He year 2024 will go down in history as a turning point for Near Eastafter leaving a Gaza Strip devastated by the Israeli offensive, a Lebanon mired in a fragile truce with Israel, a Iran weakened by the blows dealt to Hezbollah and one Syria immersed in an uncertain transition after the rapid fall of the Bashar al Assad regime.
For the 2.3 million Gazans, this year has not been much different from how 2023 ended after the Hamas attack on October 7 against Israel: close to 90% of the population is still forcibly displaced and living poorly in nylon tents, largely due to Israeli restrictions. The arrival of winter is aggravating the situation, with Israeli attacks continuing and with health infrastructure increasingly destroyed.
More than 45,500 Gazans have died – most of them women and children, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health – in a war offensive that has destroyed or damaged 87% of the homes and that this year has taken on more signs of heading towards a possible permanent Israeli occupation. Israel has not only consolidated an extensive “buffer zone” of at least 1.5 kilometers wide in 2024, but also controls two logistical routes: the Philadelphia Corridor – bordering Egypt – and the Netzarim Corridor, south of the northern city of Gaza.
Just one day after the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023, the Lebanese Shiite militia-party Hezbollah opened a support front from its side of the border with Israel, with low-intensity clashes that intensified with the passage of the months.
On September 23, after a particularly turbulent summer, Israel began an unprecedented aerial bombardment offensive against Lebanon, attacking mainly the south and east of the country, but also the southern suburbs of Beirut, then a stronghold of Hezbollah.
In a matter of days, 1.5 million people had to leave their homes, causing the worst displacement crisis in its history and, weeks later, Israeli bombings reached important historical cities such as Tire and Baalbek. More than 4,000 people have been killed and another 16,000 injured in Lebanon in 14 months of conflict.
During this war, the third between Israel and Lebanon, the leadership and entire chain of command of Hezbollah was almost completely eliminated, with the assassination even of Hasan Nasrallah, its leader for the last three decades, now replaced by its number. two, Naim Qassem.
The Shiite movement, one of Iran’s allies in the region, also faced an Israeli land invasion in the south of its territory since October 1, until both parties agreed, at the end of November, to a ceasefire mediated by the US. , which requires Israel to gradually abandon the areas it occupied in Lebanon. Both have until the end of January to work on the implementation of the UN Security Council resolution, which already ended the second war of 2006. Meanwhile, both Israel and the Lebanese authorities denounce violations of the fragile ceasefire.
Direct attacks between Israel and Iran
As the main sponsor of Hezbollah, Iran attacked Israel on two occasions, in an unprecedented gesture, but without reaching an open war in its long struggle for hegemony in the Middle East. The first Iranian attack, with more than 200 drones and missiles, occurred on April 13, in retaliation for the murder of seven Revolutionary Guard generals attributed to Israel in an attack that destroyed the Iranian consulate in Damascus.
On October 1, it launched some 180 missiles into Israeli territory in revenge for the assassinations of Nasrallah in late September and then-Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh, in an attack in Tehran in July during the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. .
Despite these direct attacks, Tehran did not respond to the Israeli countercoup, which bombed military targets shortly after, and its belligerent tone has only faded in recent weeks, which analysts link to Donald Trump’s electoral victory, in order to to keep the door open to a hypothetical negotiation with the American.
Iran is going through a moment of clear weakness, after the Israeli blows to its allies of the so-called Axis of Resistance: Hamas, Hezbollah, the related militias of Iraq and the Houthis of Yemen. Iran has even lost Al Assad’s Syria, whose Army, surprised by a lightning offensive by the rebels, was abandoned to its fate by Moscow, Tehran itself and its decimated Hezbollah partners.
After decades of repression and 13 years of civil war, Syria is now beginning a difficult political transition, with an interim government led by Hayat Tahrir El Sham (HTS), the group that was born as the Syrian affiliate of Al Qaeda and that led the offensive that overthrew to Al Assad, while fighting continues in the north between the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF, Kurdish) and the Syrian National Army (SPA, pro-Turkish). Furthermore, since the fall of the Al Assad regime, the Israeli Army has bombed hundreds of military targets in Syria, with the pretext of preventing this infrastructure and weapons from falling into the hands of the insurgents who overthrew him, and has deployed its Army in the demilitarized zone between Israel and Syria. Türkiye is increasingly strengthening its position in the area, with the aim of stopping the Kurds from gaining prominence.
