Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said that Israel is not only getting attacked from Hamas but also from other militant groups that are being harboured allegedly by the neighbouring countries, raising fears of regional escalation across the Gulf.
Speaking in parliament on Tuesday (Dec 26), Gallant said Israel is engaged in a “multi-front war from seven sides: Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Judea and Samaria [an Israeli term for the West Bank], Iraq, Yemen and Iran”.
“We have already responded and taken action in six of these theatres,” he told the Knesset, without specifying, reports Guardian.
‘Unlikely that Israel-Hamas war will end soon’
He also said that it was unlikely that the war with Gaza would come to an end anytime soon, adding “it will be a long, hard war. It has costs — heavy costs — but its justification is the highest that can be.”
“Without meeting the goals of the war, we will find ourselves in a situation where… the problem will be that people will not want to live in a place where we do not know how to protect them,” he said at a meeting of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee.
“We need determination, endurance, strength, and national cohesion with the goals. It is a battle in which the one who survives is the one who is stronger at the national level, in its values, and in its unity. This is a battle of national determination, and I tell you that we will defeat Hamas,” Gallant added.
The warning comes at a time when Yemen-based and Iran-backed Houthis has been stepping up its attack on US naval assets that are stationed in the Red Sea in the aftermath of the Israel-Gaza war.
Escalation at Red Sea
Apart from that, Israel and the powerful Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah have traded near-daily volleys of missiles, airstrikes and shelling across the frontier since 7 October.
On Saturday, the US defence department categorically blamed Iran for the first time since the Gaza conflict broke out for a drone attack targeting a chemical tanker in the Indian Ocean.
Tuesday’s explosions occurred a day after an Israeli airstrike outside the Syrian capital of Damascus killed a senior general in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. An Iranian statement on national television said Israel would “pay for this crime”.
And far across the Middle East, in India, an explosion was heard near the Israeli embassy in capital New Delhi, Israel’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday. Indian and Israeli officials are investigating the cause of the blast, in which no one was hurt.
