Working to avoid ‘war’ with Israel: Lebanon PM Najib Mikati

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister said Monday he was working to ensure his country does not enter the Hamas-Israel war, even as Hezbollah and Israel have been exchanging cross-border fire.

Najib Mikati said he feared an escalation, with the border skirmishes stoking concerns that Lebanon’s powerful Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, a Hamas ally, could open a new front with Israel.

“I am doing my duty to prevent Lebanon from entering the war” raging further south, Mikati told AFP in an interview.

Cash-strapped Lebanon is facing the possibility of war essentially leaderless, as political divisions have left the country without a president for a year, while Mikati has headed a caretaker cabinet for about a year and a half. “Lebanon is in the eye of the storm,” he added.

Mikati, who is on good terms with Hezbollah, said he has no “clear answer” about whether war loomed ahead, adding that “it depends on regional developments”. In 2006, Israel and Hezbollah fought a bloody conflict that left more than 1,200 people dead in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 160 in Israel, mostly soldiers.

“For now Hezbollah has managed the situation rationally and wisely, and the rules of the game have remained constrained to certain limits,” Mikati said.

“But at the same time I feel like I cannot reassure Lebanese” because the situation is still developing, he added.

Lebanese tired of wars

On October 7, Hamas gunmen poured across Gaza’s border with southern Israel and killed more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli officials.

Israel has responded with unrelenting bombing of Gaza, which the Hamas-run health ministry says has killed more than 8,300 people, also mainly civilians.

Mikati, who heads a caretaker cabinet with limited powers, urged Lebanese lawmakers to “elect a president as soon as possible”. Divided members of parliament have failed 12 times to elect a president during the past year.

Lebanese were weary of conflict, Mikati said, in a country that was battered by a 1975-1990 civil war, 22 years of Israeli occupation and the 2006 war with Israel.

Despite relative calm in recent years, in late 2019 the country plunged into an unprecedented economic crisis, pushing most of the population into poverty.

“Lebanese have had enough of wars,” Mikati said. “Lebanese… do not want to enter any war and want stability,”he added.