Flying under the radar in a world largely distracted by the war in Ukraine and economic worries, Iran and its proxies have recently escalated Middle East tensions by launching a growing number of co-ordinated attacks against Israeli territory.
This is a pattern highlighted again last week when Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an Iranian proxy in Gaza listed as a terror organisation in Australia, the US and elsewhere, launched hundreds of rockets at Israel.
Contrary to many news reports, Israel’s elimination of three top PIJ leaders in Gaza was not the spark that provoked these attacks, but was actually Jerusalem’s latest calculated move to try to prevent and deter a repeat of the numerous rocket barrages Israel had absorbed over the past month from PIJ, as well as other attacks.
The most senior figure killed, Khalil Bahitini, was directly responsible for the rocket attacks, while the other two – Tarek Az Aldin and Jahed Ahnam – had been responsible for funding and organising terror cells in the West Bank that actively strive to murder Israeli civilians.
These and other reckless aggressions from Iranian proxy groups have been testing the limits of Israel’s military restraint. The international community must recognise that if Tehran is not deterred from continuing down this path, we are likely to see an outbreak of highly destructive multifront, regional war between Israel and its enemies of a magnitude not seen in decades.
Read the article by Colin Rubinstein in The Australian.