[News] The next Israel-Hezbollah war is now unavoidable – and it will be worse

[Anti-Imperialist News]

rt.com
<https://www.rt.com/news/612465-war-between-israel-lebanon-inevitable/>
The next Israel-Hezbollah war is now unavoidable – and it will be worseFebruary
10, 2025
------------------------------

*Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary
filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in
the Palestinian territories and currently works with Quds News. Director of
‘Steal of the Century: Trump's Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’.*
<https://www.rt.com/op-ed/authors/robert-inlakesh/>

Netanyahu has made it clear he wants to redraw the region’s map, and the
IDF’s refusal to withdraw backs up that intent

Another round of violence between Lebanon and Israel is not a matter of if,
but when. Israel managed to extract a series of tactical victories from the
war so far, but did not possess the capacity to defeat Hezbollah
decisively. Now that Israel seeks to maintain freedom of action inside
Lebanon, it threatens a much more violent outbreak than what was stopped by
the November 27 ceasefire.

Much of the analyses offered on the conflict between Lebanon and Israel,
which erupted into a paroxysmal battle in September 2024, trace its origins
back to October 8, 2023. However, this take is limited in its scope and
also often misses key lessons from the history of the conflict.
Understanding what shaped the Lebanon-Israel war

A day after the Hamas-led October 7 attack against Israel, it became clear,
through the public statements and actions of the Israelis, that the war
they sought to launch was intended to inflict maximum collective punishment
on the civilian population of Gaza. Although it often goes unrecognized due
to the shocking effects of the Hamas raid, at least 413 Palestinians were
killed
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/08/israel-gaza-hamas-attack-netanyahu-warns-of-long-and-difficult-war>
inside Gaza that day, most of them civilians. The next day, the Lebanese
group Hezbollah began opening fire on Israeli monitoring equipment set up
in the illegally occupied Shebaa Farms area.

After Israel conducted airstrikes in southern Lebanon and killed four
Hezbollah members <https://thecradle.co/articles-id/7705>, the Lebanese
armed group responded by opening fire on Israeli military sites and
surveillance equipment on October 9. That same day, former Israeli Defense
Minister Yoav Gallant declared a *“complete siege”* on Gaza and that *“we
are fighting against human animals
<https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2023/10/9/israeli-defence-minister-orders-complete-siege-on-gaza>”*
to justify blocking all food, water, and electricity from entering the
territory.
[image: Israel holds multiple Palestinian doctors captive. Some are already
dead]
<https://www.rt.com/news/611468-palestinian-doctor-languishes-israeli-detention/>

Understanding the gravity of what had just happened, Hezbollah’s secretary
general, Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, understood that they were going to have
to play a supporting role for the Palestinian armed groups in Gaza.
However, the group did not want to drag Lebanon into a comprehensive war
and repeatedly stressed this point. The one pledge that Nasrallah made
was *“Hamas
will win,”* offering no other red lines.

>From October 8, 2023 to September 20, 2024, Israel was responsible for
around 81% of all attacks between both sides
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/9/25/mapping-10000-cross-border-attacks-between-israel-and-lebanon#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20Armed%20Conflict,least%20752%20people%20in%20Lebanon.>,
killing 752 people in Lebanon, while Hezbollah’s attacks killed 33
Israelis. The last time a war was fought between Lebanon and Israel was in
2006, which began when Hezbollah conducted a raid and kidnapped Israeli
soldiers. This war was well planned by Hezbollah and resulted in a victory
for the group, as Israeli forces retreated from Lebanese territory.

What made Hezbollah the first Arab force to claim a real victory over
Israel in 2006 was down to the absolute power imbalance, in which a
stalemate combined with tactical victories and a well executed plan made it
a defeat of the Israeli military. After this, while Israeli forces
committed thousands of violations of Lebanese sovereignty – by land, sea,
and air – occasionally assassinating Hezbollah fighters in Syria that
caused some brief border skirmishes, the two sides veered away from all-out
war.

In 2019, however, the Israelis began working on a new security fence/wall
along the Lebanese border
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-lebanon-blue-line-what-happening>,
which cut into and annexed land clearly demarcated to be on Lebanon’s side
of what is known as the Blue Line. In 2023, the most significant land grab
was of the northern Ghajjar village, which was cut off from Lebanon and
opened for Israelis to visit. In addition, Israeli forces repeatedly
entered Lebanon in order to clear land between the fence and Lebanese farm
lands, resulting in repeated standoffs.

During the period from 2006 to 2023, Israel had been working at
infiltrating Hezbollah and spying on the political party, while the
Lebanese group significantly strengthened its military power. This is of
great significance to the conflict that has taken place over the past 16
months, because Hezbollah in 2006 was somewhat comparable in power to Hamas
at the start of the war in October 2023.

