Senior Israeli minister Benny Gantz says the situation on the country’s border with Lebanon “must change”, hinting at the possibility of military escalation with the armed group Hezbollah.
Gantz, a member of Israel’s emergency war cabinet, told reporters on Wednesday the chance of a diplomatic solution to exchanges between Israel and armed groups in southern Lebanon is fast running out.
“The situation on Israel’s northern border demands change,” Gantz told a news conference.
“The stopwatch for a diplomatic solution is running out, if the world and the Lebanese government don’t act in order to prevent the firing on Israel’s northern residents, and to distance Hezbollah from the border, the [Israeli military] will do it.”
The remarks are the latest to raise concerns that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza could explode into a wider regional conflict, drawing in Iran-backed groups such as Hezbollah.
Israel and Hezbollah, along with a handful of smaller armed groups that operate in southern Lebanon, have settled into a steady rhythm of tit-for-tat exchanges since the current round of fighting between Hamas and Israel started on October 7, when the group launched an attack on southern Israel that killed more than 1,100 people.
Since then, Israel has been relentlessly bombing Gaza in a “genocidal” campaign, killing more than 21,000 people, most of them women and children, and displacing nearly its entire 2.3 million residents.
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