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Tensions between Israel and Lebanon appear to have intensified in recent days with the Israeli prime minister telling troops he is prepared for “very strong action” inside Lebanon and amid reports of incendiary white phosphorus attacks.
The escalation comes as Human Rights Watch (HRW) released the findings of an investigation on Wednesday that verified the use of white phosphorus munitions by Israeli forces in at least 17 municipalities, including populated civilian areas, across south Lebanon following the Hamas attack on 7 October, 2023. The report said Israel’s widespread use of the chemical was “putting civilians at grave risk and contributing to civilian displacement”.
White phosphorus is a chemical substance dispersed in artillery shells, bombs, and rockets that ignites when exposed to oxygen, HRW wrote, explaining that its incendiary effects “inflict death or cruel injuries that result in lifelong suffering”. It urged Israel to “immediately stop” using it in populated areas, “especially when less-harmful alternatives are readily available”.
Sky News reported Thursday that both Israeli and Arab media have been awash with warnings about the possibility of all-out war on the Lebanese front, and that there have been multiple reports of diplomatic warnings from Western envoys about an imminent Israeli attack on Lebanon.
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The media focus has rarely strayed from Gaza where the horrors have continued unabated since Israel launched its counter-offensive – after Hamas attacked killing 1,200 – but casualties in Lebanon are also mounting.
In what many have labelled a genocide, more than 36,400 lives have been lost – most of them civilians – in Israel’s eight-month-long attack on Gaza, which has been rendered unliveable, and the entire population of more than 2.2 million people are at risk of famine.
International outrage intensified last week when an Israeli airstrike on a tent city in Rafah killed at least 45 people, including women and children. The area in the southern Gaza Strip was deemed a safe zone and a World Court had ordered Israel to halt its military assault.
The death Toll in Lebanon is Rising
Days before the Rafah atrocity, three Lebanese school children on a minibus were wounded after an Israeli drone airstrike hit the car ahead of them near the town of Nabatiyeh, about 13 kilometres from the Israeli border.
Last month, a family of four, one of them a 12-year-old boy, were killed by an Israeli airstrike in their hometown of Mais al-Jabal – a village repeatedly struck by Israel. They had fled the south due to an escalation at the border but temporarily returned to check on their home and supermarket.
And, in April, a woman with her 10-year-old niece were killed and four children and their grandparents were wounded in another Israeli strike on the southern town of Haine.
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Since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas hostilities, about 90,000 southern Lebanese, including over 30,000 children, have been forced from their homes, according to a Unicef report released at the end of April, and according to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health, over 350 people have been killed by Israeli attacks in the south of Lebanon, including at least eight children and 21 women.
Near daily Israeli aerial offensives have a devastating impact on the population in the south of the country, threatening the everyday lives of children and families, and ruining their futures.
“I went to school for on