Hezbollah was also born out of the conflict between the Palestine
Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel, when the Israelis launched their
invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The Israelis killed around 20,000 Palestinians
and Lebanese in that war, which ended with a ceasefire due to the PLO’s
surrender and acceptance of deportation to Tunisia.
[image: Israel’s collateral killing of civilians is finally in the
spotlight] <https://www.rt.com/news/610182-israel-gaza-collateral-killing/>

Yet, after the PLO’s fighters and leadership left, Israel did not leave
Lebanese territory and instead occupied the south of the country, while
deploying its allied militias, including the Phalange Party, to massacre
thousands of civilians in and around the Palestinian refugee camps. The
lesson learned here for all future movements that would emerge to fight
Israel, was that you never surrender your weapons; hence the Hamas slogan
‘victory or martyrdom’. The single biggest achievement that Hezbollah
recorded in its history was forcing Israel to withdraw from Lebanese lands
and give up on their occupation.
Why war is inevitable

It is clear that the war between Lebanon and Israel, which lasted nearly
two months, was not one that Hezbollah was prepared for. Even after
Israel’s booby-trapped pager attacks, which injured thousands across
Lebanon, including many civilians, the Lebanese group still sought to fight
a limited battle, as evidenced by the speech given by Nasrallah at the
time. However, Israel did not stop there and decided to kill most of
Hezbollah’s senior leadership, including Nasrallah, making a war
unavoidable.

As early as October 8, 2024, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
was threatening
Lebanon with the kind of destruction wrought on Gaza
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/8/israels-netanyahu-warns-lebanon-could-face-destruction-like-gaza>.
While the assault that the Israelis launched was certainly devastating to
the civilian population, killing nearly 2,000 people, it was clear that it
had not decided to launch a Gaza-style attack. Meanwhile, Hezbollah began
using heavier missiles from its vast arsenal, but was tame in its approach
and was careful to make much of its strikes symbolic or aimed at military
facilities. This had nothing to do with what either side may have liked to
do, but there was strategic constraint, which appeared to be deteriorating
into the final week prior to the ceasefire.

By late November, Israel had failed to make meaningful advances on the
ground in southern Lebanon and did not achieve its objective of reaching
the Litani River area. Meanwhile, Hezbollah was not capable of equaling the
level of destruction that Israel was committing against Lebanese cities
using their missile strategy, it was also fighting essentially blindfolded
and standing on one leg after the blows it suffered. Both sides realized
that the inevitable result would be a stalemate, so in order to stop
further devastation, a ceasefire was reached.

After suffering a major disruption to its supply line through Syria, the
loss of its leadership and many commanders, also battling to solve the
issues of infiltration, Hezbollah was severely wounded, but not destroyed.
While the Israeli tactical victories have now shifted the propaganda war to
make Hezbollah appear to be on its last legs, it is far from done. In fact,
it still maintains a formidable ground force of around 100,000 fighters, a
domestic weapons production capacity, and an abundance of ammunition, which
the Israeli military understands well.
[image: Bloodshed and a hope for peace: What does 2025 hold for Israel and
the Middle East?]
<https://www.rt.com/news/610550-bloodshed-and-hope-for-peace/>

The loss of Nasrallah is not a small thing and still lingers in the minds
of each and every supporter inside the country, many of whom still yearn
for revenge after what was just committed against their nation. Israel
proved incapable of beating Hamas after 15 months of all-out devastation,
committing one of the worst atrocities since the Second World War.
Hezbollah is still a much more capable fighting force than Hamas, yet there
are a number of constraints on it due to the domestic
political/economic/social situation inside Lebanon.

If Israel chooses to stay inside Lebanese territory, for whatever reason,
it will only be a matter of time before action is taken. The next round
will also likely be much more bloody, and the death toll will make the
conflict last year seem relatively insignificant in comparison. This may
not happen in the immediate future and could even take over a year, but the
conflict is far from over and that is because there isn’t really a
ceasefire in effect as of now.

On November 27, Israel made a point of not only violating it from the first
moments and later advancing further into southern Lebanon, it committed
hundreds of violations of the ceasefire. Israel has made it very clear that
the new reality is that it has full freedom of action and can remain inside
pockets of southern Lebanon for as long as it chooses. Therefore, there
will have to be a war to ensure that a real ceasefire is reached and
Lebanese territory will not be open season for the Israeli military to
bomb, shoot at, and kidnap civilians.

Netanyahu is now bragging about changing the map of the surrounding region,
while his new army chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, recently declared *“2025
will continue to be a year of combat
<https://www.ynetnews.com/article/bydw2s6001e>.”* Israel is acting
aggressively, expanding its borders, and does not appear to be backing down
from its warmongering with Iran, which will lead to even greater chaos.
Hezbollah will have to carefully navigate Lebanon’s domestic terrain and
when it acts, implement a well oiled plan if it chooses to retaliate
against Israel’s daily assaults on its country. All of the signs point to a
dangerous escalation brewing.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely
those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20250210/0c683c88/attachment.htm>