Israel intensifies attacks in Lebanon and the West Bank, while Trump predicts collapse in oil prices after victory over Iran

Israeli air raids conducted over the last three days in various areas of southern Lebanon have caused at least 27 deaths and around seventy injuries. At dawn, a bombing on the village of Kfar Reman wiped out a family of 8 people, including 2 newborns and 2 women, as well as 2 rescuers who arrived on site. Israel justifies the attacks, which violate the ceasefire in force on paper, as a response to Hezbollah attacks against IDF soldiers in Lebanon. Meanwhile, in the West Bank, Israeli troops raided the village of Anata and the nearby refugee camp of Shuafat at dawn, north-east of East Jerusalem. According to the Palestinian agency Wafa, the military closed all entrances, destroyed the main water pipes and arrested several Palestinians. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly ordered the dismantling of illegal settler settlements in the West Bank, following strong pressure from the United States. The finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, announced the turning point. “Oil prices will collapse when we win the war with Iran.” Donald Trump said it on his social network Truth. "Three dollars a gallon, eventually two dollars a gallon. It will happen quickly, and Iran will never have a nuclear weapon", highlighted the US president.

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Approximately 10 days before the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was personally warned by the leader of the United Arab Emirates that Hamas was planning a major offensive against Israel, but he did not inform Israeli security leaders and did nothing despite being informed. Haaretz reports it, citing 'Kidnapped: 843 Days of Abandonment', the new book by journalists Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval, based on interviews with dozens of sources, including senior officials in Israel and around the world. The book claims that three senior foreign officials were briefed on the contents of the 45-minute phone call in late September. Among these was an advisor to Mohammed bin Zayed who had direct knowledge of the conversation.

According to the report, Mohammed bin Zayed warned Netanyahu that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was planning a far-reaching action against Israel, which would cause bloodshed, destabilize the region and potentially undermine the Abraham Accords. The report said Mbz was surprised by Netanyahu's optimistic response, telling him that Jerusalem had the situation under control in Gaza, that any Hamas action would likely occur in the West Bank and that Israel was prepared for any scenario.

The report states that Mbz's awareness of the Hamas threat came from Sinwar himself, who in mid-2023 was frustrated by the lack of progress in negotiations with Israel over the release of prisoners (Hamas at the time detained several Israelis who had ventured into Gaza on their own initiative, as well as the bodies of two soldiers), and who had recently repeatedly warned a key Fatah interlocutor to warn the Israelis of the consequences if they did not make progress towards a deal. “Tell the Israelis that if they don't go ahead, I'm preparing a big surprise for them,” Sinwar reportedly said in one conversation. “Tell them to expect an earthquake.”

"Israel's war, which began with its plots and provocations, is paid not only by the Iranian people and our brothers in the Gulf countries, but by everyone, involved or not." Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said this, accusing Israel of hindering efforts to end the war between the United States, Israel and Iran. "It was also Israel's lies and sabotage that compromised the Islamabad agreement, which had allowed our entire region to breathe a sigh of relief," Erdogan added, in a statement released on X by his office. The Turkish president argued that the crises in the region will not be able to ease due to Israel's "radical mentality", "which perceives even the slightest possibility of peace as a threat to itself".

"The world is heading for an industrial catastrophe if this situation continues." This is the alarm raised by the spokesperson of the Qatari Foreign Ministry, Majed Al-Ansari, in an interview with CNN on the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz. Doha, engaged in mediation between the United States and Iran, has indicated two priorities: "The first is to ensure that the Strait is open and that the economic pressure that weighs on all of us collectively is relieved. The second is to ensure that there are no military escalations in the region." Al-Ansari stressed that "we don't want to freeze this conflict and then find ourselves here in a couple of months." “The world cannot afford to normalize the idea that a strait, a waterway, can be used as a weapon in this type of conflict,” the spokesperson continued, warning that a similar precedent could be replicated elsewhere “with even more devastating consequences.”