Following Israel’s Wednesday raid on Lebanon that claimed the life of a senior militant from Fatah’s armed branch, the Palestinian movement accused Israel of attempting to “ignite a regional war.”
Khalid Maqdah was murdered in an explosion close to the southern Lebanese city of Sidon, according to Fatah, the Palestinian organization situated in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
According to the Israeli military, it was directed for Mounir Maqdah’s brother, who is in charge of Fatah’s armed wing’s section in Lebanon. It charged them both with working with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and “directing attacks and smuggling weapons” into the West Bank.
In reaction, Israel was accused by the assassinated militant’s Fatah movement—which is led by Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas and opposes Hamas, the Islamist authorities of the Gaza Strip—of trying to start a larger regional conflict.
Following the Gaza conflict, Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement have been engaged in cross-border fighting for almost ten months. Maqdah’s killing is the first such attack on a senior Fatah member.
According to Tawfiq Tirawy, a member of Fatah’s central committee, “the assassination of a Fatah official is further proof that Israel wants to ignite a full-scale war in the region” (AFP, Ramallah).
It happened just a few hours after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken returned empty-handed from a Middle East visit intended to mediate an end to the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza.
Blinken publicly criticized Israel for its planned stay in the beleaguered Palestinian enclave and pleaded with Hamas to swiftly accept a peace proposal endorsed by the US.
“Time is of the essence,” Blinken said before flying out of Doha after stops in Qatar, Egypt and Israel on his ninth regional tour seeking to halt the Gaza war.
“This needs to get done, and it needs to get done in the days ahead, and we will do everything possible to get it across the finish line,” he said of the truce proposal.
Through Qatar and Egypt, the US has pushed Hamas to resume negotiations this week in Cairo and has offered ideas to close gaps.
However, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was cited by Israeli media as disagreeing on a crucial sticking point just one day after Blinken stated that US partner Israel was on board.
Netanyahu demanded that Israel hold onto the Philadelphi Corridor, which it had taken from Hamas, which it claims uses covert tunnels to smuggle weapons into Gaza and Egypt.
