Is Israel ready for a war with Hezbollah?

The great Shakespearean actor Sir Donald Wolfit would always take one step back before moving forward to leave the stage in a performance. It was for dramatic effect but it was if he was reluctant to give up his place among his fellow actors. In many ways, the policy of the United States vis a vis Israel and the war in Gaza has followed a series of forward and backward steps, with the Biden administration committed never to leaving the stage but eternally frustrated by the cuts and thrusts of Middle Eastern politics. Another week has gone and little has been resolved to end a war which even Israel admits could last at least another six months. And now, perhaps more than at any time since Hamas caught Israel by surprise on October 7 and went on a killing and raping rampage across the border from Gaza, there are increasing fears in Washington that Israel might soon go to full-scale war with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. The arrival in the region of Amos Hochstein, President Biden's Middle East envoy, a 51-year-old Israeli American with good contacts in Lebanon, underlined Washington's alarm at the potential dangers for Israel arising from a second war front. Until now, Hezbollah, an infinitely superior military force to Hamas both in terms of missile and rocket arsenals and combat manpower, has engaged in regular strikes across the border, some of them ferocious. Israel has forcefully retaliated. Tel Aviv has an approved military plan ready to go to war with Hezbollah, according to senior Israeli officials. The last Israel-Hezbollah war was in 2006 and lasted 34 days, in stalemate. So all eyes were on Hockstein when he flew to Beirut and then moved on to Tel Aviv. But to no avail. He drew a very negative blank in Lebanon. Hezbollah and Hamas and the Houthis in Yemen and, to a lesser extent, the Islamic militia forces in Iraq and Syria, have said that their campaign of attacks will continue while Israeli forces remain in Gaza. Hockstein by all accounts received this message loud and clear. It is often premature to suggest that a war has reached a turning-point. But there are many factors now coming together which seem to indicate that Biden’s fear of an expanding Middle Eastern war is looking more rather than less likely. The anti-Israel protagonists in the region share one thing in common, backing by Iran. But so far there is no evidence of a coordinated, multi-prong strategy, masterminded by Tehran to hit Israel from all quarters using its well-armed proxy forces. Could this change? Israel clearly believes this is a possibility which is why it has acted with increasing robustness in hitting Hezbollah military targets and killing individual commanders to remind the powerful Lebanese Shia Islamist group, led by Hassan Nasrallah since 1992, what it would face in a head-on war. The potential threat of a spreading war has galvanised both Washington and Tel Aviv. This might explain why Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s embattled prime minister, suddenly decided to launch a protest at what he sees as Washington’s deliberate withholding of vital munitions which his forces need to complete the current operation in Rafah, viewed as the last Hamas stronghold in southern Gaza. His accusation met with mild reproof in Washington. Antony Blinken, US secretary of state, who has seen more of Netanyahu in the last few months than any other foreign leader, said the only shipment of arms currently being temporarily suspended was a stock of 2,000lb bombs. The reason for this, as had been expounded on previous occasions, was that the US feared the use of these heavyweight air-launched bombs would cause unacceptable collateral damage in Rafah’s dense urban environment. According to the Pentagon, the one shipment referred to by Blinken and also by Biden, consists of 1,800 2,000lb bombs but also 1,700 500lb bombs. Netanyahu wants both categories and feels Washington is letting him down, and more importantly, refusing to send the promised munitions at a time when Israel says it’s in desperate need of them, perhaps for Lebanon as well as for Gaza. The row developed during the week because Washington felt Netanyahu was trying to give the impression that the Pentagon had stopped sending arms to Israel. “Since Hamas’s vicious attack on October 7 we’ve rushed billions of dollars of security assistance to Israel to enable them to defend themselves and we’re going to continue to provide them with the security assistance they need,” said Major-General Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary. The point about these particular bombs is that they are not smart-, precision weapons. They are unguided munitions, and the US doesn’t want to be seen to be helping Israel to drop bombs on Rafah which end up killing civilians and destroying private property. Washington learned this lesson when previous shipments of these heavy bombs did precisely that in Gaza City in the early stages of the war. “There’s not been a final determination at this time on how to proceed with that shipment,” Ryder said. While Netanyahu and Washington have continued their verbal boxing match, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) operation in Rafah has ploughed on but without the sort of offensive which caused such worldwide horror in past bombing missions in Gaza. The IDF’s 162nd Division which has been in Rafah for about six weeks, claims to have killed around 550 Hamas gunmen in the city, reportedly about half of the fighting force there, or the equivalent of two battalions of the four-battalion Hamas Rafah Brigade. In the process, the IDF has lost 22 soldiers, eight of them in a single ambush-attack by Hamas on an IDF armoured vehicle, It's in Israel’s interest to complete the Rafah operation as quickly as possible but it looks likely the IDF will have to wrap it up without those bombs held back in the US. Even then, the war is not going to end because Hamas operatives have been leaving Rafah to set up elsewhere in Gaza. Furthermore, as Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, IDF spokesman, said on Wednesday on Israel’s Channel 13 TV station, eradicating the whole Hamas organisation and its ideology was unattainable. Making Hamas disappear was “simply throwing sand in the eyes of the public,” he said. But this is Netanyahu’s goal upon which Israel’s survival, in his view, and his own political future depend. He duly rebuked the admiral. With all the challenges he is facing at home and in Gaza and across the northern border in Lebanon, the Israeli leader can ill afford to be confronted by disaffection in the military. 2