The Guardian’s take on Israel and Hezbollah: a new menacing line crossed | Editorial

TThe wave of Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon on Sunday morning, and the hundreds of drones and rockets fired by Hezbollah shortly after, was the largest exchange of hostilities across Israel’s northern border since the October 7 Hamas attacks. As ceasefire negotiations in Gaza remain stalled and the horrific Palestinian death toll in that area surpasses 40,000, the nightmare scenario of a regional war encompassing Lebanon and involving Hezbollah’s patron, Iran, remains a terrifying possibility.

For now, despite the weekend’s mutual show of force, all sides appear intent on avoiding such an outcome. The brutal choreography that has dominated relations between Israel and Hezbollah will have factored in Sunday’s attack through Jerusalem, following Israel’s assassination last month of one of the organization’s top commanders. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah insisted that a decision had been made not to risk Israeli civilian casualties in the attack, which targeted military sites and the Mossad spy base near Tel Aviv.

Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz, for his part, stated that Israel did not want an all-out conflict, as it had acted preemptively to destroy some 40 rocket launchers. The lack of civilian casualties on either side indicates a desire to calibrate the level of escalation while keeping options open. Iran, which has yet to take retaliatory measures after the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, also uses the language of restraint while guaranteeing that there will be a response.

The caution underscores the dizzyingly high stakes and reflects calculated self-interest. Israel is reluctant to open a new front in the north that would cost Israeli lives, and Hezbollah does not want to risk a catastrophic repeat of the Second Lebanon War in 2006. But the risk of miscalculations and unintended consequences, as messages are delivered via explosives, is high.

As domestic pressure mounts on Benjamin Netanyahu over the 80,000 Israelis displaced from the north by Hezbollah activities, it seems likely that he will make good on his promise that Sunday’s airstrikes were “not the end of the story.” At what point Iran will see fit to intervene on behalf of its proxy remains a known unknown.

In this ominous and divisive context, this week’s Gaza ceasefire negotiations, brokered in Cairo by Egypt, Qatar and the US, take on added significance. An end to the relentless suffering inflicted on the Gazan people and the return of the remaining hostages captured on October 7 would remove Hezbollah’s immediate casus belli and provide an opportunity to defuse regional tensions more broadly.

Depressingly, the immediate prospects for a deal seem dim amid discord over the continued presence of Israeli troops in Gaza. Mr. Netanyahu’s self-interest lies in prolonging the conflict, appeasing the far-right in his coalition government and delaying a political reckoning after Oct. 7. Faced with the anger of a nation that needs to be appeased, and corruption charges hanging over his head, his instinct for self-preservation has become the biggest obstacle to breaking the cycle of violence that Hamas has started.

As long as that cycle continues, and the unjust plight of Palestinians in Gaza is allowed to continue, the dangers of a regional conflagration—whether accidental or deliberate—will grow. This weekend’s explosion on Israel’s northern border, in scale if not deadly, is another threshold crossed.