On the verge of war: Five Tweets on Israel’s escalating conflict with Iran and Hezbollah

Only days before the one-year anniversary of October 7th, the Middle East could be on the verge of an all-out war.

Here are five tweets on the conflict between Israel, Hezbollah, and Iran.

As the month began, in an unprecedented move, Iran fired 181 ballistic missiles at Israel, in retaliation for the Jewish state’s attacks on its terrorist proxies and the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. While the majority of missiles were intercepted by the Iron Dome, one person died, and it sent 10 million Israelis into bomb shelters.

The world is waiting anxiously to see how Israel will respond.

This week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued an address to the Iranian people, stressing that Israel stands with them. He declared that Iran’s leaders have subjugated its population, “plunging [the] region into darkness and deeper into war.”

“Every day, their [Iranian regime] puppets are eliminated,” Netanyahu said. “There is nowhere in the Middle East Israel cannot reach. There is nowhere we will not go to protect our people and protect our country.”

Earlier this week, Israeli troops began what they’re calling the “next phase” of their fight with Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Shia militia group based in Lebanon, which the Canadian government considers a terrorist group.

Israeli soldiers have now advanced into southern Lebanon, kicking off “targeted ground raids” and a “limited ground operation” to target Hezbollah strongholds.

Left-leaning media outlets are instead calling it an “invasion”.

The Israeli military said its focus is to remove “immediate threats” from Lebanese villages along the border, including Hezbollah’s ability to enter northern Israel. So far, eight Israeli soldiers and two Lebanese soldiers have lost their lives in the fighting.

Fighting on the ground has followed multiple airstrikes between the two countries, along with the targeted detonation of Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies. Hezbollah’s leader and founding member Hassan Nasrallah were killed by one of these airstrikes, which hit a southern suburb in Beirut, sending shockwaves through the region. Since then, Israel has also targeted his successors.

Foreign Affairs minister Melanie Joly announced that the Canadian government is helping to evacuate the 45,000 Canadians in Lebanon. She reiterated her call for a ceasefire.

Most notably and controversially, in her UN speech this past week, Joly stressed that “Canada supports the creation of a Palestinian state”, and that the government wouldn’t necessarily recognize it as the last step of a negotiated peace process. This would mean that Canada reserves the right to recognize Palestine as a state, even before a final agreement with Israel.

Federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre sparred with Joly in the House, claiming that when Prime Minister Trudeau addresses the conflict in the Middle East, he talks, “out of both sides of his mouth, saying one thing to one group, the opposite to another.”

Since Israel began its airstrikes in mid-September, at least 1,276 people (terrorists and civilians) have been killed, according to the Lebanese health ministry. Around 1.2 million people have been displaced in Lebanon. In the last year since the October 7th attacks that killed 1,200 Israelis, 67,500 Israelis have been evacuated from Northern Israel, due to relentless missile attacks from Lebanon.