Israel-Hezbollah fighting escalates

While attention is focussed on Gaza and Hamas, fighting on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon is escalating, after Hezbollah launched its biggest rocket attack into Israel today since the back-and-forth fire began in October.

The powerful Lebanese militia, deemed Tehran’s most cherished proxy group, fired a barrage of 170 rockets into northern Israel in retaliation for Israel’s killing yesterday of Taleb Abdallah, the most senior Hezbollah commander to die during the eight-month-long border skirmishes. 

The IDF confirmed today that it had killed Abdallah alongside three Hezbollah operatives during an airstrike on the village of Jouaiya in Southern Lebanon.

Thousands of Abdallah’s supporters filled the streets in the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut today for his funeral procession while senior Hezbollah official, Hashem Safieddine, vowed to avenge his death by increasing the severity of its operations against Israel. 

Could these steadily intensifying border clashes still develop into an all-out war? 

First, a reminder of exactly who, or indeed what, Hezbollah is: named the “party of God”, Hezbollah bills itself as a Shia Muslim resistance movement. Much like Hamas, it is backed by Iran, designated as a terrorist organisation by the UK government and views weakening Israel as its primary reason d’etre. But there are some key differences between the two. While Hamas benefits greatly from Iranian funding, arms and military training, it’s not in Tehran’s pocket to quite the same extent as Hezbollah, which takes direct orders from the Islamic Republic. The degree of autonomy that Hamas keeps is partly down to it being a Sunni organisation, meaning it doesn’t share the Shia religious link to Iran that Hezbollah does. 

Around 100,000 Hezbollah fighters, boasting a sophisticated military arsenal equipped with precision rockets and drones, are thought to be based in Lebanon. 

Hezbollah began firing short-range rockets into Israel from just north of the Lebanese border on 8 October – in a show of solidarity with Hamas – and Israel has not hesitated to return the favour. The back-and-forth fire has killed at least 18 Israeli soldiers and 10 civilians, in addition to at least 71 Lebanese civilians and around 500 members of Hezbollah – more fighters than it lost in the last major with Israel in 2006. 

Over 100,000 Israelis in the north have been displaced from their homes, leaving dozens of towns and villages in the agricultural regions of northern Israel to sit empty. A similar number of Lebanese civilians have been forced to flee northwards.

Israel’s mayor of Metulla on the Lebanese border has said he is “sure that 30 per cent to 40 per cent” of the town’s settlers will “never return”.

The US and France have been leading negotiations aimed at defusing the border tensions, to little avail. 

While Israeli generals have wanted to focus on the war in Gaza, last week, the IDF’s northern army commander said that Israel is “prepared and ready” for war with Hezbollah.

Ironically, the country that may be able to stop a full-blown escalation is Iran. 

Although Tehran has licensed its proxy group to increase attacks along the border in recent months, Hezbollah fighters are massed in southern Lebanon for a special purpose: they are being held in reserve to deter Israel from launching raids against Iran’s nuclear facilities. As Reaction’s Editorial Board wrote previously, Tehran is hoping that the threat of 100,000 well-armed fighters flooding across the border would inhibit the IDF from eliminating the ayatollahs’ prized doomsday project.

This special purpose means that the Hezbollah leadership is reluctant to use up too many of its resources in a conflict with Israel at this moment in time.  

But it would be foolish to assume that this calculation will absolutely guarantee restraint from Hezbollah. 

After all, Tehran has already surprised us once: back in April, when it launched its first ever direct attack on Israeli soil. 

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