Newsweek How Far Will Israel-Hezbollah Escalation Go? | Opinion Published Jul 30, 2024 at 5:11 PM EDT Updated Jul 31, 2024 at 8:39 AM EDT

Newsweek 

How Far Will Israel-Hezbollah Escalation Go? | Opinion

Published Jul 30, 2024 at 5:11 PM EDT

Updated Jul 31, 2024 at 8:39 AM EDT

00:19

Israel Strikes Beirut In Targeted Attack Against Hezbollah

By Daniel R. DePetris

Fellow, Defense Priorities

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Between August 2006 and October 2023, the Israeli-Lebanese border region was for the most part stable. Despite the occasional rocket attack or mortar round, residents on both sides of the U.N.-demarcated Blue Line were able to go about their daily lives in relative peace. The month-long war in the summer of 2006 between Israel and Hezbollah—the Lebanese militia and political party—was so disastrous for both that an unwritten regime of deterrence was soon established. Neither Israel nor Hezbollah wanted to re-live the experience.

Then came October 7, the day Hamas invaded southern Israel, butchered about 1,200 people and took some 250 hostages back to Gaza. Less than day later, the Israeli-Lebanese front heated up again, with Hezbollah using a small portion of its considerable firepower to target small towns and cities in Israel's far north. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah justified the group's actions as a way to force Israel to devote more troops to the north, diminishing what the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) could do in Gaza. Hezbollah thereby sought to burnish its anti-Israel credentials in a way that wouldn't compel Israel to launch a full-scale war in Lebanon.

This was always a dicey decision. Entering a war is one thing; managing escalation dynamics is something else entirely. The risk over the last 10 months has been that a particularly deadly strike inside Israel or Lebanon could alter the calculations of the combatants to such an extent that a full-scale war became likely, if not inevitable.

The Biden administration is no doubt cognizant of these dynamics and has poured significant diplomatic capital into preventing escalation. U.S. officials have had to work overtime over the last several days. On July 27, a rocket strike on a soccer field in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights killed a dozen children, the deadliest attack inside Israeli territory since October 7. Israeli politicians were aghast. "Lebanon should burn," Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen tweeted. "We are approaching the moment of an all-out war against Hezbollah and Lebanon," Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said. Former IDF chief of staff Benny Gantz, who left Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's wartime cabinet in early June, was breathing fire: "Israel must respond to this incident, it must have a comprehensive plan of action. It is possible to hit Lebanon hard and to tear it apart."

The urgency to respond only became more pressing as time went by. On July 30, another civilian in northern Israel was killed in a rocket attack claimed by Hezbollah.

It didn't take long for Netanyahu to retaliate. On July 30, an Israeli drone strike in the Dahiya, Hezbollah's Beirut stronghold, targeted Fuad Shukr, one of Hezbollah's most senior military officials and a man who is also wanted by the FBI for involvement in the 1983 truck bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut. The Israelis have pointed to Shukr as a man heavily involved in attacks against Israel in the past, including the strike on the soccer pitch several days ago. Hours after the strike, the IDF confirmed his death.

Lebanon-Israel conflict

Smoke billows from a site targeted by the Israeli military in the southern Lebanese border village of Kafr Kila on July 29, 2024, amid ongoing cross-border clashes between Israeli troops and Hezbollah fighters. Fallout from... More Rabih DAHER / AFP/Getty Images

 

Before this strike, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin stated that Washington would help Israel defend itself in the event of an Israel-Hezbollah war. Whether he meant assisting Israel with air defense or ordering U.S. aircraft to bomb Hezbollah positions inside Lebanon, Austin didn't say.

The White House is confident the Israeli government will tailor any military operation to ensure a large-scale conflagration doesn't become a reality. "We've all heard about this all-out war scenario, now multiple points over the last 10 months," White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters on July 29. "Those predictions were exaggerated then, and, quite frankly, we think they're exaggerated now."

There is some truth to what Kirby said. Israel and Hezbollah may be mortal enemies, but it's difficult to see how a full-blown conflict serves either of their interests. The IDF remains tied down in Gaza, at times entering the very same neighborhoods in Gaza City and Khan Younis it withdrew from weeks or months earlier. Despite Netanyahu's repeated claims that Israel is close to defeating Hamas militarily, the reality is that the war could go on for the rest of the year (assuming a ceasefire and hostage-release deal isn't signed with Hamas before that time). Furthermore, if Israel wants to make sure the tens of thousands of civilians in Northern Israel can go back to their homes, it's hard to see how conducting a war against Hezbollah—a group with approximately 150,000 missiles and rockets, some of which can reach all of Israel—would do that. What exactly are displaced Israelis going to come back to? Destroyed towns, villages, and kibbutzim?

Hezbollah, too, has reasons to avoid a war right now. Before October 7, the group's popularity in Lebanon was on a downward slide as the Lebanese people started viewing it as just another incompetent part of an already incompetent political elite. After October 7, this is no longer the case. Some Lebanese outside of Hezbollah's core Shia support base now regard the militia army as a necessary evil against perceived Israeli aggression. Frankly, the last thing Nasrallah wants is to be blamed for a rain of destruction upon a country whose population is suffering from systemic political dysfunction, an economic depression, and widespread poverty.

Will these factors be enough to restrain both parties as they continue taking shots at each other? Or will the emotional urge for revenge rule the day? The answer will determine how bad this situation gets.

Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a syndicated foreign affairs columnist at the Chicago Tribune.