Palestinians worry that the Lebanon crisis is diverting global attention from Gaza, where ongoing Israeli strikes have killed dozens this week, further dimming hopes for a cease-fire after a year of devastating conflict.
An escalation in the conflict between Israel and the Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah over the past two weeks has led to clashes between Israeli and Hezbollah forces inside Lebanon and fueled fears of a wider regional war.
Although both Israel and Hamas say the Lebanon conflict could help end the Gaza conflict, but some analysts, officials from mediating countries, and Gazans, are skeptical.
“The focus is on Lebanon, which means the war in Gaza isn’t ending anytime soon,” Hussam Ali, a 45-year-old Gaza City resident who said his family had been displaced seven times since the conflict between Israel and Hamas began on Oct. 7 last year, told Reuters via a chat app.
When Iran launched ballistic missiles at Israel late Tuesday, provoking an Israeli promise of a “painful” response, some Gazans welcomed the salvo visible in the skies overhead as a sign Tehran was fighting for their cause.
Sami Abu Zuhri, a senior Hamas official, said prospects for a Gaza cease-fire deal, which would see the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza and Palestinians jailed by Israel, were distant before the escalation in Lebanon. A regional conflagration could lead to pressure on Israel to strike a deal in Gaza, he said.
But with attention swinging to Lebanon, the war in Gaza risked being prolonged, said Ashraf Abouelhoul, managing editor of state-owned newspaper Al-Ahram in Egypt, which has helped to mediate months of cease-fire negotiations.
“The most dangerous thing isn’t that the media attention is going somewhere else, it is the fact that no one in the world is now talking about a deal or a cease-fire, and that frees Israel’s hand to continue its military offensive and plans in Gaza,” he said.
Stalled talks
Inside Gaza there has been no sign of a let-up in Israel’s genocidal war. On Thursday, local medics reported at least 99 Palestinian deaths in the past 24 hours.
Egypt, which has been alarmed by the Israeli offensive on the other side of its border with Gaza and has lost billions of dollars in Suez Canal revenues during the war, is frustrated that its mediation efforts have failed to secure a truce.
U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters that the U.S. remained focused on securing a cease-fire though Hamas had for weeks “refused to engage.”
Hamas officials and Western diplomats said in August that negotiations had stalled due to new Israeli demands to keep troops in Gaza.
“Whereas Israel has been saying since Oct. 7 that military force and putting pressure on Hamas and Hezbollah will help to bring the hostages home we have seen that the exact opposite is true,” said Nomi Bar-Yaacov, an expert on Middle East diplomacy at London-based think-tank Chatham House.
Israel’s escalated campaign against Hezbollah “is putting the cease-fire in Gaza on the back burner, given that the focus is now on trying to dismantle as much of Hezbollah’s military arsenal as possible,” she said.
An official briefed on the Gaza cease-fire talks told Reuters nothing would happen until after the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 5, “because nobody can effectively pressure (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu, which is the key impediment to a Gaza cease-fire deal.”
No quick cease-fire
The official said that during U.N. General Assembly meetings last week Hezbollah wanted a proposal for a 21-day cease-fire with Israel to be linked to a cease-fire deal in Gaza, but Israel rejected this and the plan was dropped. Top Israeli officials publicly dismissed the idea of a quick cease-fire with Hezbollah.
Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah last week complicated chances for mediation, two Egyptian security sources said. Egypt’s efforts became limited to containing any further escalation, the sources said.
The Gaza war was triggered by the Oct. 7 Hamas incursion into Israel, causing 1,200 deaths and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s genocidal war, in comparison, has killed over 41,600 Palestinians, mostly women and children.
In Lebanon, nearly 1,900 people have been killed and more than 9,000 wounded in Israel’s yearlong violence with most of the deaths occurring in the past two weeks.
“We feel for the people of Lebanon and we don’t want them to go through the devastation and starvation we are enduring,” said Ghada, a 50-year-old mother of five living in a tent in the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah, where a million people are sheltering.
“I am afraid the world has become less interested in what happens to us here.”
