Hezbollah acts, Israel reacts, Iran pulls the strings

Old habits die hard in the fraught relations between Israel and the Iranian-backed Lebanese movement Hezbollah, and the pattern of their interaction never fails to carry with it the seed of escalation, planned or unintended.

However, a rather aimless three days of firing rockets across the border from Lebanon into Israel this month, initiated by Palestinian factions and provoking a measured Israeli retaliation, represented a worrying change. It was the first time since the 2006 war that Hezbollah had fired rockets into Israel. Both Israel and Hezbollah tried to make a point by this exchange, but if there was one, it was hard to detect, beyond a wish to demonstrate their stable though fragile relationship of mutual deterrence. Damage to either side was negligible, and as usual it was the subsequent vitriolic rhetoric that threatened to escalate the violence.

However, in any such outbreaks of hostility between Israel and Hezbollah there are more than strictly local issues at stake. Regional and international factors weigh heavily, above all Iran’s malign intentions and destabilising operations. New governments in both Israel and Iran are adding to the sense of uncertainty. The accumulated impact of rising tensions between them on several fronts threatens to explode in one place and spread to others, and the Israeli–Lebanese border is one of these theaters of confrontation constantly on the verge of a flareup.

What makes the fundamental antagonism between Israel and Hezbollah more conducive to escalation is both sides’ chronically unstable political systems; Lebanon in particular is in danger of becoming ungovernable, which would create the space for Hezbollah to operate both inside and outside the system and to mainly to serve its own interests regardless of those of the country as a whole. The destructive military capabilities possessed by both sides have long deterred them from embarking on a senseless attempt to defeat each other, but on the other hand have maintained a dangerous level of volatility along a border that is always on a knife edge.

For the Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who fashions himself as a political hawk, there is a danger of being sucked into a conflict from which Israel could gain little, and which would play into the hands of Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah, enhancing his image as the one who stands up to the might of the Jewish state. For Nasrallah, confrontation with Israel is a tool for reviving his and his organization’s dwindling power and influence in Lebanese politics.

Israel needs to keep a close eye on domestic events in Lebanon, but it must avoid giving its arch enemy any excuse to divert attention from those events by overreacting.

Yossi Mekelberg

Just such a conflict broke out in 2006 when Ehud Olmert, who was taking his first steps as Israel’s prime minister and also had a novice defense minister, responded to a Hezbollah provocation that led to a war. Despite forcing Nasrallah underground ever since and obliging him to move from one hiding place to another, that conflict also exposed Israel’s vulnerabilities. In the years that followed, Hezbollah increased its military capabilities exponentially, allowing it to hit any population center in Israel, but it is also aware that Israel’s retaliation is bound to be disproportionately painful by design.

This has led to an alarming balance of power between Hezbollah and an Israel that can’t afford to appear weak in the face of Tehran’s stooges, who thrive on confrontation with the Jewish state. When a member of Israel’s coalition from the left-leaning Meretz party, Ghaida Rinawie Zoabi, said that if Israel embarked on a military campaign her party and the Palestinian-Israeli party Raam would resign from the coalition and so bring down the government, it actually put pressure on Bennett to retaliate to maintain his credibility among the right in Israel.

Reality is much more complex than either side would like it to be, and deterrence works best when it doesn’t have to be proved on the battlefield. Israel’s experience in Lebanon has been a bitter and expensive one of entanglement without any political achievements. Prolonged incursions across the border are costly, and incapable of achieving any long-term objectives in a totally fragmented country, where Hezbollah has established a state within a state and is Lebanon’s strongest military power by far.

However, Hezbollah is increasingly under political fire at home, and although in its early days it was regarded as radical but at least clean of corruption and representing something genuine and different to the usual convoluted Lebanese political scene, this is no longer the case. It has become one of the sources of the country’s dysfunction, to a large extent epitomising it, and its involvement in the war in Syria does not serve Lebanon’s interests. It is always likely to bring calamity by miscalculating and provoking another large-scale confrontation with Israel.

Lebanon’s top Christian cleric, the Maronite patriarch Bechara Boutros Al-Rai, made a rare intervention this year when he accused the Hezbollah movement of being detrimental to the national interest by dragging it into regional conflicts: “I want to tell them,” he said, “do you want us to stay in a state of war that you decide? Are you asking us before you go to war?” Leading the resistance against Israel is hardly a vote winner in Lebanon, as the country has more urgent and existential issues to deal with. Its economy is in crisis, public services are on the verge of complete collapse, and its politicians are under ever increasing pressure to prevent their country from completely disintegrating.

Interestingly enough, in the aftermath of last week’s incident between Israel and Hezbollah, video footage emerged showing Druze villagers assaulting those on board a vehicle from which the rockets were fired. The villagers accused Hezbollah of provoking a war in their locality, one that they will end up paying the price for. The situation for Nasrallah and his organization is changing, and as Lebanon once again slides toward further internal strife, the last thing its people want is another devastating war with Israel, especially one for the benefit of Tehran.

Israel needs to keep a close eye on domestic events in Lebanon, but it must avoid giving its arch enemy any excuse to divert attention from those events by overreacting. Certainly, Nasrallah himself understands the consequences of a military confrontation with Israel, and would rather adhere to his usual demagogy than resort to such a dangerous move.

• Yossi Mekelberg is professor of international relations and an associate fellow of the MENA Program at Chatham House. He is a regular contributor to the international written and electronic media. Twitter: @YMekelberg