Hezbollah is testing Bennett, but is playing with fire

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Friday morning’s rocket fire from Lebanon was unusual, but even more so given the claiming of responsibility.

Hezbollah was indirectly involved in the Katyusha rocket fire into Israel after the 2006 Second Lebanon War, but this time the group made sure to claim responsibility. The decision to launch rockets and the ensuing announcement are part of Hezbollah’s attempt to maintain a balance of deterrence with Israel despite Lebanon’s accelerating collapse.

At the same time, this is a dangerous challenge for Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. Hezbollah already succeeded once – too often – when it dragged a new prime minister, Ehud Olmert, into the 2006 war. This time, it’s more complicated because the incident took place during regional theatrics between Israel and Iran, even if most of this conflict is clandestine.

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Friday morning marked the sixth such incident in under three months. During the fighting with Gaza in May, rockets were fired at Israel from Lebanon three times. (Twice rockets were fired from Syria.) And three incidents have taken place since the end of the Gaza operation.

It may not seem like it, but there have been more incidents at the northern border than at the Gaza border. In each incident before Friday, the Israel Defense Forces attributed the fire to Palestinian operatives in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah wasn’t even in the picture, the IDF said.

On Wednesday afternoon three rockets were fired toward Kiryat Shmona in the far north. The IDF responded immediately with artillery fire and later, overnight, with jets, the first such attacks in nearly a decade, even if they were against relatively minor targets. The Israeli strikes destroyed the launchers that fired the previous rounds of rockets; during one attack a stretch of road was destroyed that lay near where the cell had been operating.

It seems Hezbollah felt that Israel’s unusual use of combat capabilities warranted an exceptional response. It seems these considerations have more to do with the big picture in Lebanon and the region. Either way, a Hezbollah cell was sent to the Lebanese slopes of Har Dov on the border, also known as Shaba Farms.

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Not letting the Palestinian factions act

According to the IDF, 19 Katyushas were fired from a vehicle carrying a multibarreled launcher. (Images from Lebanon appear to depict a 32-barreled launcher.) Three rockets landed in Lebanon. Sixteen rockets reached the Mount Hermon and Har Dov areas; 10 were intercepted by the Iron Dome antimissile system and six landed in open areas.

Hezbollah said the rocket fire was a response to Israeli aggression. In addition to the Israeli jets, the group seems to be referring to other events in recent months: the killing of a Hezbollah operative who crossed the border into Israel near Metula at a protest during the Gaza operation, and the wounding of an Hezbollah man during an airstrike attributed to Israel in Syria. This time it’s important that Hezbollah won’t let Palestinian factions act for it, whether through action or omission.

The fact that Hezbollah took responsibility has more repercussions than the act itself. Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah is expected to give a speech Saturday. It’s safe to assume he’ll give a rational explanation, as usual, and he won’t be brief. Like the vast majority of his speeches over the last 15 years, Nasrallah is expected to speak from a well-protected secret location. It seems that this time he has better reason for doing so.

At this point, the Israeli response to the rocket fire has been local and limited. It’s safe to assume that during the security assessment, the prime minister, defense minister and IDF chief discussed a harsher response in the future. With that, Israel isn’t conveying a particularly strong fighting spirit.

Other considerations are in the background. The nation is poised for a fourth coronavirus lockdown, expected to be announced later this month. The economic damage of the pandemic adds to the balance as tourism in the north is recovering thanks to the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who canceled their vacations abroad due to the spread of the delta variant.

The Israelis, as is their wont, don’t want war. That doesn’t mean they have to buy the IDF’s explanations.

Until Friday morning, the military thought Hezbollah didn’t take part in the previous rounds of rocket fire, and maybe even opposed them. Now the IDF claims that the rocket fire toward open areas proves that Hezbollah is still deterred. Maybe it is but is still willing to break the taboo with a massive rocket barrage toward Israel, and then claim responsibility.

Failed states

In general, it seems the IDF must make sure it doesn’t get addicted to its storytelling. The army fell into that trap for years with Gaza, when it chose to ignore the relationship between Hamas and “rebel” Palestinian factions that supposedly launched rockets without Hamas’ knowledge. The rude awakening came in May when Hamas, contrary to early intelligence assessments, ignited a small war with Gaza by firing rockets at Jerusalem.

As Lebanon crumbles, Israel finds itself surrounded by failed states and areas: Lebanon, Syria, Hamas-led Gaza and in certain ways the Palestinian Authority-led West Bank. This phenomenon is turning the region into a much more volatile theater – not least because all these fronts maintain ties with each other. An escalation in one place could cause a flare-up on several fronts; the rocket fire from Lebanon and Syria during the fighting with Gaza in May was the first glimpse of such a possibility.

Michael Milstein of Tel Aviv University, a former senior official at Military Intelligence, told Haaretz on Friday that he sees a common thread between the latest incidents in the Persian Gulf and Lebanon, and May’s fighting with Gaza.

“Each of these spots is developing based on its own unique circumstances, and each leading player has its own internal problems,” he said. “Still, there’s more daring here compared to past events, and we can see an attempt to redraw the rules of the game vis-a-vis Israel.”

Milstein says “this may have to do with the new government here and the new administration in the United States. I fear we’re reading our adversaries based on our old familiar world and don’t understand well enough the change that has taken place recently in their operational logic.”

Nasrallah has his own constraints, as seen in the videos taken after the south Lebanon incident. Druze residents can be seen attacking the Hezbollah vehicle from which the rockets were launched, assaulting one of the passengers and accusing the organization of igniting a war with Israel – for which the Druze could pay the price. The leaders of Israel’s Druze community say Hezbollah is intentionally creating provocations near Druze villages in Lebanon to drag them into the complicated situation it’s creating.

While Hezbollah – and maybe its Iranian patrons too – is assessing Bennett – it’s also playing with fire. Nasrallah has overdone his provocations before, against Olmert. The Second Lebanon War wasn’t the Israeli success story that the prime minister and his supporters are selling today, but there is also no doubt that Nasrallah eventually regretted the abduction that ignited the war.

It seems Hezbollah’s leader would be better off not pushing Bennett into the same corner where he pushed Olmert in 2006, a move that brought death and destruction on both sides.