Lebanese Alarmed as Hamas Creates New Group to Attack Israel From Lebanon

While reeling from the IDF offensive in Gaza, the terror group Hamas has operatives in Lebanon who have since the start of the war been launching rockets at IDF soldiers and soldiers from that country. Hamas has now announced that it is forming a new terror group in Lebanon for a possible large-scale attack across Israel’s northern border. More on these plans, and on Lebanese alarm, can be found here: “Hamas Creates New Terrorist Group to Destroy Lebanon,” by Khaled Abu Toameh, Gatestone Institute, December 11, 2023:

On December 4, the Iran-backed Palestinian terror group Hamas announced the establishment of a new terrorist group in Lebanon with the goal of “liberating Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.” In the past two months, Hamas terrorists in Lebanon have carried out rocket attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians in northern Israel.

Hamas has called on the Palestinians living in Lebanon to join the group, “Vanguards of the Al-Aqsa Flood,” the name it chose for its barbaric invasion of Israeli communities near the border with the Gaza Strip on October 7, when it massacred 1,200 Israelis and abducted 240 others to the Gaza Strip.

Hamas, in short, is saying that it is planning a similar invasion of Israel, but this time from Lebanon.

The announcement has drawn sharp criticism from many Lebanese, who fear that the Palestinian terror group and its patrons in Tehran are seeking to drag Lebanon into a destructive war with Israel. The Lebanese see how Hamas has brought devastation down on the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as a result of their attack on Israel. They fear the same consequence in Lebanon.

Israel has already warned Hezbollah that if its rocket attacks in northern Israel do not cease, the IDF could “turn Beirut into Gaza.” And the same warning goes, of course, for Hamas. If it tries a large-scale attack on Israel from Lebanon, it is not just Hamas, but the Lebanese, who will pay a steep price when Israel retaliates.

“This [Hamas] statement is unacceptable, neither in form nor in content,” said Samir Geagea, head of the Lebanese Forces Party. “It harms Lebanese sovereignty and is again trying to harm the relationship between the Lebanese and Palestinians.”…

Geagea is the head of the Lebanese Christians, long a foe of Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel from Lebanese soil, and just as adamant an enemy of Hamas’ plans to hit Israel from Lebanon.

Former Lebanese Foreign Minister Gibran Bassil, who also serves as president of the Free Patriotic Movement, wrote: “We categorically reject the announcement by the Hamas movement in Lebanon. We also consider that any armed action from Lebanese territory [against Israel] is an assault on our national sovereignty.”…

Bassil, a Christian and a son-in-law of former President Michel Aoun, directs his remarks at Hamas directly, but impliedly also at Hezbollah when he denounces “any armed action” from Lebanon at Israel,

Lebanese journalist Tony Bouloss…called on the Lebanese authorities to expel the leaders of Hamas from Lebanon “and protect the Lebanese people from bringing Israeli destruction into our country.” He added: “Hezbollah wants to turn Lebanon into a new Afghanistan, attracting all terrorist organizations in the world so that Lebanon becomes an alternative homeland for rogue groups.”

Bouloss sees Hezbollah manipulating behind the scenes, not only to help Hamas establish itself more firmly in Lebanon, but to encourage other terror groups to come to Lebanon in order to form a grand alliance of such groups to attack the Zionist entity from the north..

This is not the first time that the Lebanese people voice concern over plans Iran and its proxies to turn Lebanon into a launching pad for attacking Israel. Over decades, Hezbollah has accumulated approximately 150,000 rockets and missiles, many of them precision-guided, hidden among the homes of civilians along its 75 mile (120 km) border with Israel.

The Iranian regime has many proxies and allies throughout the Middle East: the Houthis in Lebanon, the Kataib Hezbollah militia in Iraq, the Alawite-led Syrian Army, and — most important of them all — Hezbollah in Lebanon. That is why the Iranians have supplied what is now the most powerful of all terror groups with more arms — rockets and missiles — than are possessed by 90% of the world’s regular armies.

Three-quarters of the Lebanese don’t want war with Israel, whether caused either by Hezbollah, or by Hamas, attacking the Jewish state from Lebanon.

A poll conducted in Lebanon between October 13 and 17 showed that 73% of Lebanese oppose Lebanon’s entry into the current Israel-Hamas war….

In the four weeks since that poll was taken, the IDF’s assault on Hamas has led to the terror group’s reeling from loss after loss. Nearly 1000 of its tunnels now have been destroyed, about 6,000-7,000 Hamas fighters have been killed and many more wounded, most of its command-and-control centers have been reduced to rubble, huge amounts of arms have been found and seized by the IDF, and more than half of Hamas’ battalion commanders have been killed. Such dramatic losses by Hamas surely mean that the Lebanese have even less desire to be dragged into the Israel-Hamas War than they did when the poll was taken between October 13 and 17, when 73% voiced their objections to Lebanon being dragged into a war with Israel.

Hezbollah, under instructions from Iran, recently allowed 400 Hamas fighters to deploy along the border with Israel. Coordination between the two terror groups is increasing: Saleh Al-Arouri is the high-ranking Hamas official who now lives in Lebanon; he is responsible for furthering coordination between Hamas and Hezbollah. It seems that Iran may now favor the opening of a second front against Israel, on its northern border with Lebanon. Tehran knows that if there is a major attack by Hamas across that border, even if immediately repelled by the IDF, that will lead to massive Israeli bombing throughout southern Lebanon and, especially, in Beirut. But the Iranians don’t care what happens to Lebanon, as long as the IDF is stretched thin fighting both in Gaza and in Lebanon.

Hamas has in recent years been receiving aid — money and weapons — from Iran. It has, with Hezbollah’s approval, begun to mobilize fighters from among the mostly-Sunni Palestinians in Lebanon. Hamas operatives in Lebanon are eager to coordinate attacks on Israel with the much larger terror group Hezbollah, that is made up largely of Lebanese Shi’ites. Hamas has thus become part of the “Shi’a crescent” of Iran-allied fighters that extends from the Houthis in Yemen, to the Iranian-backed Kataib Hezbollah militias in Iraq, to the Syrian Army controlled by Alawites (Shiites), to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Hamas may be able to launch rockets into Israel from Lebanon, but every such attack, whether successful or not, is answered by Israel with a much more deadly response. And should Hamas try a cross-border surge by its fighters into Israel from Lebanon, like that which it conducted with such hideous success from Gaza on October 7, it can expect much of Beirut to be destroyed. The Israelis have already warned of that result. Four-fifths of the Lebanese will blame Hamas for that destruction, and turn on the group, and then on its backer Hezbollah, with uncontrolled fury.

That, of course, is a consummation devoutly to be wished.