In the war of varying intensity and shifting fronts that Israel and Hezbollah have been waging for four decades, everything is subject to a final assault that is difficult to predict. According to Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Lebanese Shiite party, this week’s wireless attacks have crossed all the red lines. Although the Israeli government has not acknowledged responsibility, which is usual in this type of action, several of its members have done so indirectly. Thus, immediately after the attacks, Benjamin Netanyahu has spoken of new strategies to achieve a fourth war objective of the Gaza war: the return of the displaced population from northern Israel following the intensification of hostilities with Hezbollah over the Gaza war. It is not surprising that Nasrallah has interpreted this as an implicit declaration of war.
However, the interest in open war varies from side to side. Israel wants and needs a rapid response from Hezbollah to justify the invasion of Lebanon and the creation of a new “security zone”. This is what happened in 1982, with the excuse, at that time, of the attack on its ambassador in London, and invoking, as we have heard these days, the famous “now or never”, a phrase from the then Prime Minister Menachem Begin. The occupation of southern Lebanon lasted until 2000, but Israel finally had to withdraw, a fact generally considered a triumph of the Lebanese resistance, that is, of Hezbollah. From that lesson, everyone drew their own conclusions.
Israel opted for a strategy that reached its climax in 2006 after the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers: an air raid devastated Dahiya, the suburb of Beirut where the displaced population from the south, mostly Shiite, had gathered in their flight from the Israeli occupation. General Gadi Eizenkot, now a member of the Israeli war cabinet, gave this name, Dahiya, to a doctrine that explained what had happened and predicted what was to come: in an interview in 2008 he said that “the Arabs must answer for their leaders”, because “from our point of view there are no civilian populations, they are military bases”. The operation unleashed in Dahiya is what is known in Israel as the second Lebanon war, which is considered the first one fought by proxy with Iran, and which some Israeli sectors consider a defeat.
Hezbollah, for its part, has always been better off with a delayed response, a latent war with different conflict hotspots that suits its mobility on the ground. Moreover, it better serves Iranian interests. And this is also what emerges from Nasrallah’s recent speech.
It was in Dahiya that most of the devices exploded, killing at least 37 people and wounding more than 3,000. Eizenkot continued in 2008, referring to the operations against Gaza at that time: “What happened in the Dahiya district of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which shots are fired in the direction of Israel.” […] We will apply disproportionate force on him and cause great damage and destruction. […] It is not a recommendation. It is a plan that has already been approved.” Lebanon and Gaza have been victims of these forms of mass destruction.
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