Israel’s Haifa engulfed by fear of Iran, Hezbollah retaliation: Media
Israeli media reports indicate that settlers in the strategic port city of Haifa in the northern occupied territories are increasingly anxious about potential retaliatory strikes from Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah in response to recent Israeli assassinations of top resistance leaders.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz said in a report on Wednesday that Haifa settlers are “very afraid” that their petrochemical factories in the port city, which contains hazardous materials, could be struck by Iran and Hezbollah.
The scenario that deprives many Haifa settlers of sleep is “strikes on petrochemical plants, including oil refineries, where large concentrations of hazardous materials are stored,” the paper said.
The newspaper quoted a settler in Haifa as saying he was “deeply concerned about an incident related to hazardous materials,” adding, “We are sitting on a barrel of explosives and we are very afraid of what might happen here.”
Pointing to a 2022 survey by the regime’s ministry of environmental protection, Haaretz said part of the research confirms the presence of “1,500 dangerous sources and 800 types of hazardous materials in Haifa Bay.”
The survey stressed, “There are dozens of companies working with hazardous materials, as well as a gas farm, located in the same area.”
Haaretz added that “the petrochemical industry is not the only thing that Haifa settlers worry about,” with others concerned about “the blows that may be inflicted on residential buildings and some neighborhoods where there is only one entrance and exit, which they described as besieged neighborhoods,” especially since “Haifa has many military installations near the buildings.”
Hebrew-language newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported that the worst-case scenario for the Israeli military is a “coordinated, swift assault from both Iran and Lebanon.”
The paper said recent assessments suggest, “Hezbollah will strike first, while Iran deliberates its response to Haniyeh’s assassination.”
The newspaper underlined that Hezbollah’s reaction “will be powerful but focused on military targets in the north, possibly concentrating on the Haifa area, which houses several IDF bases and strategic facilities.”
The paper pointed to the Knesset, the prime minister’s office, the prime minister’s residence, the ministry of war in Tel Aviv, air force bases, spying bases and headquarters of Mossad and Shin Bet as the possible targets for Iran and Hezbollah.
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah was addressing a ceremony to commemorate top-ranking commander Fuad Shukr.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said during his speech on Tuesday that “Haifa may be one of the main targets that Hezbollah may strike in response to the assassination of leader Fuad Shukr in Beirut.”
Nasrallah’s remarks came days after Fuad Shukr, a senior figure with the Lebanese resistance movement, was assassinated when an Israeli attack drone fired three missiles at the area around Hezbollah’s Shoura Council in the Haret Hreik neighborhood on July 30.
Less than a day after Shukr’s assassination in Beirut, Israel assassinated Hamas’s Political Bureau Chief Ismail Haniyeh in the Iranian capital, Tehran. The back-to-back targeted killings pushed the region to the brink of an all-out war, with Iran and Hezbollah vowing a harsh punishment for the Israeli regime.
Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei warned the Israeli regime of a “harsh response,” and said it is the Islamic Republic’s duty to avenge the blood of the Palestinian resistance leader.
“The criminal and terrorist Zionist regime martyred our dear guest in our homeland and left us bereaved, but it also set the ground for a harsh punishment for itself.”
