🌟 [ 34 ]   Fears mount over regional escalation after strike in Beirut kills a top Hamas leader, AP explains [ @AP Archive ]

(3 Jan 2024) RESTRICTION SUMMARY: ASSOCIATED PRESS Jerusalem - 3 January 2024 1. SOUNDBITE (English) Isabel DeBre, AP Jerusalem correspondent: The alleged Israeli killing of Salah Arouri, the deputy Hamas leader and a founder of its military wing, has put the region on edge with everybody fearing that the current war in Gaza could spill over and engulf the wider Middle East. Israel has said multiple times that it wants to target Hamas leaders, not only in the Gaza Strip, where many of them are believed to be hiding deep underground in Hamas s extensive tunnel network, but also wherever in the Middle East they may be. And they re not only in Lebanon. There are also Hamas political leaders in Qatar and in Turkey. But when you think about the political cost of Israel attacking Turkey a NATO ally, or Qatar, which is actually the main mediator right now in this war between Israel and Hamas, it does make sense why it would have chosen Lebanon to allegedly attack Arouri there. But at the same time, opening a new front in Lebanon is incredibly concerning. And the main reason for that is Hezbollah, the powerful, Iran-backed militant group that operates out of southern Lebanon and is believed to have an arsenal of at least 150,000 rockets, many of them long range. And Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, is under increasing pressure to get more heavily involved in the Israel-Hamas war. Hezbollah needs to preserve its credibility as a defender of the Palestinians and as a vanguard of the axis of resistance. But at the same time, we have noticed so far that in the Israel-Hamas war, Hezbollah has not necessarily stayed on the sidelines because it has attacked Israel actually every day. But it has limited its response in the northern border area of Israel. These communities that are actually largely evacuated instead of striking deeper into the territory, and that s because it does have these domestic and regional calculations to consider. And domestically, it s .

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