“This is much worse than anything we anticipated when border clashes between Hizbullah and the Israeli army started, when Hizbullah was acting in some sort of solidarity with Hamas,” said a Beirut-based diplomatic source.

He spoke on Sunday evening, in the wake of remote explosions of portable communication devices that killed several high-ranking Hizbullah officials and wounded close to 3,000 people.

“This is a very troubling moment. Israel’s war on Gaza is now clearly open-ended, and it has eliminated a number of Hamas and Hizbullah leaders,” said the source.

“Unfortunately, we could be looking at the opening chapter of another extended war that might continue hand-in-hand with the war on Gaza, and there could be confrontations on other fronts.”

By Monday afternoon, Israel had moved from remotely operated explosive devices and targeted missile attacks to wider air-raids that killed close to 500 Lebanese and wounded over 1,500. Monday was rightly described as the bloodiest day for Lebanon since the civil war.

According to the Beirut-based source and to a second diplomatic source speaking on Monday evening from the UN headquarters in New York, worse is expected. Both sources say that in diplomatic and intelligence quarters there is widespread concern that Israel could start a ground invasion of south Lebanon within days.

In a speech on Friday, following the first round of explosions of sabotaged communication devices, Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah threatened to respond if Israel invaded South Lebanon. Yet by Monday evening, endless queues of cars were carrying people desperate to escape north out of fear of an Israeli invasion.

Mariam, a Beirut-based Lebanese teacher, said that her family was preparing to receive relatives from the south. Speaking on the phone early Monday evening, she said that it would be “insane to exclude the possibility of an Israeli ground invasion after we saw Israeli tanks being transferred to the border with Lebanon.”

“It is a moment of total horror,” she said, adding that Beirut and other cities will have to make room for a wave of displaced people from the south, and “there is no telling how long this will last.”

Meanwhile, in Cairo, an informed source confirmed news reports in the Israeli media on Monday morning that Israel is planning to force another massive displacement on Palestinian civilians in the north of Gaza in order to create a buffer zone.

“And there is enough reason,” he added, “to think that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will try and create a similar buffer zone between northern Israel and Southern Lebanon. This is why it is unwise to exclude the possibility of an Israeli ground operation.”

None of five sources that have spoken with Al-Ahram Weekly since Friday had any hope that mediation — be it the American or French — will persuade Netanyahu to reconsider his plans.

“Netanyahu has until the inauguration of the next US president in January to do what he wants without having to worry about what Washington thinks,” said the Egyptian source. He added that the Americans just want to avoid scenes of heavy civilian casualties.

According to the source in New York, Saudi Arabia is pushing for a ministerial-level joint-meeting between the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. If the meeting does not take place in New York it might convene in Jeddah around 7 October, the one-year anniversary of the beginning of the Israeli war on Gaza. The objective of the meeting, he said, is to find ways to stop Israeli attacks expanding “beyond Gaza and Lebanon” and “to stop these wars, especially in Gaza where the humanitarian situation is beyond devastating.”

In a press statement released on Monday, Egypt called for an end to Israeli “escalation” in Lebanon, a ceasefire in Gaza and for the UN Security Council to act to stop the situation from spinning out of control.

Following the explosion of pagers and walkie-talkies in Lebanon, the UN Security Council warned against further escalation. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that unless there was an immediate de-escalation, a “big explosion” could well be in the making.

Diplomatic and security sources say that given the humiliation Israel has inflicted on Iran’s ally Hizbullah, Tehran will find it hard to continue with the self-restraint it showed following the Israeli assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh while he was in the Iranian capital for the inauguration of the new Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.

After he arrived in New York this week to head his country’s delegation to the UNGA, Pezeshkian told journalists that Iran will respond at the “appropriate time and place and in the appropriate manner”. The Iranian president said that it was Israel that wanted to push the region into an all-out-war by getting Iran directly involved.

According to Ahmed Morsi, visiting fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, it remains unlikely that Iran will become directly involved. He noted that over the past year Iran has been very cautious in its reactions to the killing of Iranian officials, including in the Iranian Consulate in Damascus. He added that there are already intensive diplomatic and security talks behind the scenes to ensure a degree of containment.

At the end of the day, argues Morsi, “Israel wants to keep the upper hand, maintain its deterrence and force any side that is planning to attack Israel to recalculate.”

He assumes that, in line with its established policy, Israel will continue with operations that serve this purpose, with or without claiming responsibility.

What the next few days bring, he says, will be determined by players on the ground, not least by “how Hizbullah reacts”. He also thinks the Israeli prime minister is unlikely to opt for a significant ground military operation in South Lebanon, arguing the Israeli calculations on Lebanon are very different to those in Gaza and the West Bank.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 26 September, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly