Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is openly threatening a major attack on Lebanon, following a series of Hezbollah strikes that have embarrassed his government. However, the threats and plans to invade Lebanon did not start over the past days.
The stories that received the most attention in the international press lately, about the ongoing tit-for-tat battle between Israel and Lebanon, have been the recent fires caused in the northern Israeli border settlements and a major strike on an Israeli military site. In the first instance, some 96 fires were caused since Monday due to Hezbollah rocket fire, producing videos and images causing outrage over the extent of the damage caused, which doubled the amount of fire damage recorded during the 2006 Lebanon-Israel war. Despite this being undoubtably true, and Hezbollah has most certainly picked up the pace of its attacks in recent weeks, the corporate media is not providing sufficient context behind the armed group’s actions.
According to a recent report issued by Human Rights Watch (HRW), the international rights group confirmed that Israel had used White Phosphorus munitions against at least 17 Lebanese municipalities, including the use of banned airburst White Phosphorus on 5 civilian populated municipalities since October. HRW stated noted that “under international humanitarian law, the use of airburst white phosphorus is unlawfully indiscriminate in populated areas and otherwise does not meet the legal requirement to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian harm.” These chemical weapons munitions were also used by the Israeli military to set fire to Lebanese farm lands.
In the case of the recent attack on an Israeli military position located in the Hurfeish settlement area, inflicting over 20 total casualties, it was carried out with a batch of loitering munitions (suicide drones). Israel, which has been covering up most of its military casualties in the north, was not able to hide this attack as the military site struck was situated right next to a public football field and main road. This, coming days after the Israeli public bore witness to videos of settlements like Kiryat Shmona engulfed in flames, it has stirred up a desire for revenge that the military and political establishment are not able to ignore.
Despite Hezbollah clearly having upped the quality of its targets, seeking to embarrass and punish Israel after its refusal to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza, it is also important to note that the recent drone attack came in response to deadly Israeli airstrikes that targeted the Lebanese town of Naqoura.
Also, the fighting between Lebanon and Israel did not just begin. On October 8, Hezbollah began launching attacks against Israeli military positions along the southern Lebanon border, primarily targeting surveillance and intelligence gathering equipment. This strategy, of escalating tensions in response to Israel’s aggression against Gaza, and later Lebanon, has created an 8-month-long tit-for-tat battle along the southern Lebanese border with occupied Palestine. During this time, Israel has murdered Lebanese journalists, medical workers, women, children and elderly citizens, in addition to hundreds of Hezbollah members. The total death toll in Lebanon is around 400, since October.
On the Israeli side, the official death toll figures are completely inaccurate as almost all its military casualties have been covered up or remain unannounced, however, we do know around 100,000 Israeli settlers have been displaced from their homes and the Israeli economy in the north remains paralyzed. In addition to this, the strategy of the Lebanese political party/armed group is to draw the Israeli military’s focus away from Gaza and onto Lebanon, and this has clearly worked and been costly to Tel Aviv.
Why War Now?
To begin with, Hezbollah and its regional allies appear to be in agreement that now is the time to escalate. Israel is actively avoiding concluding a ceasefire and prisoner exchange deal in the Gaza Strip, despite US pressure on them to do so. Instead the Israeli military is adamant on continuing its ground offensive in Gaza, which they say they won’t end until they complete a full-scale invasion of the coastal enclave’s southernmost city of Rafah, and beyond that, the complete destruction of Hamas.
The Secretary General of Hezbollah, Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, originally set a single redline in the Gaza war, asserting that “Hamas will win” and that he wouldn’t let them lose in his first speech during the conflict. At this point, 8 months into one of the most destructive and deadly military campaigns ever carried out against civilian targets and urban areas, the viewpoint of Hezbollah seems to have shifted somewhat. In Nasrallah’s latest speech, he said the Israeli regime are like Nazi Germany and that the region cannot live with them.
It appears that Hezbollah are now seeking to draw the Israelis into a larger fight, after having dismantled a multi-billion dollar intelligence and monitoring defence network located in the northern Israeli settlements. As was demonstrated in Wednesday’s deadly attack on Israeli soldiers, during which the air defense systems didn’t detect the Hezbollah drones and the siren system wasn’t even triggered, Tel Aviv has lost its capability to stop most of the munitions being fired at it from Lebanese territory.
Despite the fact that Israel recently announced it would expand its reservist force capacity by 50,000, bringing the total number available to them 350,000, there is no indication that this move will help them achieve greater success in a conflict against Lebanon. Israeli military officials have explicitly stated that the move had nothing to do with Lebanon, but this is questionable to say the least. Right now, the Israelis are bogged down militarily and have failed to achieve any of their military goals in Gaza, while they also maintain a massive military presence in the West Bank. It suffices to say, Hezbollah is in a favorable position and appears to be leading the Israeli military into a trap.
On the Israeli side, their thinking is likely some variation of the following:
Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is now at a dead end in Gaza’s Rafah and has to deal with mounting pressure from the US government that seek to have him conclude a ceasefire/prisoner exchange deal. Netanyahu’s problem is that his population doesn’t believe they have won the war in Gaza and most Israelis want Tel Aviv to reoccupy the besieged coastal territory. The Israeli Premier also has to deal with a large number of individuals from different parties, the most vocal being from the Religious Zionism list, that threaten to collapse his coalition in the event that he bows to American pressure.
Benjamin Netanyahu knows that there is no route to victory in Gaza and he is now forced to choose which side of the double-edge sword on which to empale himself. So, the only possible way forward is through another distraction on another front, and that is Lebanon. If Israel seeks to launch a limited war against Lebanon, they can have a brief exchange of fire with Hezbollah and then attempt to close the Lebanon front.
This strategy means taking a huge gamble, one that will certainly result in hundreds, if not thousands, of Israeli deaths. When Israel attacks Lebanon, Hezbollah will respond with unprecedented missile strikes against Israel. Under such circumstances, there will be little focus on Gaza, especially from the Israeli public who will be fixated on the destruction caused by Hezbollah. In such an environment, striking a deal with Hamas in Gaza will be less controversial and may be easier for Netanyahu to pull off.
Assuming this strategy all goes to plan, the natural next step would be for Israel to launch a large-scale attack on the occupied West Bank, with the goal of crushing the Palestinian armed groups that are based primarily in the north of the territory and of annexing ‘Area C’ (60% of the West Bank). If the Israelis manage to isolate the West Bank, by closing off the other fronts, then it will be able to inflict what will be a military victory on paper. The annexation of Area C of the West Bank would be yet another grave violation of International Law, yet it seems that the Zionist Lobby is already working to make sure the US government will eventually allow Tel Aviv to get away with it. Miriam Adelson, the billionaire wife of deceased Republican Party mega-donor Sheldon Adelson, has apparently conditioned her financial support for the Trump campaign on the former President allowing Israel to take the West Bank.
On top of the above mentioned possible strategic vision of the Israeli leadership, they are now under tremendous pressure to do something against Hezbollah, after having been embarrassed over and over. Regardless of whether this conflict remains limited, the danger of this possibly spinning out of control and into a broader regional conflagration is so high that it is criminal that the US Biden administration has been too weak to force Israel to end this war. It has reached the point that we are no longer just talking about a war in Gaza, we are now talking about the Israeli regime’s possible end and the prospect that it could end up using its nuclear weapons as a last resort.
Just imagine the cross pollination with Ukraine war. You already reported Azov are in Syria. If Ukraine attacks in Russia, PUtin has said he too had a choice of ready proxies to attack “western interests”…he said it’s not hard to supply a proxy with weapons! But the neconz……hunkered inside the beltway cannot equilibrate their rage.