When Hizbollah pledged retaliation for the killing last month of one of its most senior officials, many Lebanese and Israelis feared it would be the point at which the 10-month-old hostilities between the Lebanese militant group and Israel finally erupted into a full-scale war.
But although Hizbollah’s retaliatory barrage on Sunday — which was preceded by a pre-emptive strike on its launching positions by Israel — marked the biggest exchange of fire between the two sides since 2006, by evening, both were sending de-escalatory signals.
Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant said the Jewish state did not want “regional escalation”. Hizbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah said his group was still assessing the barrage’s impact, which targeted military sites in Israel’s north and an intelligence base near Tel Aviv. But he said if it was deemed a success, “we will consider the response operation has ended”.
By Monday, however, both sides had returned to the lower-level cross-border fire that has characterised the past 10 months, and analysts said the risks of a broader escalation remained — either as the result of a miscalculation, or domestic pressures in both countries.
“Both Israel and Hizbollah rushed to exaggerate the success of their operations on Sunday, signalling that, for now, they both preferred to remain below the threshold of a full-blown war,” said Rym Momtaz, a Middle East analyst formerly with the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
But the tit-for-tat clashes on the border “nevertheless still carries a high risk of escalating as both will continue pushing the limits of the acceptable targets to try to shape the new rules of engagement,” she said.
In Israel, the main source of pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu’s government for a more aggressive approach to Hizbollah is the tens of thousands of people evacuated from the north of the country, who have been unable to return home for 10 months due to the hostilities with the militant group.
In a sign of the mounting anger, the mayors of three northern communities on Sunday announced they would suspend contact with the government until it found a “complete solution for the residents and children of the northern border”, claiming that their needs were being overlooked.
“The sentiment in the north is frustration. We are frustrated that the [Israeli military] finally took the initiative . . . and then stopped after a couple of hours,” said Nisan Ze’evi, a former tech worker from Kfar Giladi, a kibbutz near Israel’s border with Lebanon, which has been evacuated.
“We have to find solutions, because if not you’ll see whole families leaving the area for good . . . After 11 months we say ‘this is enough’. We need to take action.”
Opposition politicians made similar demands. Benny Gantz, leader of the centrist National Unity party, said Israel’s pre-emptive strike was “too little, too late,” while Gideon Sa’ar, head of the New Hope party called it the “less correct strategic alternative”.
“[Israel’s strike was] the continuation of the policy of containment,” he wrote on X. “This opportunity should have led to a decision on an overall pre-emptive attack to change the reality in the north.”
Meanwhile in Lebanon, Hizbollah was grappling with its own contradictory needs.
The group’s muted attack on Sunday using its most primitive weaponry and avoiding civilian targets was a clear sign it wanted to avoid a potential escalation, even as it responded to the assassination of its commander Fuad Shukr.
“The response was so underwhelming that Nasrallah needed to explain it to people in an hour-long speech,” said Mohanad Hage Ali, deputy director of research at the Carnegie Center in Beirut.
But it is also struggling with appearing weak and deterred by its enemy, a problem it sees as existential.
Over the past 10 months, Israel has established its “escalation dominance” over Hizbollah, “decimating civilian targets, agricultural lands and water wells, and degrading some of Hizbollah’s material and human capabilities,” Momtaz said.
“Meanwhile, Hizbollah has struggled to exact a price, despite its unprecedented success in forcibly displacing tens of thousands of Israelis.”
Experts think this imbalance could push it to mount another attack on Israel in future.
“There’s a case growing within Hizbollah for an escalation because internally, they know they are looking weak,” Hage Ali said. “They need to re-establish [deterrence]. And an escalation at a time suitable for them would help do that.”
While the sense of relief on Monday was palpable in Lebanon, the perception of Israel’s impunity has been deeply felt by people weary of a 10-month war where Israeli air strikes have become the unwelcome norm.
“Nasrallah told us we were safe for now and could go back to our homes, but I am still afraid,” said Mariam Um Hassan, 49, a supporter of the group who fled Hizbollah’s southern Beirut stronghold of Dahiyeh following Shukr’s killing.
“What happens when Israel strikes us again? Hizbollah needs to do more to make Israel afraid of striking in Dahiyeh again.”
The other country that will influence whether the situation escalates is Iran, which has vowed to retaliate against Israel for the assassination of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, which took place in Tehran the day after Israel killed Shukr.
Israel has neither denied nor confirmed its involvement in the killing of Haniyeh.
While Iranian politicians continue to emphasise that retaliation is inevitable, they have been ambiguous about whether the Islamic republic is considering a direct confrontation with Israel or would instead challenge it through proxy forces.
Reformist politicians believe this is partly due to a shift in Iran’s approach, as the reformist new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, has promised to initiate nuclear negotiations with world powers to secure relief from US sanctions, which requires a relatively calm atmosphere at home and in the region.
Former reformist vice-president Mohammad Ali Abtahi said it was difficult to find anyone in Iran’s top echelons of power who sought a direct military confrontation with Israel.
But he also said that this did not mean Iran should be expected “to deprive itself of the right to respond through direct attacks”.
“Nothing is off the table in a Middle East that has become more unpredictable than ever, particularly as long as Netanyahu remains in power,” he said.
Cartography by Aditi Bhandari
Read the full article here
