Middle East escalation, Ukraine war top agenda at G7 summit in Italy
Meeting in Naples, G7 defense ministers discuss the death of Yahya Sinwar, escalation in Lebanon, Gaza ceasefire prospects, and the Ukraine war entering its third winter
The defense ministers of G7 countries convened Saturday against a backdrop of escalation in the Middle East and the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Italy, holding the rotating presidency of the Group of Seven, organized the body’s first ministerial meeting dedicated to defense, staged in Naples, which is a city also home to a NATO base.
Invited to the one-day talks were NATO Chief Mark Rutte and the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell.
Borrell told reporters the group had much to discuss, including recent strikes on the UN’s peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, and the possibility of a ceasefire in Gaza.
The summit comes two days after Israel killed Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar, the architect of Hamas’s October 7, 2023 invasion, slaughter and mass abduction in southern Israel that led to the ongoing war in Gaza, which has since spread to Lebanon.
“Certainly after the killing of Yahya Sinwar a new perspective is open and we have to use it in order to reach a ceasefire, to release the remaining hostages and to look for a political perspective,” Borrell told journalists.
Discussions at the one-day event included recent strikes in Lebanon that hit UNIFIL, which is the UN’s Lebanon peacekeeping mission in Lebanon. Israel is at war with the Iran-backed terror group and Hamas ally Hezbollah, which has been firing rockets and drones into Israel for over a year.
Borrell suggested the peacekeepers’ mandate should be beefed up by the UN Security Council to give them more scope to act in response to attacks on their positions.
“They cannot act by themselves, it is certainly a limited role,” he said.
Israel has urged UN forces to leave the combat area, saying Hezbollah sometimes fires at Israeli forces from their vicinity, endangering them. UNIFIL peacekeepers have resisted calls to evacuate, though their purpose in staying amid the open warfare is unclear.
Earlier Saturday, Borrell wrote on social media that “a more robust mandate for UNIFIL” was needed.
In Lebanon Friday, Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni slammed as “unacceptable” the recent strikes that hit UNIFIL.
Italy has around 1,000 troops in the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, which has soldiers from more than 50 countries.
There is scant appreciation in Israel for the peacekeepers. After the 2006 Second Lebanon War, UNIFIL was tasked with ensuring the implementation of Resolution 1701, which stipulated that Hezbollah must not operate in southern Lebanon.
The terror group flaunted that demand, building up a vast array of tunnels, bunkers and masses of weaponry along the border in the decades since, with little to no pushback from UN forces. The peacekepers also did little to counter Hezbollah since October 2023 as it attacked Israeli towns from the territory of their mandate on a daily basis.
As the Naples talks began, Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto told the group that the “critical situation in the Middle East,” Russia’s war in Ukraine, “profound instability” in sub-Saharan Africa and “increasing tension” in the Asia-Pacific region “highlight a deteriorated security framework with forecasts for the near future that cannot be positive.”
Ukraine prospects
On Ukraine, the ministers will contemplate Kyiv entering a third winter at war, battlefield losses in the east — and the prospect of reduced US military support should Donald Trump be elected to the White House next month.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, under mounting pressure from Western allies to forge a winning strategy against Russia, on Thursday presented what he called a “victory plan” to the European Union and NATO.
Ukraine’s main thrust is a call for immediate NATO membership, deemed unfeasible by alliance members.
It also demands the ability to strike military targets inside Russia with long-range weapons, and an undefined “non-nuclear strategic deterrence package” on Ukrainian territory.
Under discussion will also likely be reports, based on South Korean intelligence, that North Korea is deploying large numbers of troops to support Moscow’s war against Ukraine.
NATO was not as yet able to confirm that intelligence, NATO chief Rutte said on Friday.
