Israel warns it could send Lebanon ‘back to the Stone Age’

Israel has warned it could send Lebanon “back to the Stone Age” as it prepares to transfer thousands of troops from war-torn Gaza to its northern border – with fears growing of a war with Hezbollah.

During a visit to Washington to meet US officials, defence minister Yoav Gallant said Israel was keen to avoid another war with the Lebanon-based, Iran-backed Hezbollah – after weeks of trading fire with increasing frequency – but added that it was within their power to destroy their neighbour if they needed to.

“We don’t want to get into a war because it’s not good for Israel,” Mr Gallant said. “ We have the ability to take Lebanon back to the Stone Age, but we don’t want to do it.”

His comments came just two days after Benny Gantz, the former Israeli army chief who was one of three members of the war cabinet convened over the war in Gaza before he quit earlier this month, said they could “plunge Lebanon completely into the dark”.

“We can plunge Lebanon completely into the dark and take apart Hezbollah’s power in days,” Mr Gantz said on Tuesday during a conference in Herzliya, a city just north of Tel Aviv.

On Monday, Mr Netanyahu said the Israeli military would soon look to “transfer some forces north” from Gaza to shore up the border with Lebanon, as the most intense phase of its offensive in Gaza comes to an end.

In what was his first interview with Israeli media since the Hamas attack inside Israel on 7 October, Mr Netanyahu said the transfer was “first and foremost for defensive purposes” but the situation on Israel’s northern border remains unstable.

The Hamas attack killed around 1,200 people, with another 250 taken hostage. Israel’s ensuing offensive against Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip, has killed more than 37,700 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

Across Israel’s northern border in Lebanon, where Hamas-allied Hezbollah have vowed to fight Israel until it ends its war in Gaza, at least 481 people, including 94 civilians, have died since October, according to AFP. On the Israeli side, at least 15 soldiers and 11 civilians have died, according to Israel.

The three sets of comments were a rare sign of unity between the three former members of Israel’s now-dissolved war cabinet, which had been made up of Mr Gallant, Mr Gantz and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as three observing members.

Mr Gantz quit alongside secondary member Gadi Eisenkot over Mr Netanyahu’s failure to put forward a long term plan for the war in Gaza.

Speaking to reporters after meeting with senior US officials in Washington, Mr Gallant said that he had discussed with his US counterparts Israel’s “day after” proposals for governance of post-war Gaza and that it would include local Palestinians, regional partners and the US, though he added it would be “a long and complex process”.

Humanitarian aid organisations have warned that a shortage of medical and food supplies into Gaza could kill countless more Palestinians while border crossings remain shut.

Twenty-one critically ill children were set to exit Gaza on Thursday in the first medical evacuation since the territory’s sole travel crossing was shut down in early May, Palestinian officials said.

Family members bid a tearful goodbye to the children as they and their escorts left the Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis bound for the Kerem Shalom cargo crossing with Israel.

But speaking at a press conference at Nasser Hospital, Dr. Mohammed Zaqout, the head of Gaza’s hospitals, said over 25,000 patients in Gaza require treatment abroad, including some 980 children with cancer, a quarter of whom need “urgent and immediate evacuation.”

He described the evacuation of 21 children as a “drop in the ocean”, adding that the complicated route through Kerem Shalom and into Egypt cannot serve as an alternative to the Rafah crossing, a much larger route further west.