It is now clear that last Tuesday’s exploding pager operation was just a first step. What is now unfolding is an Israeli strategy of military escalation against Hezbollah, premised on the risky belief that the militant group can be bombed into a ceasefire before fighting in Gaza ends.
Monday’s wave of airstrikes in southern Lebanon killed at least 558 people and displaced many thousands, and there is little sign of the campaign slowing. Israel’s air force has said it had dropped 2,000 bombs in 24 hours – and there can be little doubt that this is now a full-on war, though it is not yet an all-out conflict.
Hezbollah, meanwhile, is in some disarray. First, hundreds of its operatives were wounded in the pager and subsequent walkie-talkie attack; then, commanders in its elite Radwan military unit were killed in an Israeli strike in southern Beirut on Friday. On Tuesday, Israel claimed it had killed Ibrahim Qubaisi, the head of Hezbollah’s missile systems, again in an attack in the south of the Lebanese capital.
Nevertheless, Hezbollah is also escalating its attacks. As Yehoshua Kalisky of the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies thinktank has observed, its rocket and drone attacks into northern Israel in support of Hamas had amounted to strikes against “targets and communities in the Upper Galilee”. Weapons used included “short-range rockets carrying approximately 20kg of explosives” – a modest amount.
Since Sunday, however, Hezbollah has begun using short-range missiles, the Fadi-1 and Fadi-2, with ranges of 50 and 65 miles respectively – targeting around the northern city of Haifa. Though not particularly accurate, the Fadi-2 carries an explosive payload of about 170kg, Kalisky writes, part of a short- and medium-range stockpile estimated to run into “the tens of thousands”.
But while Israel has killed hundreds of people, Hezbollah has only been able to wound small numbers in return. That does not amount to a deterrent to Israel, so it is no surprise that the country’s top military commander, Herzi Halevi, promised to “speed up the offensive operations today” – because Jerusalem knows it holds the military initiative.
Assaf Orion, a former brigadier-general in the Israel Defense Forces and its chief of strategy between 2010 and 2015, argues that the dynamic of the conflict is now “heading for more escalation”. He said: “I don’t see Hezbollah succumbing and yielding. It’s a question of image and power; they cannot be seen as bending the knee.”
The reality is that Hezbollah has to keep posing a threat to Israel’s north to keep the conflict running on the terms under which it is being played out. Last week, Israel’s security cabinet introduced a fresh war aim: the safe return of approximately 65,000 people displaced from the north – but, if anything, the immediate conflict risks displacing more Israelis from their homes as the range of attacks increases.
Israel, meanwhile, has been targeting missile launch sites in the south of Lebanon, but one four-year-old estimate by the Alma Centre, an Israeli thinktank, has suggested there are 28 more in Beirut in civilian areas. This means that a bombing campaign aimed at parts of the Lebanese capital cannot be ruled out in a further escalation, an uneasy prospect given Israel’s intense bombing of Gaza.
Hezbollah has many more missiles in reserve – 20,000-40,000 ballistic missiles with ranges of up to 300km, estimates the CSIS thinktank, and a small number of guided missiles, perhaps 150 to 400. Though Israel has confidence in its Iron Dome and other air defence systems, if a small number do get through, landing perhaps in built-up areas, there is a real risk to civilians – and then further escalation.
If the heightened conflict continues much longer, the question will become whether Israel will consider a ground invasion of southern Lebanon, through rough terrain to the line of the Litani River, where Hezbollah has built an extensive tunnel network. But it is a risky option, against a well-armed and experienced group with perhaps 30,000 fighters and similar numbers in reserve, and trying to demilitarise the area may not halt missile attacks from farther north.
The situation is evidently becoming more fraught. Hezbollah has allies in pro-Tehran militias in Syria and Iraq and, of course, Iran itself. Though few experts believe Iran wants to be drawn into a confrontation with Israel (notably, Tehran eschewed a reprisal after the assassination of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in August) there will be anxiety in Iran if Hezbollah continues to be hit hard.
Diplomatically, there appears to be “no off-ramp right now”, Orion added, while months of efforts to bring peace to Gaza, led by the US, Qatar and Egypt, have failed to bear fruit. Israel’s leaders – still smarting from the failure to predict Hamas’s surprise attack on 7 October – now believe they have the military superiority to force Hezbollah into a defeat, while Hezbollah only has to show it can still pose a threat to prevent Israelis from the north returning home. It is a toxic combination.