Another war could break out on Israel’s northern border

The bright winter sun plays on the pockmarked rock caves and the Mediterranean views are beautiful. However, if you take a closer look at the seemingly peaceful scene from where Israel’s border with Lebanon meets the sea, danger lurks. Navy patrol boats cruise the coast, their guns at the ready. The popular tourist attraction is usually deserted except for armored vehicles. A short drive up the wooded ridge just south of the border fence reveals dozens of camouflaged silhouettes where Israel Defense Forces (IDF) paratroopers have been deployed since October 7, the day of devastating Hamas surprise attacks on Israeli communities and military bases in the south. .

Although the landscape is calm, the dangers of a full-blown war in between Israel And Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Lebanese party and militia. Especially since the Jan. 2 explosion in Beirut’s Dahiyeh neighborhood, a major stronghold of Hezbollah. The explosion, attributed to an Israeli drone attack, killed Saleh Al-Arouri, a senior Hamas leader close to Iran, as well as several other commanders. Hezbollah responded by saying that the massacre would not go unpunished and that it had its “finger on the trigger”. Even before the attack, some European officials feared that the front would explode within days or weeks.

Adding to the tension and uncertainty, two explosions rocked the Iranian city of Kerman on January 3, killing nearly 100 people near a mausoleum. Qasim Soleimani. Many of them had gathered to pay tribute to the commander of the Quds Force, the foreign operations wing of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), who was killed in a US strike four years ago. Iran blamed the recent blasts first on “terrorists” and then on the United States and Israel.

Threats of war on the Lebanese border rose for the first time in the hours and days immediately following Hamas’ attack on Israel, which feared that Hamas ally Hezbollah was about to launch a similar attack. Many of the hundreds of thousands of reservists called up that day were sent north. By evening, entire divisions were deployed near the border, known as the Blue Line.

Senior Israeli security officials, including Defense Minister Yoav Galant, were in favor of conducting a pre-emptive strike against Hezbollah. Till this issue remained in the air Benny Gantz, the most practical general and now leader of the centrist party, joined the government on 11 October. A call for intervention by the American president, Joe Biden, which deployed an aircraft carrier strike group off the Lebanese coast, also helped persuade the Israelis to wait. During a visit to Israel on October 18, Biden warned. “Any state or any other hostile actor that is thinking of attacking Israel,” he said. “Don’t do it. don’t do that Don’t do it.”

Hezbollah fired missiles and drones at Israeli civilian and military targets daily, and Israel launched a counterattack. For the most part, both sides have attacked targets near the border, according to vague rules of engagement established over the years. In Israel and Lebanon, thousands of civilians have fled the fighting, and cities such as Shlomi and Kiryat Shmona in Israel have become ghost towns. In three months, Hezbollah has lost more than 146 of its fighters, while 15 have been killed by Israeli missiles. Three journalists from the Lebanese side have also died.

Here is an example for this situation. In 2006, Hezbollah attacked across the border and attacked an IDF patrol, killing five soldiers and taking two bodies. The conflict quickly turned into a 34-day war in which both sides bombed each other. The IDF launched a major ground operation inside Lebanon, but Hezbollah stood its ground. Lebanon It was the country that suffered the most, with more than a thousand civilians killed and extensive damage to infrastructure.

Hezbollah insists on defining itself as a “resistance” movement and has amassed an enormous arsenal of some 150,000 missiles. A few hundred of them have the range and precision needed to reach anywhere in Israel. It has up to 100,000 fighters (the actual number is probably half that), many of whom gained experience from the recent war in Syria, where Hezbollah supported the regime. Bashar al-Assad During a decade of civil war.

These are compelling reasons for Israel to avoid an all-out war, but in the wake of Hamas’ surprise attack, some senior Israeli security officials believe their country cannot allow such threats to remain on its borders. They maintain that Israel must take the initiative, especially given the force crying Hezbollah’s elite group has been trained to attack Israeli territory with the same tactics that Hamas has used in its attacks on Israeli communities and military bases.

An Israeli army spokesman claimed that the IDF was “already fighting a war,” although “at the moment we are in defense mode.” Commanders observe empty villages and nearby kibbutzim and say the mission for them “will not be complete until our citizens can return home in peace and Hezbollah is still here on the border.” Israeli troops, currently busy locating and destroying Hezbollah missile teams from afar, prepare to go on the offensive.

