Lebanon faces ‘war of attrition,’ prepares for possible Israeli escalation, prime minister says

BEIRUT / ISTANBUL

Lebanon faces a “war of attribution,” Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said Tuesday, calling for taking all necessary precautions to confront any potential Israeli escalation.

“We are in a war whose pace is escalating and has taken the form of a one-sided war of attrition by Israel,” Salam told a press conference following an inspection visit to Beirut Port.

“We will work to mobilize more Arab and international support to stop these attacks and push for an Israeli withdrawal,” he added in his comments cited by the state news agency NNA.

On Sunday, five people were killed and 28 others injured in an Israeli airstrike targeting senior Hezbollah commander Haitham Tabatabai in southern Beirut.

Tensions in southern Lebanon have been mounting for weeks, with the Israeli military intensifying near-daily air raids inside Lebanese territory, claiming to target Hezbollah members and infrastructure.

According to the Lebanese Health Ministry, at least 331 people have been killed and 945 injured by Israeli fire since a ceasefire deal took effect on Nov. 27, 2024.

Beirut Port

Salam described Beirut Port as “the memory and future of the city.”

The government “is working for Lebanon’s economic recovery, and a key pillar of that is developing and modernizing Beirut Port,” he said.

“Our priority is to place Lebanon and Beirut Port on the map of transportation routes in the Levant.”

Salam said he reached an agreement with the World Bank last week to prepare a study on transportation links between Lebanon and the surrounding region, covering seaports, airports, and land routes.

Lebanon’s railway sector has been entirely inactive since the country’s civil war of the 1970s and 1980s, despite once serving as a vital network connecting coastal and inland cities and facilitating trade and travel.

Five years after the port explosion, large sections of Beirut Port remain abandoned rubble.

The August 2020 blast killed more than 220 people and injured 7,000. Judicial investigations into its causes and responsibility have yet to be concluded.