With a look at the recent Israeli operations against Hezbollah and Lebanon, some questions present themselves: What's behind this escalation? Given the new developments, what can we take from the balance of power on the ground? How can the outlook of war be drawn based on the strategic aims of each side of war?
To answer these questions, we need to examine various levels of confrontation between the two sides to see if the gains worth the costs.
3 strategic failures of Tel Aviv in achieving its goals
Undoubtedly, the Israeli cabinet has set goals for itself in its entering into a dangerous game with Hezbollah, and it thinks that it can achieve them in this chaotic regional situation.
In the first place, the Israeli army sought to inflict widespread casualties on the Hezbollah military by firstly exploding electronic devices and secondly by assassinating the senior commanders to destroy or at least operationaly paralyze the largely disciplined and modern military structure of Hezbollah with a big shock.
However, according to the reports of the Lebanese Ministry of Health, only 25 people were killed and hundreds of others were injured in the two explosions of electronic devices, most of whom were civilians and only a few members of Hezbollah were among the martyrs.
Also, in the attack on the southern suburbs of Beirut, 16 Hezbollah commanders were killed. Though this was a precious war gain for the Israelis, given the fact that Israel is facing a professional army of over 100,000 Hezbollah fighters with massive war skills of 10 years in Syria, this attack is not considered a fatal blow to Hezbollah. Experience has shown that Hezbollah and other resistance groups are not individual-reliant and each time they lose a commander, his place is immediately filled with a more effective one to continue the anti-occupation struggle.
The second point is the correlation between Israel's strikes on Lebanon and Tel Aviv's strategic goal on the northern front.
The main and most urgent goal of the Israeli cabinet to carry out multifaceted operations in Lebanon is to force Hezbollah to stop its operations on the northern front and restore the deterrence lost over the past year of conflict.
The regime's war cabinet seeks to shift from defensive stance to an offensive stance against Hezbollah using its military and sabotage operations.
Almost a year after the start of the Gaza war, the Israelis are complaining that Hezbollah has advanced in the buffer zone known as the Blue Line and the Litani River and has strengthened its military position on the northern borders with the occupied territories.
The commanders of the army and the Israeli cabinet are determined to return the displaced settlers to their homes in the north by stopping Hezbollah's operations. Currently, more than 70,000 settlers have fled their homes for the fear of Hezbollah operations, and this issue has become a major crisis for Netanyahu.
But these attacks have backfired and not only Hezbollah's operations have not stopped, but also in recent days, new areas of the occupied territories, including the port city of Haifa, have been targeted by the Lebanese resistance.
On Saturday, Hezbollah struck facilities of the Israeli military production company Rafael with Fadi 1 and Fadi 2 missiles. Also, the Israeli media announced that on Saturday morning, about 30 rockets were fired at the town of Keriot, causing fire to some homes.
The escalation on the northern borders has also increased the number of displaced Israelis and made their return impossible. Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah pointed to this reality in his recent speech and the Israeli political observers admitted this.
In this regard, Udi Segal, an analyst of Israel's Channel 13, pointed to Netanyahu's promise to return the refugees to the north of the occupied territories, saying that the question that the authorities have not provided an answer to is how the increase in tensions will help the Israelis return to their homes in border areas with Lebanon.
Another important issue is that the terrorist operations targeting Lebanon left Hezbollah hands open for future attacks deep into the occupied territories. From this point of view, Hezbollah has so far only carried out operations within a radius of 50 kilometers of the occupied territories in line with the rules of limited conflict, but now the enemy gave it this excuse to target any point in the occupied territories.
Therefore, the increase in the scope of Hezbollah's attacks in recent days also indicates that the movement is still confident in its upper hand in maintaining the deterrence equation with the regime and finds the Israelis incapable of ignoring their points of military and economic vulnerability in any all-out war with Hezbollah.
From another perspective, in the past months, Western mediators have been pressuring the Lebanese politicians to crack down at home on pro-Gaza Hezbollah operations to make the resistance move act conservatively to avoid home discontentment. But now with the Israeli terrorist crime in Lebanon, the Westerners cannot accuse Hezbollah of escalation and Netanyahu bears the responsibility for increase of Hezbollah operations range.
Even contrary to the imagination of the Israeli leaders, the Lebanese rushed to donate blood to the injured to prevent large number of casualties. The people of Lebanon support the resistance operations against the occupied territories, and this is the encouraging and assuring factor to continue the war more comfortably.
The Israeli admission of harder revenge by Hezbollah chief, the promises of whom are never doubted by the Israelis, bears witness to the fact that the terrorist operations have not helped mend the deterrence equation by the Israelis.
Military power inefficient amid strategic confusion
With the recent combined attacks on Lebanon, the Israeli regime showed that it recklessly consumes all its cards against Hezbollah, but it is in a strategic confusion to determine the main goals of the war, escape from crises, and make gains.
Over the past year, Netanyahu's government has failed to specify the aims of the war on different fronts and has not made any achievements in the battlefields.
In the invasion and occupation of Gaza, Tel Aviv intended to destroy Hamas and release the Israeli prisoners, but Hamas is still in power and firing rockets from all over Gaza towards the occupied lands. That is why Netanyahu changed the main goals of the war midway and chose the occupation of the northern Gaza as the only option to make gains against the Palestinian resistance, but there is a serious gap between politicians and security officials on this plan.
The Chief of Staff of the Israeli Army Herzi Halevi and Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant, arguing that the government does not have a plan for the post-war period in Gaza, do not consider it advisable to continue the conflict, because from their point of view, staying in the Philadelphi Corridor on the Gaza-Egypt border will not help make gains and will only increase the army's costs. Nevertheless, in Lebanon, Netanyahu has also acted aimlessly and he still does not have a clear plan as to what goals he is really pursuing by playing with fire.
In the West Bank, where Israel sought to neutralize the resistance groups in Jenin and Nablus through a massive military campaign, the Israelis met their failure, and after 10 days of blind attacks, they retreated from the West Bank.
In the Red Sea, the Yemeni Ansarullah does not allow the passage of Israeli ships, inflicting a huge damage on the economy of this regime, and with the firing of a hypersonic missile at the occupied territories last week, the helplessness of the war cabinet against Yemen is more visible than ever.
Recently, a new front against the occupied territories has been in the making in the Jordan Valley, severely worrying Tel Aviv leaders.
Above these all, confronting Hezbollah that is way stronger than other resistance groups in the region will bring forth unpredictable consequences to the occupiers. After all, should thousands of missiles rain down on Israel targeting the infrastructures, power plants, factories, ports, and airports, the occupied territories will sink in a deep crisis.
As a conclusion, we can suggest that Netanyahu, who is
under heavy pressure from the opposition on the one hand and his
hardline cabinet ministers on the other hand, has escalated tensions
with Hezbollah and other resistance groups to survive the security
crises and shore up internal cohesion, but these actions do not signal
signs of foreign and home crises mitigation.
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