Western officials say the IDF has the military capability to open a second front as long as the war in Gaza continues and quickly encircle Hezbollah positions near the border within hours. Although at times a major flare-up seemed inevitable, efforts to defuse the situation continued. Hezbollah has withdrawn fighters from positions along the fence to positions located about 2-3 km from the border. It may only be a strategic withdrawal, but it is also a signal to the Israelis and the Americans that he wants to avoid combat. Meanwhile, the IDF has reduced its numbers slightly, although they remain much larger than before October 7. The Israelis are ready to go on the offensive at any moment.

Both sides have compelling reasons to avoid escalation. Israel has been engaged in a bloody campaign on the ground in Gaza and has lost nearly 1,400 civilians and soldiers since October 7. Hezbollah, for its part, knows it will not be popular by inviting Israeli retaliation, especially since many Lebanese remember the devastation of the 2006 war and witness the destruction of Gaza, where more than 22,000 Palestinians have died, most of them civilians. . Iran, which has seen Israel destroy most of Hamas’s military capabilities, is reluctant to undermine its investment in Hezbollah, which serves as a deterrent against an Israeli attack on Iran’s own nuclear facilities.

Nevertheless, Iran is freely using its proxies elsewhere in the region to keep Israel guessing. Militias it supports fire rockets into Israel from Syria and Yemen, while they attack US forces in Iraq. The Houthis, who control large parts of Yemen, have also disrupted global trade by attacking cargo ships in the Red Sea. An international naval force led by the US has attempted to secure shipping traffic through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, the main passage through Yemen and leading to the Suez Canal. But major shipping companies divert their routes to South Africa, meaning longer and more expensive journeys. Western ships have shot down several Houthi missiles and sunk several Houthi boats.

However, the United States is finding it difficult to maintain its large deployment in the region, which has helped curb hostilities. On 1 January he said a carrier group would return to base, although a second remained nearby, such as a Marine force of about 2,000 troops. Still, Israel worries that the United States will draw down its military, reducing its ability to deter Iran or Hezbollah from attacking Israel.

Israel’s response is to try to dismantle Iran’s proxies without provoking a wider reaction. On December 25, an airstrike near Damascus almost certainly killed Razi MousaviBrigadier General of the Quds Force of Iran. Razi Mousavi worked for many years as a liaison between Iran and Hezbollah and other Iranian armed terrorist groups in the region.

Efforts are being made from outside to cool down the situation on the Lebanese border. A close adviser to President Biden frequently visits Israel and Lebanon in an attempt to broker a deal to defuse the situation. This may be based on UN Resolution 1701, which was passed at the end of the war in 2006. It is believed to hold Hezbollah forces north of the Litani River, which runs approximately 29 km north, roughly parallel to the border. But the Lebanese army and the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, tasked with implementing the resolution, have not.

Israel claims that since 2006 Hezbollah has placed hundreds of rocket launchers on civilian buildings in southern Lebanon, in defiance of a United Nations resolution. In December 2018, the IDF revealed six cross-border tunnels dug by Hezbollah in preparation for future attacks. Hezbollah has also set up checkpoints along the border under the guise of an ecological front group called Greens Without Borders. Many of them have been attacked by Israel since October 7.

Negotiations are not helped by dysfunctional Lebanese politics. The country has been without a president since October 2022 and has been led by a caretaker government since then. However, reaching some kind of agreement is not impossible. In October 2022, Israel and Lebanon agreed to demarcate their maritime border to allow the exploration and exploitation of offshore gas fields in the area each claims belongs to their exclusive economic zone.

And although leaders of both parties make grandiose statements, in practice they have proven cautious. Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, has long exercised restraint in response to cross-border attacks. And Hassan NasrallahHezbollah’s leader for more than three decades and Iran’s most powerful ally in the region, Israel appears reluctant to provoke another war after miscalculating that it would not respond forcefully to Hezbollah’s 2006 offensive.

Israel’s condition is that it remains cautious even if it attacks Hamas leaders in Lebanon, preferring to withdraw its troops on the other side of the litany rather than risk losing them to an Israeli attack. “Nasrallah can accommodate this,” says an Israeli military official. “It’s still your decision.”

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