Does Israel really want to start a two-front war by attacking Hezbollah in Lebanon?

By Ian Parmeter, Australian National University | –

(The Conversation) – Among the many sayings attributed to Winston Churchill is: “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

This attitude seems appropriate as Israel appears potentially ready to start a war against the militant Lebanese group Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said this week that a decision on a full-scale war against Hezbollah was “imminent” and that senior commanders of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had signed a plan for the operation.

This threat comes despite the fact that Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza is far from over. Israel has still not achieved the two main goals that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set out at the beginning of the conflict:

• the destruction of Hamas as a military and governing entity in the Gaza Strip
• the release of the remaining Israeli hostages held by Hamas (about 80 of them are believed to be alive, and the remains of about 40 are believed to be dead).

Why Hezbollah is now attacking Israel

Israel has strong reasons for wanting to eliminate the Hezbollah threat. Since the Gaza war began on October 8, Hezbollah has fired rockets, missiles and drones from Iran across the border into northern Israel. Its stated goal is to support Hamas by diverting Israeli forces from their Gaza operation.

Hezbollah’s attacks have been relatively limited and so far confined to northern Israel, but they have led to the displacement of around 60,000 residents of the border area. These people are understandably fed up and are demanding that Netanyahu’s government take action to force Hezbollah to withdraw from the border.

That anger was heightened this week when Hezbollah released video footage of military and civilian sites in the northern Israeli city of Haifa taken by a low-flying surveillance drone.

The conclusion: Hezbollah was looking for new targets in the region. Haifa, a city with almost 300,000 inhabitants, had not yet been the target of Hezbollah attacks.

The most right-wing members of Netanyahu’s cabinet, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, have openly called on Israel to invade southern Lebanon. Even without this pressure, Netanyahu has every reason to want to neutralize the Hezbollah threat, because the residents of northern Israel are strong supporters of his Likud party.

US and Iranian interests in a larger conflict

The United States is clearly concerned about the risk that Israel could open a second front in its conflicts. For this reason, President Joe Biden has sent an envoy, Amos Hochstein, to Israel and Lebanon to try to ease tensions on both sides.

In Lebanon, he cannot speak publicly directly with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah because the group is on the US list of global terrorist organizations. Instead, he met with the long-time speaker of the Lebanese parliament, Nabih Berri, who, as a fellow Shiite, can speak to Nasrallah.

But Hezbollah is subordinate to Iran, its main backer in the region, and it is doubtful whether any Lebanese leader can persuade it to abandon actions sanctioned by Iran.

Iran’s interests in a possible war between Israel and Hezbollah are currently mixed. Of course, it would be pleasant for Iran to see Israel under military pressure on two fronts. But the Iranian leadership sees Hezbollah as a hedge against an Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities.

Hezbollah has an estimated 150,000 rockets and missiles, including some that could penetrate deep into Israel. So far, Iran appears to want Hezbollah to hold back from a major escalation with Israel that could deplete most of that arsenal.

However, while Israel’s Iron Dome defense shield has proven remarkably successful in neutralizing the rocket threat from Gaza, it may be less effective against a large-scale attack from more sophisticated rockets.

Israel needed help from the United States, Britain, France and Jordan to repel a direct attack by Iran in April that involved around 150 missiles and 170 drones.

Lessons from previous Israeli interventions in Lebanon

The other factor – especially for bright minds with a sense of history – is that the country’s previous interventions in Lebanon have been far from free.

Israel’s problems with Lebanon began when the late Jordanian King Hussein forced the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), then led by Yasser Arafat, to relocate to Lebanon in 1970. He did so because the PLO had used Jordan as a base for operations against Israel after the 1967 war, thereby provoking Israeli retaliation.

Since the early 1970s, the PLO formed a state within a state in Lebanon. It operated largely independently of the perpetually weak Lebanese government, which was divided by sectarian differences and culminated in a protracted civil war in 1975.

The PLO used southern Lebanon to launch attacks against Israel, prompting Israel to launch a limited invasion of its northern neighbor in 1978 and expelling Palestinian militia groups north of the Litani River.

This invasion was only partially successful. The militants soon retreated to the border and renewed their attacks on northern Israel. In 1982, then Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin decided to expel the PLO completely from Lebanon and launched a major invasion of Lebanon as far as Beirut. This eventually forced the PLO leadership and most of its fighters to relocate to Tunisia.

Despite this success, the two Israeli invasions had the unintended consequence of radicalising the previously calm Shiite population in southern Lebanon.

This enabled Iran, in its early post-revolutionary phase under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, to form Hezbollah (“Party of God” in Arabic) together with Shiite clerics in Lebanon, which became a greater threat to Israel than the PLO had ever been.

Thanks to Iran’s support, Hezbollah has grown stronger over the years, becoming a force in Lebanese politics and regularly firing rockets at Israel.

In 2006, Hezbollah was able to block an Israeli military advance into southern Lebanon to rescue two Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah. The outcome was essentially a draw, and the two soldiers remained in captivity until their bodies were exchanged for Lebanese prisoners in 2008.

Many Arab observers at the time believed that Hezbollah had achieved a political and military victory by surviving an asymmetric conflict.

During and after that conflict, Nasrallah was for a time one of the region’s most popular politicians, even though the rulers of conservative Sunni Arab states like Saudi Arabia detested him.

DW video: “What a war between Israel and Hezbollah would mean”

Will history repeat itself?

This is the background to the discussions in Israel about a war against Hezbollah. And it shows how relevant Churchill’s quote is.

Most military experts would warn against fighting a two-front war. Former US President George W. Bush decided to invade Iraq in 2003, when the war in Afghanistan was not yet over. The result was enormously costly for the US military and disastrous for both countries.

The 19th century American writer Mark Twain is said to have said that history does not repeat itself, but often rhymes. Will Israel’s leaders listen to the echoes of the past?

Ian Parmeter, Researcher, Centre for Arabic and Islamic Studies, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.