“There are decades when nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades do happen,” Vladimir Lenin is famously quoted as saying. Last week, Israel blew up thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies owned by Hezbollah members in a highly sophisticated attack that killed at least 39 people and injured 3,000. Then came hundreds of airstrikes across Lebanon since Monday that killed at least 558 people, including 94 women and 50 children, in the country’s worst day in decades.
The target of this attack is the terrorist group Hezbollah. Its size and scope have alienated the world’s most powerful non-state actor by decimating much of its military leadership, including its chief of staff, its head of special operations, and key members of its elite combat units, the Radwan Forces.
The similar blows that Israel has given to its arch-enemies backed by Iran are staggering, even when measured against the background of the turbulent Middle East.
Read more: The Coming Israel-Hezbollah War
But will Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu achieve his new war goal of returning tens of thousands of displaced Israelis to their homes in the north? Without stopping the fighting in Gaza; it is impossible.
It is difficult to imagine that Hezbollah ends its almost daily fire into Israel, given Iran’s strategy of “alignment”, which it announced after the attack by Hamas on October 7. Hezbollah is the most prominent flame in the “ring of fire” of Iran surrounding Israel that includes allied militant groups in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Gaza itself.
Netanyahu, a veteran soldier turned astute politician, probably understands that the price he is demanding is too high for Hezbollah or its Iranian backers to pay. This raises the question of whether the main purpose of Netanyahu’s war in Lebanon is to return the Israelis who had left to their homes in the north, or if that is simply a cover for carrying out a campaign that greatly degrades the title of Iran.
It is a question similar to the one that many Israelis ask when they wonder if Netanyahu’s main goal in Gaza is to return Israeli captives, or the complete destruction of Hamas. And, of course, the long military campaigns allow Netanyahu to postpone his day of reckoning, when he is expected to answer for a major security failure on October 7.
Read more: How Netanyahu Viewed Israel’s Security
But ending Hezbollah’s rocket fire and destroying Hamas are not realistic war goals. Whenever Israel exhausts its military options in Lebanon—after every known Hezbollah target has been repeatedly hit, at great human cost, without reaching the end of Hezbollah’s rocket fire—it will have to return to the communications channel.
Netanyahu, using the formidable Israeli military at his disposal, will face the fact that he can influence political policies in Lebanon and Gaza, but he will not be able to rewrite the entire national equation by imposing a firewall between the two.
The Biden-Harris Administration has long understood that a cease-fire in Gaza is necessary to open a deal in Lebanon. President Joe Biden’s point person on the issue, Amos Hochstein, has spent months negotiating the details of a new security plan for South Lebanon that is acceptable to both the Israeli military and Hezbollah. It also includes the withdrawal of Hezbollah forces away from Israel’s border in order to restore Israel to certain disputed areas. It also includes a monitoring and enforcement mechanism, which is a key requirement for Israel, developed by the US and France.
Therefore, Israel’s war in Lebanon is less about the terms of the settlement than about reducing Iran and bringing Hamas to heel in Gaza. Realizing that he is unlikely to separate the two, Netanyahu’s retreat is to bring so much military pressure to bear on Hezbollah that it, along with its Iranian sponsor, will pressure Hamas to accept a cease-fire in Israel’s favor. This would allow Hezbollah to pursue that without appearing to abandon the Palestinian cause. Senior US officials in recent weeks have made several offers to Hezbollah and Iran, but to no avail.
It is not clear whether Iran and Hezbollah can use this much power against Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. Sinwar, whose exact whereabouts in Gaza are unknown, has long sought to expand the Israel-Hamas war in the hope of boosting his depleted military status. Given the dramatic escalation between Hezbollah and Israel, Sinwar is likely to harden his negotiating position.
Faced with the Gordian Knot of Gaza and Lebanon, and Netanyahu’s plan to “escalate to detente,” the US strategy to resolve the conflict has collapsed. Biden is still willing to help Israel and deter Iran, but there is absolutely no political will to pressure Netanyahu to resolve political issues ahead of the hotly contested US election in November.
Abandoned, the Middle East finds itself in a dangerous crisis—a violent test of will and power between bitter enemies where no one can win. Once again, Lebanon is the scene of a recent tragedy.
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