Islam Times - Extensive Israeli Bombing of Lebanon: Is It Start of New War?

Islam Times - Since Monday morning, the Israeli regime has launched its yet "most violent, most extensive and most intense" airstrikes against Lebanon since start of border conflict with Hezbollah about a year ago.

These attack of Monday, which was the deadliest since the country's civil war in the 1990s, raised questions: Has it just ushered in a way larger war? Does the Israeli regime intend to take actions it has taken over the past 11 months in Gaza this time in Lebanon?

Signs of war

The rhetoric of the Israeli political officials does not deny likelihood of such an assumption, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the press conference on Monday to announce the beginning of the aggression on Lebanon, began with these words: "We are on the verge of changing the balance of power in the north, and complicated days await us."

Accordingly, in the first place, it is clear from the confession of the Israeli officials that Israel sees the balance of power against Hezbollah as lost, and therefore one of the aims of the Tel Aviv cabinet is to restore the balance in favor of the regime against Hezbollah, and naturally, such a goal can not be achieved without military operations that either hit Hezbollah's military power or force it to stop its offensive campaign in support of Gaza and accept Tel Aviv's demand for retreat from Litani River on the border of Lebanon and the occupied territories.

From another aspect, war is approaching its first anniversary as the longest of this regime in its 75-year-old history, and this is while the armed-to-the-teeth Israeli army has not only failed to release prisoners from Hamas captivity, but also has failed to, as commanders acknowledge, disarm Hamas and destroy its military infrastructure, and it is indiscriminately striking the civilians.

Hamas has stood firm on its principles and conditions for agreement and is not giving in to the enemy's dangerous plans regarding the Rafah border crossing, thwarting Netanyahu’s plots. Netanyahu knows that striking an agreement that meets Hamas' conditions means the fall of his cabinet and his political death. This situation is definitely a heavy burden on the shoulders of the hardline Israeli cabinet, which is struggling to find a way out of the Gaza quagmire.

The final evaluation of the Israeli cabinet is that as long as Hezbollah continues its operations in the north of the occupied territories and its support injects morale into Gaza, the leader of Hamas will refuse to accept the agreement. Therefore, the main goal of the attack on Lebanon is to advance the regime's favorable scenarios for the future of Gaza free of concerns about the military pressure of the Lebanese resistance movement.

We should not forget that prisoner crisis weighs heavy on Netanyahu's cabinet, and a large part of the settlers and radical parties and their affiliated ministers, such as Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich and Minister of Internal Security Itamar Ben-Gvir yearn for a war with Hezbollah which has asserted several times that it will not allow displaced Israelis to return home without Israel halting the genocidal war on Gaza.

Amid such a situation, the pagers detonation in Lebanon and targeting Hezbollah's commanders over the past week should be interpreted as an attempt to pave the way for a full-scale war, since in addition to the Israeli planning for causing the largest possible number of casualties among ranks of Hezbollah’s fighters and loyalists to debilitate its operational power in the beginning— an aim that failed to be realized— another aim was to destroy the two vital elements of communication and command of Hezbollah which are crucial to ensure cohesion and health of the forces in classic armies.

However, for a variety of reasons, war in Lebanon does not match the optimistic goals and expectations of Netanyahu and his cabal in the cabinet and the army, and it will not be long before they will be forced to review their positions.

War on Lebanon is not like the war on Gaza

The first major difference that has given Hezbollah an upper hand against the Israeli army is the distinctive geographical features of southern Lebanon compared to Gaza. The border between Lebanon and Israel is about 76 kilometers from the occupied Shebaa Farms in the east to Ras Naqura in the west, along about 30 kilometers of coastline south of Litani River. The mountainous area of Jabal Amil is forested and has many valleys and rivers and natural roughnesses, which the resistance forces have full knowledge of and have had many years to design tactics matching these geographical conditions and build military posts and facilities and hideouts to surprise the enemy in the time of need.

Certainly, air operations alone are far from enough to win the war and completely clear an area from enemy military elements and take over the territory of an operational area, and from this point of view, the Israeli army has to take action on the ground to achieve the goals of Netanyahu and his friends, and given what was said about the geographical situation of the southern Lebanon region, this is the best opportunity for Hezbollah to inflict the biggest casualties on the enemy and even take prisoners from it.

In the small area of 370 square kilometers of Gaza, the Israelis used all of their armored power to reduce its military casualties, and this caused the army to officially announce that it does not have tanks to train new forces. Naturally, the different geography of Lebanon's southern borders does not provide such a possibility to the army to save the lives of the soldiers, even if all the military needs of the regime are met by the Westerners.

On the other side, Hezbollah is equipped with much more modern, various, and larger number of arms than Gaza, including pinpoint missiles and drones.

Some sources have estimated Hezbollah's missile number at up to 150,000, which is said to include around 10,000 long-range guided missiles capable of wreaking havoc across Israel.

Also, in 2021, Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah had said that the resistance movement has 100,000 fighters.

While Hezbollah has only used a very limited and insignificant part of its military arsenal against the occupied territories, yet all the occupied territories are in a state of full readiness and, naturally, in the next stages of the war, the regime's strategic centers such as ports and the Karish gas facility and the Dimona nuclear border can become the targets of the resistance forces which will accelerate the economic crisis and reverse migration in addition to the new wave of internally displaced people.

On August 25, Hezbollah fired at Israel hundreds of drones and missiles in response to assassination of its top military commander Fuad Shukr. Nasrallah announced striking Gilot military base near Tel Aviv that was responsible for the assassination.

Hezbollah sent a strong message to Israel that crossing the red lines of striking Beirut and its south will trigger attacks on Tel Aviv.

Indeed, the equation of confrontation with Hezbollah will not end here for the Israelis since the Axis of Resistance— an anti-Israeli and anti-imperialism alliance led by Iran and including Iraq, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, and Palestine— under the "unity of fronts" strategy that was introduced after Gaza war is at high level of readiness in expectation of more complicated war stages. Many branches of the Axis of Resistance are ready to participate in the ground battle against the Israeli army, and Iran has not yet responded to the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the Hamas political office in Tehran. While the officials of the Islamic Republic are talking about the certainty of this response, the warmongering of Tel Aviv in Lebanon can trigger revision of Iranian response model from security-intelligence to military reaction.

Even in the past few days, many Israeli analysts, including prominent former army figures, have criticized Netanyahu’s unrealistic estimations about possibility of destroying Hezbollah or quick victory in a ground battle and warned about sinking in Lebanon quagmire. Actually, Lebanon is bigger than Netanyahu’s mouth and no matter how much Netanyahu plays skillfully with fire, war with Hezbollah is not a war Israel can long withstand its blazes.