Border clashes between Israeli and Lebanese troops have left three Lebanese soldiers and a journalist dead. Lebanon’s Hezbollah TV, Al Manar,
reports one high-ranking Israeli officer has been killed but this has
not been confirmed by the Lebanese army or UN troops stationed in
southern Lebanon.
As the photo above makes clear, this was a blatant act of provocation
by Israeli forces — no one accidentally strayed over the border. This
is more like kids tossing matches to find out whether a brush fire will
start.
Should a new war break out, Israel is determined to
strike a more devastating blow more quickly than it did during the last
conflict, in which it failed in its objective of destroying Hizballah.
It has publicly warned that it would destroy Lebanese civilian
infrastructure, and that Syria, as Hizballah’s armorer, would not be
off-limits. But Hizballah believes its capacity to fire missiles into
Tel Aviv is key to restraining Israel from returning to finish off the
Shi’ite militia. And, of course, amid regional tensions over Iran’s
nuclear program, members of the self-styled “axis of resistance” — Iran,
Syria, Hamas and Hizballah — have deepened their alliance, raising the
possibility of any one of those groups joining the fray should any of
the others come under attack from Israel or the U.S.Although all of the main players have good reason to avoid initiating
another war right now, the Crisis Group warns that “tensions are
mounting with no obvious safety valve.” At some point, Hizballah’s
growing deterrent could cross Israel’s red line. And the Western
diplomatic boycott of the resistance camp is cause for alarm because
there are no effective channels through which the various antagonists
can be made to understand how their actions could produce unintended
consequences — in the tragic tradition of Middle Eastern wars that
erupted in part because the adversaries failed to understand one
another’s intentions. Indeed, after proclaiming his movement’s “divine
victory” in standing up to Israel’s 2006 offensive, a feat that made him
a hero on the streets of the Arab world, Hizballah leader Sheik Hassan
Nasrallah did admit that had he known Israel would respond with a
full-blown invasion, he would have avoided the provocation of snatching
the Israeli troops that started the showdown.The danger posed by the lack of communication channels between the
resistance camp and the Israelis explains why British Prime Minister
David Cameron, a recent guest at the White House, last week went to
Ankara to urge Turkey to maintain its ties with Israel and use its ties
to the likes of Syria to facilitate communication that could mitigate an
outbreak. Turkey has been pilloried in some quarters in the West — and
certainly in Israel — for its diplomatic rapprochement with the likes of
Syria, Iran and Hamas, but Cameron’s appeal was a tacit admission that
the continuing Bush-era policy of refusing to engage with the region’s
designated “radicals” has sharply diminished the ability of the U.S. and
the European Union to influence events in the Middle East. Peace talks
between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and the Israelis
are all very well, but Abbas is not at war with Israel, nor would he be
even if a new round of fighting broke out in Gaza.
While it is widely assumed that Hezbollah would have a critical role
to play in the event that Israel launches or instigates an attack on
Iran, it likewise follows that the IDF will be tempted to decisively
neutralize this threat preemptively. The problem, for Israel, is this:
what happens if a preemptive attack fails, meaning, Israel comes under
even heavier rocket attack than it did in 2006 and that Hezbollah
survives an even more brutal onslaught than it suffered in that war? In
such an outcome, the idea of subsequent military action against Iran
becomes even more implausible than it already is.