JERUSALEM: For months, Israel has vowed to put an end to the frequent cross-border fire from Hezbollah which has led authorities to evacuate tens of thousands of citizens from areas near the border with Lebanon.
The situation has grown more tense this week following a rocket strike on the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights which killed 12 children, raising fears of a further escalation in Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that Israel will deliver a “severe” blow to Hezbollah, although the details of any plans for a military response to Saturday’s attack in the Druze Arab town of Majdal Shams remain unknown.
Experts told AFP that Israel’s strategy would be to increase pressure on Hezbollah while trying to avoid a full escalation at a time when it is still engaged in a deadly war with Hamas in Gaza.
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What are Israel’s options?
Orna Mizrahi, a Hezbollah expert at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies said that the response would be “more devastating than what (the Israelis) have done until now, but it will be a response that can be contained by Hezbollah, and prevent the deterioration into a full-scale war”.
Jean-Loup Samaan, a researcher at the French Foreign Relations Institute specialised in Lebanon, said the Israelis would “want to show that they’re going up a notch, but to what point?”
He said target selection and location would be the key factors considered by those determining Israel’s response.
“Will they go for Beirut? ... Or will they stay in the south (of Lebanon) as they have until now?” he said.
“Will they stick to Hezbollah targets or potentially widen their scope to... government infrastructure or the airport”, Samaan said, adding that he didn’t think Israel had yet reached that point.
Could there be a ground invasion?
Experts told AFP that, at this moment in time, a ground invasion was unlikely.
Michael Horowitz, geopolitical expert for Middle East-based security consultancy Le Beck, said “Israel can strike hard at Hezbollah without touching Beirut, for example with strikes over a few days on military targets in the rest of the country”.
Mizrahi and Samaan also said a ground invasion remained unlikely for now.
The choices available to Israeli leaders will also be constrained by the military’s ability to divide its forces between two fronts, with hundreds of thousands of Israelis already mobilised since October for the war in Gaza.
“The Israeli army has been preparing for a war on several fronts for a long time, but that doesn’t mean it necessarily wants one”, said Horowitz.
He added that a ground invasion “is the riskiest and most unpredictable scenario because Israeli forces on the ground mean no one would hold back”.
Samaan, meanwhile, said that “the main question would be how many troops could they leave in Gaza, knowing that the situation is very uncertain there and that they regularly have to return to certain areas that they had previously claimed to have secured”.
Mizrahi said that while she expected Israel’s response to be “low-level” and designed to avoid a full-scale war, Israel “can deal with two fronts” even though “the price will be high and it will be more difficult.”
What influence do Israel’s allies have?
The international community, led by the United States and the UN, has mobilised to try to stop the war in Gaza from spreading to Lebanon.
“Israel must listen and consider the United States’s opinion, particularly when it comes to Hezbollah, because Washington might have to intervene to support Israel if the conflict escalates,” Horowitz said.
Israel’s strongest ally is also its main arms supplier and is facing domestic calls to freeze weapons shipments.
“What the Americans think and ask, that’s taken into consideration. And maybe some of the Europeans”, said Mizrachi.
“But usually the main consideration is what is good for the people of Israel”, she added.
Israeli forces and Hezbollah have frequently exchanged cross-border fire following the October 7 attack on Israel by the Lebanese group’s Palestinian ally Hamas, which triggered the war in Gaza.
The cross-border violence has so far killed at least 529 people in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally, most of them fighters but also including 104 civilians.
On the Israeli side, 24 civilians and 22 soldiers have been killed, according to the military.
