Does Hezbollah want a confrontation, and can Israel afford to put off afinal showdown?
PRIMITIVE, YET DEADLY Can Hezbollah’s rocket arsenal overwhelm Israel’s air defemses? (Photo: Flash90)
“Will there be war?” is the question around every Israeli kitchen table nowadays, as the IDF and Hezbollah trade artillery and drone strikes and the upper Galilee and southern Lebanon burn. From the White House to European capitals, foreign leaders are scared by the possibility of a conflagration that could draw in Iran and upend the Middle East. Lebanese citizens fleeing the country remember the destruction visited on Beirut last time that Hezbollah started a war, but Israelis are well aware of the terror group’s enormous rocket arsenal and battle-tested army. As conflict hovers over Israel’s northern reaches, what are the dynamics shaping the standoff, and is a Third Lebanon War just a question of time?
After the failure of Israeli intelligence on the Gaza front that led to October 7, no Israeli analyst will risk a definitive answer to the crucial question of whether Hezbollah is intent on provoking Israel into all-out war, or is happy to keep scoring PR points for baiting Israel, while not risking the destruction of Lebanon that would ensue if war broke out.
“Hezbollah behave like they don’t want all-out war, but we don’t really know their intentions,” says Israel’s former national security advisor Maj. Gen. (res.) Yaakov Amidror, currently a senior fellow at the Jerusalem Institute of Strategic Studies and Washington-based JINSA. “They have achievements in this fighting, including the evacuation of the Israeli population, but we have to remember that more Lebanese have been evacuated than Israelis, which could be a factor in their plans. Remember that Hezbollah’s legitimacy rests on their image as defenders of Lebanon, so the more that citizens suffer, the less they can carry off that image.”
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