Israel’s military is preparing for “any scenario” today, the day after a strike in a Beirut suburb killed the second-in-command of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, raising even more concern about the risk of the war spreading to the Gaza Strip.

“The Israeli forces are at a very high level of preparation in all areas, in defense and in attack. We have prepared for every scenario. The most important thing to say tonight is that we are focused and will remain focused on the fight against Hamas,” Chahal spokesman Daniel Hagari said Tuesday night.

Earlier, Lebanon was in for a shock: a strike attributed to Israel in a southern suburb of Beirut, a stronghold of the Shiite pro-Iranian group Hezbollah, killed Saleh al-Aruri, the second-in-command of Hamas’s political wing, and at least six other members or officials her.

“A movement whose leaders and founders fall as martyrs for the dignity of our people and our nation will never be defeated”, was the reaction of Ismail Haniya, of the head of Hamas, in addition to condemning the “violation of Lebanon’s national sovereignty” and the “expansion” of the war which is still raging in the Gaza Strip.

The Lebanese Hezbollah warned last night that “the assassination of Saleh al-Aruri” it is not only an “attack on Lebanon” but also a “serious development in the war between the enemy and the axis of resistance” — the latter term referring to Iran and its allies in the region, who are hostile to Israel and the US.

“This crime will not go unanswered or unpunished,” Hezbollah added. whose secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah is set to deliver a much-anticipated speech tonight, while Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati has accused Israel of dragging his country into a “new phase” of armed conflict.

Since the outbreak of the Israel/Hamas war on October 7, tensions have soared on the Israel/Lebanon border, in Syria and Iraq, where US bases have been targeted dozens of times, as well as in the Red Sea, where the attacks by Houthi rebels — renewed last night, according to the US military — are slowing international trade by sea.

With this background, French President Emmanuel Macron appealed to Israel to “avoid any behavior” that would lead to “escalation”, “especially in Lebanon”during a telephone conversation with Benny Gantz, a member of Benjamin Netanyahu’s wartime government.

During his conversation with Benny Gantz, Emmanuel Macron called for an effort to declare a “permanent cease-fire” between Israel and Hamas, while reiterating his “very strong concern in the face of the particularly heavy toll of casualties among civilians” in the Gaza Strip, living to the rhythm of airstrikes and Israeli artillery fire for the past nearly three months.

“Very difficult for us”

Hamas’s military arm launched an unprecedented attack on southern sectors of Israeli territory on October 7, killing some 1,140 people, most of them civilians — according to an AFP tally based on official government data — and taking another 250 or so hostages, a hundred and now of which they were released at the end of November thanks to a seven-day truce.

In response to this attack, the deadliest since 1948 by the Jewish state, Israel’s civil-military leadership vowed to “eliminate” the Palestinian Islamist movement, which Israeli authorities, the EU and the US have labeled a “terrorist” organization.

Bombings and ground operations have since killed 22,185 people in the Gaza Strip, the vast majority of them women and children, according to the latest tally released yesterday by the Health Ministry of Hamas, in power in the Palestinian enclave since 2007.

Saleh al-Arouri, the exiled leader of Hamas in the occupied West Bank, is the most senior figure in the Palestinian Islamist movement to be killed in the war to date.. Moments after news of his death broke, people took to the streets to demonstrate in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank.

Overnight, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that Israeli army operations were conducted in various sectors of the West Bank.

Despite continued international pressure for a ceasefire, the Israeli military is preparing for “prolonged fighting” expected to last “all year” in the Gaza Strip.

“The idea that we could stop soon is wrong. Without a clear victory, it would be impossible to live in the Middle East,” Defense Minister Yoav Gallad bids.

Overnight, the director-general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, denounced on Tuesday night the “outrageous” blows suffered by the Palestinian Red Crescent facility in Khan Younis, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip.

And early this morning, an AFP journalist reported that there were new strikes in Khan Younis, where the Hamas Health Ministry spoke of “many” dead.

The 2.4 million residents of the Gaza Strip — 85% of whom have been displaced by shelling and hostilities, according to the UN — are experiencing severe shortages of food, water, fuel, medicine.

“It’s been seven days since I’ve been here, sleeping in the rain, without even a tent (…) we had to beg for blankets from apartment dwellers in the area,” laments Wojud Kamal al-Shinbari, who fled to Rafah, on the southern edge of the Palestinian enclave. neighboring Egypt.

“We can’t find anything to eat or drink, we’re starving because of the cold, I have a baby and I can’t find diapers, water, or milk powder for him,” she adds.

In Jabalia, in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, Shazda Maarouf describes her own hell on earth: “bombs are falling on us, people are falling to pieces (…) we would like a truce please, we are exhausted.”