“There is no more time to lose” the US and Egypt said on Thursday (August 8th), calling on Hamas and Israel to resume negotiations as Israel braces for retaliation by Hezbollah and Iran for the assassination of senior figures recently.
But in reality Hezbollah may not be seeking escalation all that much.
It is recalled that late Saturday afternoon (10/8) Hezbollah hit northern Israel with a barrage of attacks.
The Lebanon-based group launched a drone and rocket attack in the Western Galilee, claiming it was targeting a military base near Maghar.
According to the Times Of Israel, it targeted the IDF’s Michve Alon base, which it claims is used by the military as a base and ammunition depot, as well as for training purposes.
Hezbollah, however, appears to be proceeding with such limited and targeted strikes as to avoid provoking a wider conflict.
“We did not escalate, even when our dear leaders were killed,” Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah said in a speech on Tuesday, August 6, referring to the dual reality in Lebanon.
“For 10 months, there is a front, martyrs and funerals, and another part of Lebanon where there are concerts, recreation, lunches and dinners,” he said. But the “aggression” against Soukr, a few miles from downtown Beirut, was different. “The Israelis are the ones who chose this escalation with Lebanon,” he said.
In a speech that appeared designed to prepare Lebanon for war, “the tone has changed,” said Michael Young, a fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center.
“We’re in a situation where the tempo that Hezbollah is trying to contain the conflict is no longer possible, it seems, in part because the Israelis appear willing to expand it,” Young said.
No one in Lebanon – including Hezbollah supporters in the country’s Shiite Muslim community – wanted a war, he added.
Damage to Lebanese homes and farms is concentrated along the border with Israel, after months of fighting in which Israeli strikes outnumbered Hezbollah’s by more than 6 to 1, according to data through Aug. 1 compiled by ACLED , an organization that collects data on the conflict.
More than 100,000 people have been displaced by the fighting, which has killed 114 civilians and non-combatants in Lebanon. Across the border, more than 60,000 people remain displaced from communities in northern Israel since Hezbollah began hostilities on October 8. 19 soldiers and 24 civilians were killed in attacks by the group.
Hundreds of homes have been damaged and tens of thousands of acres burned by fires ignited by drone and rocket strikes.
In Lebanon, the suffering stretches miles from the border, to Wadi Jilo.
But as suffering spreads across Lebanon, the group has sought to soften opposition to its military operations by arguing that its tactics have limited the spread of violence and prevented its battles with Israel from erupting into a wider conflict.
By largely limiting the fighting to Lebanon’s southern border areas, it “created less of a problem than it might have if they had started a major conflict,” Young said.
Hezbollah managed to keep the discontent of the Lebanese under control by making a “separation” in the south of the country that receives the Israeli attacks from the rest of the country where life continues as normal. Because of this separation, as well as a widely shared revulsion in Lebanon at the “barbarity” of Israel’s assault on Gaza, Hezbollah has been able to keep “a lid on the resentment,” Young said.
But Ibrahim Mneimneh, an independent MP in Lebanon, said the toll of the war in southern Lebanon was serious enough to question Hezbollah’s strategy. “I don’t believe they were able to protect Lebanon through what they used to call ‘equal deterrence,'” he said, referring to the perception that neither Israel nor Hezbollah wanted to escalate beyond a point.
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