If Israel and Hezbollah wanted an all-out war it would have happened a long time ago. Each side would welcome the destruction of the other, but the time is clearly not right for either of them to plunge into a full-scale conflict.
The exchange of hostilities across the Israel-Lebanese border on Sunday morning provided yet more evidence of this underlying reality.
In terms of munitions expended, it was the biggest engagement for many months. Israel put 100 jet fighters in the air and struck more than 40 sites with missiles, but killed only one person and wounded four more, according to the count as of Sunday afternoon.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were clearly taking far more care over civilian casualties in Lebanon than they have in Gaza. While Israel insists it will fight until Hamas is completely obliterated, its foreign minister, Israel Katz, stressed on Sunday his government had no interest in such an existential fight with Hezbollah.
According to its own version of events, Hezbollah launched 320 rockets and a large number of drones on Sunday morning, but caused only a small handful of injuries. The Lebanese Shia militia claimed nonetheless to have achieved its aims, to avenge a commander killed by Israel last month. Its spokesperson stretched credulity by claiming its plans had not been affected in any way by the earlier Israeli airstrikes, but the aim of the message was clear, to draw a line under the day’s hostilities and reduce pressure on Hezbollah to keep the battle going.
Both sides have compelling reasons not to go to war now. Israel does not have the stamina for another front while it has not yet managed to eliminate Hamas completely in Gaza and with the West Bank being driven to the brink of a wider explosion of violence by hardline settlers and their backers inside the Israeli state.
IDF commanders are also aware that a war with Hezbollah could not be won without a ground invasion, which would cost the lives of many Israeli soldiers. Despite recent upgrades, Israeli tanks are still considered highly vulnerable to ambush.
For its part, Hezbollah’s leadership has assets to protect in Lebanon, political and economic, that would be devastated in a war with Israel. The group’s regional patron, Iran, is clearly not ready for a conflict either and has deferred for now its own threatened response to Israel’s killing of the Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last month.
Hezbollah and Iran do not share the apocalyptic self-destructive impulses of Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas commander in Gaza, who launched his surprise 7 October attack on Israel based on the mistaken assumption his allies in Beirut and Tehran would join the battle.
Just because neither Israel nor Hezbollah wants a war now, does not mean it is not going to happen, however. Both sides are using very crude tools – high explosives mainly – to send each other messages, and the room for miscalculation is always high.
The IDF was reportedly on the brink of going to war in Lebanon immediately after 7 October, on the strength of faulty intelligence suggesting that Hezbollah was involved in the attack and its fighters were about to pour over the northern border.
The potential for unintended consequences was also high on Sunday. If the IDF account of events was accurate, its warplanes blew up dozens of launch sites and thwarted planned Hezbollah missile strikes against strategic targets in central Israel. If one of those missiles had hit a major city and caused substantial casualties, the political pressure on the Netanyahu government to clear Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon could easily have become irresistible.
The room for error is likely to be greatest when each of the parties try to guess the other’s internal political dynamics. For example, when Israel killed the Hezbollah commander, Fuad Shukr in an airstrike on south Beirut last month, there was no way of knowing how many rockets or missiles Hezbollah would deem sufficient to avenge him, or where they should be aimed.
Similarly, while driving more than 80,000 Israelis from their homes with its cross-border bombardment, Hezbollah could not possibly gauge the political pressure it would put on the Netanyahu coalition to take over southern Lebanon so that the displaced residents could return. Public support for an invasion is already considerable, and furthermore, the Israeli prime minister has his own reasons to keep his country at war, and new elections at bay.
In the midst of this mutual recklessness, the US is desperately trying to mitigate the risk. The Biden administration’s principal aim since 7 October – and principal achievement, US officials argue – has been to prevent the Gaza war becoming a regional conflagration.
Washington has urged restraint on its friends, while moving its forces into the region to deter its enemies. The central strategy – or the essential hope at least – is that a hostages-for-peace agreement in Gaza would also defuse the worsening confrontation on Israel’s northern border.
Talks continue this week and American briefers still insist, despite evidence to the contrary from recent experience, that a deal is within reach. But there are serious doubts over whether Netanyahu or Sinwar really want an end to the fighting. War can break out without both sides wanting it, but the same cannot be said about peace.