What makes the new war in the Middle East so dangerous for us: Israel’s ground offensive in Gaza could be followed by a blaze

With 150,000 missiles against the deadly enemy

There is a vengeful regime in Tehran. The Iranian mullahs have always been Israel’s mortal enemy. Instead of their own armed forces, they prefer to have their military missions in the Middle East carried out by the proxy armies Hamas and Hezbollah. Both militias receive hundreds of millions of payments annually directly from Iranian treasuries.

Hezbollah, based in Lebanon, has about 150,000 rockets. It could give the war a completely new dimension with a major attack on Israel, says Michel Wyss, a military expert at the Military Academy of ETH Zurich. Hezbollah attacked several border posts on Sunday: the first tremors of the announced “huge earthquake”. As a precaution, Israel has demarcated a four-kilometer-wide security zone along the Lebanese border.

Military expert Wyss emphasizes that it is difficult to say whether Hezbollah will attack Israel comprehensively: “In the event of a Hezbollah attack, Israel threatens devastating consequences for the whole of Lebanon.” It is also questionable whether Iran is actually willing to risk the military threat it has built up over the years in the region for what Tehran sees as Hamas, which is less important. “The primary purpose of the Iranian presence in southern Lebanon is to deter Israel from attacking Iran,” Wyss told “Blick.”

America, which is traveling to the eastern Mediterranean with two of its aircraft carriers, dozens of fighter jets and elite troops, has also made it unmistakably clear that it will not tolerate Iranian agitation.

The Arab neighbors are behind the Palestinians

Israel’s neighbors are now also watching it closely. The recent conciliatory mood in the Arab world towards the Jewish state is changing. Saudi Arabia, which had been slowly but surely moving closer to Israel, halted normalization efforts at the end of the week. The royal family in Riyadh does not appreciate Israel’s violent retaliation against its Arab brethren in Gaza.

More about the war in the Middle East:

Has a death trap been sprung?

That is why Hamas wants to lure Israeli soldiers to Gaza

Calmy-Rey on the Middle East

‘Nothing will erase the idea of ​​resistance’

Army on the border

Egypt closes the emergency exit from the Gaza Strip

Israel’s southern neighbor Egypt is also angry, on whose borders tens of thousands of desperate Palestinians from Gaza are pleading for entry. The economically hard-hit country on the Nile currently has little time to absorb the Palestinian exodus provoked by Israel.

The mood is also likely to change in Israel’s eastern neighbor Jordan, where 80 percent of the population has Palestinian roots. King Abdullah II is still diplomatic, only because his desperately poor country is dependent on dollar support from the US. After all, Syria has been at war with Jerusalem since the Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights in 1967.

Hot protests in the European autumn

There is currently a lot of unrest in the West Bank. Israel, which has recently significantly expanded illegal settlement construction on Palestinian territory, speaks of at least 10 attempted terrorist attacks in the past week. At least 55 Palestinians have been killed in clashes with the army in the West Bank.

In addition to Hamas in the south and Hezbollah in the north, Israel also has a source of unrest in the east. “We will assert ourselves in our homeland. We will not give up anything, whatever the cost,” said a Palestinian from the city of Nablus who wished to remain anonymous. ‘We are against the war. But we at least want to be able to live in peace here in our country.”

The recent mass demonstrations have shown how quickly the conflict can spread to European cities. France deploys 7,000 soldiers to protect cultural institutions – for fear of Islamic attacks. Basel and Zurich ban pro-Palestinian gatherings. If the ground invasion of Gaza comes, these protests could quickly escalate. Pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli groups are more or less balanced in Europe. Unfortunately, violent clashes are anything but absurd fantasies. Autumn can also be hot here.