demise is coming with the inner war.

Bible quote

4 Yea, and what have ye to do with me, O Tyre, and Zidon, and all the coasts of Palestine? will ye render me a recompence? and if ye recompense me, swiftly and speedily will I return your recompence upon your own head; (Joel 3:4)

Weekly World Watch, Andy Walton