It was an action with symbolic power: Hezbollah fighters completed a military exercise over the weekend that simulated a war with Israel – the whole thing was framed by aggressive tones. Israel views the development with concern.
First military music, then a martial military show in which masked fighters blow up Israeli flags, jump through flaming hoops and fire live ammunition at imaginary Israeli targets: the Hezbollah militia – and that’s the message – seems ready to surrender to the mortal enemy in the to face south.
A message that Hezbollah boss Hassan Nasrallah also verbally underpins: “The Israeli enemy makes a mistake when they make plans and think they can bomb Syria and retaliate in Syria while Syria is at war and there is no new front can dedicate. But these considerations can be wrong and this mistake can take revenge at any time.”
Sharper tones after years of restraint
For a good decade, Nasrallah, the head of the Shiite Hezbollah militia in southern Lebanon, has been largely silent verbally. That has changed. Nasrallah obviously believes Israel has been weakened internally by months of protests against government policies. The militia chief now speaks openly of an “invasion in Galilee.” Statements that are taken seriously by senior military officials in Israel.
Aharon Haliva, the director of Israel’s military intelligence, was unusually clear for an intelligence chief in his speech at the Herzliya conference: “Since the mistake Nasrallah made in 2006, it can now be seen that Hezbollah’s borders with the State of Israel want to try again,” said Haliva. Nasrallah is about to make a mistake that could drag the whole region into a major war.
military confrontation counts as one scenario
The 2006 blunder the intelligence chief is talking about was Hezbollah’s kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers. An action that triggered the 34-day Lebanon War with more than 1,600 mostly civilian victims. A military conflict with Hezbollah in the Israeli-Lebanese border region is also a possible scenario for Israel’s chief of staff, Halevi. “An offensive on the northern front will be difficult for the population. We will be able to cope with it, but it will be difficult. But it will be seven times as difficult for Lebanon and even more so for Hezbollah.”
Unusually clear words from the military, which certainly also have the purpose of demonstrating Israeli determination to Hezbollah. Nevertheless, many are puzzled as to how likely a military conflict really is.
“Things have gotten worse”
Talya Lankri, the former head of the Israeli military’s national security staff, during a discussion on TV channel 12, does not believe that the skirmishes were just verbal. “When both the chief of staff and the chief of military intelligence and the secretary of defense speak like that at a conference, then there is no doubt that things have deteriorated. One could also take it to mean that we might be approaching a conflict.”
It is not an easy situation for Israel. The threat situation for the small country has intensified in recent months. Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran in the background are building a terrorist network that could hit Israel on five fronts. The fronts are the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Arab Israelis and southern Lebanon. The latter front is likely to be the most dangerous for Israel due to the firepower of the Hezbollah militia. But it is also clear that Israel is aware of this danger.