Wednesday night and Thursday morning were especially tough in Jerusalem. From the shelters, they were heard more missiles and more interceptions than ever since the start of the war.
Although no missiles hit the city throughout the day, one thing is evident: Iran is attacking the Holy Land, a fact proven on the first day of March, the third day of the war, when two of these attacks were not intercepted by the Iron Dome, causing nine deaths in the town of Beit Shemesh.
The action is surprising because Jerusalem is considered a relatively “segura” in times of war, and is not usually the target of attack.
The city is sacred to the Jews because in its historic center is the Wailing Wall, the only remaining vestige of the Second Temple of Jerusalem, destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.
For Muslims it is also sacred because the Al Aqsa mosque is located there, the third holiest place for Islam, after Mecca – a place that every Muslim must visit at least once in their life – and Medina, both in Saudi Arabia.
The Al Aqsa Mosque is the place, according to Islamic tradition and the Koran, from which the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.
However, despite having received more attacks, the Holy Land is not the main target: the places that receive the most attacks from Israel are urban centers in the north such as Tel Aviv, its capital, or Haifa, Israel’s third largest city and which is less than an hour’s drive from Lebanon.
Another existential enemy for Israel continues to fight in the country of cedars: Hezbollah, Iran’s main ally in the Middle East.
The origin of the enmity
But to better understand this alliance, we must go back in time. Since the Islamic revolution triumphed in 1979 and the Ayatollah regime was established in Iran, Western countries together with Israel pushed sadam husseinpresident of Iraq, to a war of attrition against Iran in 1980.
The end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988 marks the beginning of the Iranian resistance.
“Iran, not being an Arab country but a Persian one, despite professing Islam, considered that the Israelis would have nothing against it, because at that time they had nothing against Israel,” he explains. Dolores Rubioprofessor of International Relations at the Complutense University of Madrid.
However, after the war between Iran and Iraq ended, Iran found itself totally alone in the region, without a single ally.
“Faced with this immense loneliness at the regional level, Iran reached a resolution: to embrace the Palestinian cause in a radical way. And by embracing the Palestinian cause, you are logically against Israel,” adds the expert.
It was at that time, in 1988, that Iran and Hezbollah became allies.
Hezbollah was born in the Lebanese civil war that tore the country between 1975 and 1990. Once the conflict ended without a clear winner, all the actors in the war were disarmed except Hezbollah, a Shiite militia, which has a political arm and a military arm.
In fact, currently, there is no political power in Lebanon capable of disarming Hezbollah.
Thus, both become enemies of Israel, given that Hezbollah had suffered its attacks during the Lebanese civil war, when the Israeli Merkava invaded southern Lebanon in 1982, reaching the south of the capital, in the suburbs such as Dahieh, Hezbollah’s stronghold in Beirut.
Hezbollah is armed by Iran as an actor of resistance to the Western powers—currently represented by Israel—that operate in the region.
In this resistance against Israel we must include, along with Hezbollah and Iran, the Houthis of the Yemeni conflict. Thus, since the 1980s, the alliance between Iran, the Houthis and Hezbollah has only deepened over the decades.
Lebanon, “kidnapped” by Hezbollah
“It is impossible to eliminate Hezbollah, because it is part of Lebanese society,” he says. Xavier Abu Eidpolitical analyst. “Hezbollah constitutes a state within a state in Lebanon,” Rubio agrees.
The great fear now in Lebanon is that Israel will return to the fray as in 1982, when it occupied southern Lebanon until the year 2000, says the professor.
The first year of the war occurred the Sabra and Shatila massacre (September 16) in which members of the Lebanese Phalange (Kataeb), allies of Israel, murdered at least 3,500 Palestinian civilians in the refugee camps south of Beirut.
It is in this invasion of southern Lebanon that Hezbollah was born, filling the void left by the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization), one of the opposing factions in the conflict. “In this war it was not Israel that removed the PLO from Lebanon, but the International Community, which meant a defeat for Israel,” explains Rubio.
However, Lebanon’s immediate future is uncertain. “Whether Israel is invading southern Lebanon depends on whether it has the capacity or not, and what its main ally, Donald Trump, says,” explains the analyst.
Iran-Hezbollah Coordination
None of the experts consulted by EL ESPAÑOL can corroborate 100% that Hezbollah and Iran are coordinating their attacks on Israel to penetrate its Iron Dome, but they all agree that it is a highly probable theory. Neither party has confirmed that they are doing so.
“In the first days, according to Iranian media, Iran used old rockets, a tactic they had used before, to see where the Israeli air defenses were located,” explains Abu Eid.
At this point, “it has reached a point where Israel is starting to run out of air defenses, and neighboring Arab countries are also running out of them,” Abu Eid continues.
The Israeli analyst Amir Orange He claims not to know the technical details, but confirms that in the latest attacks, several missiles have penetrated Israel’s defense.
He further states that “no one knows why the system is failing, but the only thing that is clear is that it should protect us.”
Now, despite its failures, the analyst affirms that “the Israeli air force and the intelligence community have done wonders,” although there is another consideration.
According to Oren, during last summer’s war it was shown that the home front was not as well prepared as it was believed.
“There are anti-missile batteries that have a very good success rate, but, despite this, many structures and civilians were affected in the last war with Iran and Netanyahu did nothing in the following months to improve the situation,” explains the analyst.
Nor does he know that anything is being done to ‘cover’ the cracks, nor that concrete actions are being taken to fix them. “And here we are again with the same problem,” concludes Oren.