Hizbollah and Israel full of sound and fury, but not set for war
Despite the threats of a fullscale confrontation between Israel and the Lebanese Hizbollah, experts say neither side wants to be involved in another conflict.
“The clouds of war are gathering. Hizbollah is preparing for war,” US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley told the security council last week, claiming the end of uneasy peace since their 2006 war was imminent.
Mrs Haley’s grim testimony on the situation in southern Lebanon and calls for more monitoring by the UN interim force there was preceded by much sabre-rattling from Iran-backed Hizbollah and Israel this summer.
Hizbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said the next confrontation could be inside Israel, which “will suffer the same defeat that it suffered in 2006, but with greater force”.
Meanwhile, former Israeli defence minister Moshe Yaalon said that “if [Iran’s supreme leader] Khamenei wants war, then Lebanon will go to war, and every Lebanese will suffer from the next war because all infrastructure will be destroyed”.
A recent report, The Low-Profile War Between Israel and Hizbollah by the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies, said the party had more than doubled its capability since 2006.
Its arsenal is estimated to be up to 140,000 rockets and missiles, said the report. The number of fighters has increased to 45,000 from 17,000 in 2006.
But experts argue that the build-up could even be a preventive tactic by Hizbollah.
Hanin Ghaddar, a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said: “For Hizbollah, this is not the time for another war with Israel.”
A confrontation with Israel would jeopardise Hizbollah’s other regional priorities, Ms Ghaddar said.
“At a time when Hizbollah and Iran are winning the battles in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, why would they risk a confrontation?” she asked.
She said the party was “very thinned out and has lost many of its high-ranking commanders and trained fighters. They will need time to regroup and organise themselves if a war were to happen.”
Aram Nerguizian, a senior associate at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, described a complex interplay between Israel and Hizbollah that makes the timing and the outcome of another war unpredictable.
“Every year, since 2006, the anticipation has been building. It would shift and turn as both Hizbollah and Israel adapted and responded to local, regional and international forces,” Mr Nerguizian said.
He said the key factors at this point included the gradual rout of ISIL in Syria and Iraq, Syrian president Bashar Al Assad clawing back territory, and the rapid decline and collapse of Syrian armed opposition groups.
Also to be considered were a more aggressive US posture toward Iran and Hizbollah and Russia’s preference for pre-eminence in Syria.
All of these factors make 2017 “just as unpredictable as every previous year since 2006”, Mr Nerguizian said.
But what remains clear, he said, was “that neither the US nor the Israeli military establishment nor Hizbollah have
a preference for another round of sustained fighting”.
Ms Ghaddar agrees and qualifies aggressive statements and military threats as more “rallying the base rather than calling for war”.
“Hizbollah is less ready than Israel for the next war, but Israel too knows that another war would be costlier,” she said.
Mr Nerguizian said: “Hizbollah has to turn its attention to how it refocuses its efforts inward in Lebanon.”
Hizbollah is facing serious problems with its Shiite support base, Ms Ghaddar said.
“The whole concept of resistance has been shaken by their involvement in the war in Syria and the losses in fighters,” she said.
Hizbollah’s involvement in the Syrian war, publicly acknowledged in 2013, has cost the lives of an estimated 1,700 of its fighters. These elements “have exhausted the Shiite community and raised a lot of concerns regarding the actual involvement in the war in Syria”, Ms Ghaddar said.
At the same time, Hizbollah has become battle-hardened in Syria and has acquired new weapons and control over strategic areas along the border with Lebanon.
“As a side-effect of the Russian aid to Assad, Hizbollah is reported to have ac quired additional maritime stand-off missile capability. This could pose a threat to Israeli naval assets and to other civilian and military traffic in the eastern Mediterranean,” Mr Nerguizian said.
The party’s involvement in Syria could also mean a wider war than 2006 if a confrontation were to happen.
“We are talking about a wider scope for any war,” said Ms Ghaddar. “Israel might actually strike Hizbollah in Syria, where they are more exposed … while Hizbollah could use certain areas in Syria which are under its control or under the Assad regime to fight Israel.”
Without a ground invasion, which carries catastrophic risks, it would be hard for Israel to emerge victorious in another confrontation against Hizbollah, Mr Nerguizian said. “Israel would need to decisively score a win in any future war with Hizbollah. All the Shiite militant group has to do is survive to fight another day.”