You can listen to the Front on your smart speaker every morning to hear the latest episode. Just say play the news from the Australian. From the Australian, here's what's on the Front. I'm Kristin Amiot. It's Tuesday, August twenty seven. Peter Dutton is the most divisive leader of any major political party in Australia's modern history. That's according to Treasurer Jim Chalmers, who made his scathing assessment of the opposition leader in a major speech in Melbourne on Monday night.
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Our chief international correspondent believes airstrikes by Israel and Hesbela over the weekend are likely to reduce the risk of war, and Cameron Stewart says, it's clear nobody's ready for all out war in the Middle East. That's today's episode. On Sunday morning, rockets rained down on southern Lebanon. They were targeting military sites belonging to the Iranian backed terrorist group Hesbela.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanya, who said later that the Israeli Defense Force was acting on intelligence that indicated a large scale attack was brewing over Israel's northern border. Bouzin Zbala Israel said thousands of Hesbela military sites had been destroyed, but within hours, in the early morning light, Israel's infamous Iron Dome sprang into action, intercepting hundreds of rockets launched
by the Lebanese group. Birds can be heard chirping, but the light of dawn pales in comparison to the fiery tales of missiles zigzagging across the sky. Allen Hesbela said it had sent more than two hundred rockets south into populated areas of northern Israel. Drones were captured exploding on film two, but only one woman was injured as a direct result of the attack.
A La Lado Womanalado.
This was an act of revere by Hesbelah for the death of its military chief on July thirty.
And Jon Padiodan Alad, the hatman in shah Allah.
Israel hasn't claimed any responsibility for the assassination, but it didn't denounce it either, and Hesbela hasn't ruled out further attacks. Cam retrek from both sides of the border appears to indicate that this is an escalation of the conflict in the Middle East. But things were strangely quiet after those hundreds of rockets were fired from both Israel and Lebanon on the weekend. So is this an escalation, Well, it's interesting.
It's an escalation certainly in the very short term, but I think in the longer term it probably isn't.
Cameron Stuart is the Australian's chief international correspondent.
Now, of course things are very fluid, anything can change in the next forty eight hours or so. But interestingly, this barrage of barock it's fired all occur within a twenty four hour period, and it seemed as if this
was going to escalate the conflict. However, Hesbala then abruptly stopped its bombardment and said that's all for now, and Israel didn't have a big, heavy blanket response, So I think if you rear between the lines, even though there was a lot of literally smoke and bombardment on both sides, I think what we're seeing here is a desire by both Hesba and Israel to limit the conflict to some degree.
When Hamas militants invaded southern Israel on October seven, killing almost twelve hundred people, Israel was totally blindsided. It retaliated with a full scale invasion of Gaza, where her Maas is based. Thousands of people have been killed or injured in that conflict, many of them are Palestinian civilians. Millions more have been displaced, left with our shelter, food and clean water. Mediations and ceasefire negotiations have failed, the gunfire
raging for all but six days. Hesbela joined the fighting the very next day, on October eighth, and has fired thousands of missiles and drones at northern Israel since then, sparking fears this could become an all out regional war. So far, that hasn't happened. Cam You've written for the paper that the events of the weekend weren't necessarily enough to tip this conflict into a region wide war. Are
we seeing the crystallization of Israel's strategy? Here? Is this ten month assault of Gaza a warning to the rest of the region.
Well, the Israel certainly has been very muscular in its response to any threats. It's obviously hurted sinternational reputation by the heaviness of the response in Gaza. It's certainly responded very vigorously to previous attacks by Hezbalah and by Iran's proxies in the region as well. But I think Israel does not want to go into have full scale conflict with Hesba. Hezebela is the best armed terror force in
the region. If it really wanted to, if it really wanted to attack Israel, especially civilian centers, it could do horrific damage to Israel. What's happened is Israel has had to basically abandon villagers in northern Israel. There's tens of thousands of people there Christian who can't go back to their homes and so this is a real problem for Israel. How does it deal with these low level attacks by
Hezbollah without creating a bigger war? And so in a way, this attack allows Hesbalah to, if you like, say face to say, look, we've attacked Israel, whereas that in fact the attack caused almost no damage to Israel. But it does allow Hesbella to save face. So that's why I think Hesbela might be quite satisfied with this outcome, because it looks like it's been hairy chested about its threats, but in fact it's actually done so in a way that doesn't appear to have infuriated Israel.
