Israel takes its conflict with Hezbollah to the brink of war

|
Aziz Taher/Reuters
People walk on a beach as smoke billows over southern Lebanon following Israeli strikes on Hezbollah positions, amid ongoing cross-border hostilities.
  • Quick Read
  • Deep Read ( 4 Min. )

As Israeli jets continued to pound Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, and Hezbollah extended its barrage of rocket fire ever deeper into Israeli territory, concerns grew that brinkmanship could tip the Middle East into a wider regional war.

Hezbollah appears unwilling to raise the stakes, and so does its patron, Iran. But Israel is behaving unusually belligerently. In the most lethal day of conflict in Lebanon for decades, on Monday, nearly 500 people were killed as Israel struck 1,600 targets and claimed to have destroyed thousands of Hezbollah rockets.

Why We Wrote This

Israel’s unusually heavy bombardment of Hezbollah positions in Lebanon puts militia leader Hassan Nasrallah in an awkward spot, balancing his credibility with his desire to avoid full-scale war.

This has made things difficult for Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, as he seeks to maintain his group’s credibility while avoiding all-out war that could leave Hezbollah in shreds. Notably, in a bid to find an acceptable balance, Hezbollah has shown no signs yet of being ready to use its high precision long-range guided missiles that could wreak havoc on Israeli cities.

Nonetheless, warns Nicholas Blanford, an expert on Hezbollah with the Atlantic Council, a U.S. think tank, “The intensity of fighting on both sides has risen much closer to that threshold which, when crossed, will lead to war.”

As Israeli jets continued to pound Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, and Hezbollah extended its barrage of rocket fire ever deeper into Israeli territory, concerns grew that brinkmanship could tip the Middle East into a wider regional war.

For the time being, Hezbollah appears unwilling to raise the stakes. The heavily armed militia “is ready” for an all-out war, says one of its fighters in Beirut, but is “trying to avoid” such an outcome for fear of heavy civilian casualties. “But if we are pushed into a corner, yes, we will fight,” he says.

Hezbollah’s patron, Iran, also appears cautious. “We do not want to be the cause of instability in the Middle East,” Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian told reporters in New York on Monday. “Its consequences could be irreversible.”

Why We Wrote This

Israel’s unusually heavy bombardment of Hezbollah positions in Lebanon puts militia leader Hassan Nasrallah in an awkward spot, balancing his credibility with his desire to avoid full-scale war.

But he pledged that Tehran would “defend any group that is defending its rights and itself,” and later told CNN that “Hezbollah cannot stand alone against a country that is being defended and supported and supplied” by the U.S. and Western countries.

Israel, meanwhile, is acting unusually belligerently, stepping up hostilities last week with two mass attacks on Hezbollah communications networks. In the most lethal day of conflict in Lebanon for decades, on Monday, 558 people died as Israel struck 1,600 targets and claimed to have destroyed thousands of Hezbollah rockets.

“Israel is on the fast track to war, even if the public has not been told,” military analyst Amos Harel wrote in Tuesday’s Ha’aretz newspaper.

Vahid Salemi/AP
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian (right) listens to the commander of the Revolutionary Guard's ground force as he reviews an annual armed forces parade.

Who wants war, who doesn’t?

This has put Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in an awkward spot, as he seeks to maintain his group’s credibility while avoiding all-out war that could leave Hezbollah in shreds. Balancing those two considerations will not be easy in the middle of such a swift spiral of escalation, this time driven by Israel, after a year of carefully calibrated increases in Hezbollah rocket fire.

“It is evident from Hezbollah’s [limited] actions that they still don’t want a war and won’t be goaded into it,” says Nicholas Blanford, author of “Warriors of God: Inside Hezbollah’s Thirty-Year Struggle Against Israel.”

“I think the Israelis have concluded that, because Hezbollah does not want a war, because Iran doesn’t want a war, it gives them more leeway to escalate, in the knowledge that there is little risk of a major blowback,” Mr. Blanford suggests.

Notably, in a bid to find an acceptable balance, Hezbollah has shown no signs yet of being ready to use its high precision long-range guided missiles that could wreak havoc on Israeli cities. Nonetheless, warns Mr. Blanford, “The intensity of fighting on both sides has risen much closer to that threshold which, when crossed, will lead to war.”

Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters
People in heavy traffic drive north from Lebanon's southern coastal city Sidon as they flee Israeli bombardment.

The two sides last waged an all-out conflict in 2006, for 34 days. Since then, mutual deterrence has prevailed, as each side has spent the intervening years preparing for a decisive, final fight against the other – while also avoiding such a costly and destructive battle.

Those calculations may now be changing, after a year of ever-widening regional conflict triggered by Hamas’ cross-border attack from Gaza on Oct. 7 last year, which left 1,200 Israelis dead and 250 hostages.

What’s it all about?

Israel’s declared goal for its current wave of air raids on Hezbollah rocket installations is to “change the security balance, the balance of power in the north” of Israel, in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s words.

That would then make it safe for the region’s 60,000 residents to return home, after having been evacuated last October when Hezbollah, in support of Hamas in Gaza, began rocketing Israeli towns and villages in the area. Hamas is a member of the Iranian-led Axis of Resistance against Israel.

Ronen Zvulun/Reuters
Israel's Iron Dome antimissile system intercepts rockets are launched from Lebanon amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel.

Some observers, however, see a broader aim behind the stepped-up Israeli operation than ensuring security for Israeli citizens in the north of the country.

“There appears to be a change in the Israeli approach … for something deeper – breaking down the Axis of Resistance that supports one another,” says Ehud Eiran, a professor of International Affairs at Haifa University. “If Israel can take Hezbollah out of the equation, that’s a big statement on the limitations of the [anti-Israel] alliance.”

Such an effort, though, would almost certainly provoke an Iranian response in support of the most powerful arm of its Axis of Resistance. It would likely also prompt Mr. Nasrallah to play his trump card – the precision guided missiles – in a last ditch effort to force Israel to back down.

In the meantime, says Mr. Blanford, an analyst with the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank, “the Israelis are now intensifying, presumably in the hope that Hezbollah will say ‘OK, we give up, we’ve had enough, stop.’”

“That’s never going to happen,” he predicts. “That is not in Hezbollah’s DNA. They will not stop because that would be tantamount to surrender and defeat, and then they would face a massive backlash from the Lebanese … for dragging Lebanon into a costly war without getting anything out of it.”

Special correspondent Dina Kraft contributed reporting to this article from Tel Aviv, Israel.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Israel takes its conflict with Hezbollah to the brink of war
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2024/0924/Israel-takes-its-conflict-with-Hezbollah-to-the-brink-of-war
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe