Tel Aviv: As Israel pounded targets in the Gaza Strip from the air and sea on Wednesday, a member of the country’s war cabinet threatened action on a second front, along the border with Lebanon, where Iranian-backed militia Hezbollah has fired rocket barrages into Israel.

“I say to our friends around the world: The situation in the northern border necessitates change,” the war cabinet member, Benny Gantz, told reporters. “The time for a diplomatic solution is running out. If the world and the government of Lebanon don’t act to stop the fire toward northern communities and to push Hezbollah away from the border, the IDF will do that.” The reference was to the Israel Defence Forces.

The threat of a wider war has preoccupied the US and its allies since the start of the conflict in Gaza and has only grown as three Iranian-backed groups — Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis in Yemen — launch attacks toward Israel as well as on commercial ships in the Red Sea. The concern prompted the US to dispatch two aircraft carriers to the eastern Mediterranean in the weeks after the October 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel that sparked the war in Gaza.

The Israeli military said on Wednesday that its northern command, along the border with Lebanon, was in a “state of very high readiness”.

New York Times News Service