The wave of Israeli air strikes in southern Lebanon on Sunday morning, and the hundreds of drones and rockets launched soon afterwards by Hezbollah, was the biggest exchange of hostilities across Israel’s northern border since the Hamas attacks of 7 October. As Gaza ceasefire negotiations continue to stall, and the appalling Palestinian death toll in that territory surpasses 40,000, the nightmare scenario of a regional war encompassing Lebanon and involving Hezbollah’s patron, Iran, remains frighteningly possible.
For now at least, despite the weekend’s reciprocal show of force, all parties appear keen to avoid such an outcome. In the brutal choreography that governs Israel’s relations with Hezbollah, Sunday’s attack will have been factored in by Jerusalem following Israel’s assassination of one of the organisation’s top commanders last month. Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, emphasised that a decision had been taken not to risk Israeli civilian casualties in the assault, which targeted military locations and the Mossad spy base near Tel Aviv.
For his part, Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, stated that Israel did not desire an all-out conflict, having acted pre-emptively to destroy around 40 rocket sites. The absence of civilian deaths on either side points to a desire to calibrate levels of escalation while keeping options open. Iran, which has yet to retaliate after the assassination of the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, is also using the language of restraint while guaranteeing that a response will come.
The caution underlines the vertiginously high stakes and reflects calculated self-interest. Israel is reluctant to open another front in the north, which would be costly in Israeli lives, and Hezbollah does not wish to risk a catastrophic repeat of the second Lebanon war in 2006. But the risk of miscalculation and unintended consequences, as messages are delivered via the medium of explosives, is high.
As domestic pressure mounts on Benjamin Netanyahu over the 80,000 Israelis displaced from the north by Hezbollah activity, it seems likely that he will make good on his promise that Sunday’s air raids were “not the end of the story”. At what point Iran may judge it necessary to intervene on behalf of its proxy counts as a known unknown.
In this ominous and fissile context, this week’s Gaza ceasefire negotiations, mediated in Cairo by Egypt, Qatar and the US, take on added significance. An end to the relentless suffering being inflicted on the Gazan people, and the return of the remaining hostages taken on 7 October, would remove Hezbollah’s immediate casus belli, and offer an opportunity to defuse regional tensions more widely.
Depressingly, the immediate prospects for a deal look slim amid disagreement over the continued presence of Israeli troops in Gaza. Mr Netanyahu’s self-interest lies in prolonging the conflict, appeasing the extreme right in his coalition government and postponing a political reckoning following 7 October. Faced with the anger of a nation to placate, and corruption charges hanging over him, his instinct for self-preservation has become the biggest obstacle to moving out of the cycle of violence that Hamas began.
For as long as that cycle is sustained, and the unconscionable plight of Palestinians in Gaza is allowed to continue, the dangers of a regional conflagration – whether by accident or design – will grow. This weekend’s eruption on Israel’s northern border, in scale if not in lethality, represents another threshold crossed.
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