And what's the calculus for the other fringe players in this conflict? Do you think what's going on in the war rooms of Iran and Yemen for example right now?
Yeah, that's a great question because Iran and of course Hesbola are incredibly close. Hesbelah more or less does what Iran wants it to do, and so the question is now what will Iran do? Because Iran, just like Hesbola, pledged to attack Israel. In Iran's case, it was in retaliation for the assassination of the political chief of Hamas in Tehran last month. Iran has done nothing and Israel has waited. Now the question here is what will Iran do. We've seen what Hesbela has done. Will Iran have any
sort of striking against Israel. If it did, would it be a big strike or would it be a limited strike. That's really the calculus which everyone's looking at at this minute.
Israel's placed a lot of focus on the fact that this was a preemptive strike based on intelligence that it says it's had for several weeks. Now. That's in stark contrast to the catastrophic intelligence failure of October seven? Is that intentional? Do you think are they trying to maybe either reassure Israeli's in their intelligence abilities or are they sending again a warning to other forces in the region that they know what they're up to.
I think to a degree, what they're trying to do here is genuinely forestall a very big attack by Hersbla, if that's what Hesbaba was planning. But of course the image that gives of Israeli intelligence knowing the threat is certainly something which Israel would be keen The net Niyahu government would be very keen to reinforce. I mean Benjamin Nettniaho,
the Israeli Prime Minister. His fundamental political problem above all else here is at the moment that the fighting dies down if there was a cease fire agreement, for example, between Hamas and Israel in Gaza. The focus politically in Israel will be going on to October seven and on the catastrophic intelligence failures under net Nieh's watch that allowed this massacre of Israelis by Hamas to happen. That is the big shadow that hangs over Israeli politics or the
Israeli government at this point in time. So they certainly would like to, wherever possible, demonstrate that their intelligence services are not as bad as they did appear on October seven.
Coming up, what the weekend's events mean for the future of the Middle East conflict. Don't forget Subscribers to The Australian get access to this kind of in depth reporting and analysis around the clock. Check us out at the Australian dot com dot au and we'll be back after this break. As Israel and hasbel a traded missile fire on Sunday, peace talks hit another hurdle. Hamas rejected a ceasefire deal broken by negotiators from the United States, Katah
and Egypt. It took issue with the suggestion Israeli troops would remain stationed on the Philadelphi Corridor. That's a fourteen kilometer strip of land along the border between Gaza and Egypt. It's not the first time a ceasefire deal between Israel and Tamas has fallen over here's Cameron Stewart. Just lastly, Cam on Monday, it was reported that ha Mass has rejected the latest ceasefire deal negotiated by the United States and others. This conflict is quickly coming up on a
terrible milestone, that's the one year bark. But everyone seems to be in this strange holding pattern where no one's pushing it into a region wide conflict, but no one's backing out either. So where does this conflict go from here? In the context of what's happened over the weekend.
Well, strangely enough, the peace talks are still going on, and it's very difficult to read because each day you hear different things, you read different things. The concept of whether they will agree to this peace deal seems to shift by the day With Hamas, so they don't appear entirely committed to it and entirely reliable. You can also answer the same question of Israel. There's a lot of speculation that Benjamin Nenia, who doesn't really like this cease
fire deal. He doesn't really want to cease fire. He wants to keep going after Hamas. So I think the commitment to the ceasefire from both Humas and Israel's point of view is very much up in to debate, and each day you keep thinking it's getting closer and closer. The Americans have been saying it's very close. Joe Biden, the President, said just the other day, we think we're very close, but it hasn't yet happened, and it's absolutely no guarantee to happen at this point in time.
Cameron Stewart is The Australian's chief international correspondent. You can read all our reporting and analysis of the conflict in the Middle East right now at the Australian dot com, com dot au