After eight years of relative quiet on the Lebanese front, there is growing concern in Israel over possibility of a renewed outbreak of fighting with Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shi’ite militia. Israelis tend to attribute the protracted lull to deterrence ostensibly achieved through the Second Lebanon War in 2006. But there are other factors that have been no less central to the Hezbollah decision to avoid escalation against Israel.
For one, over the past few years Hezbollah has been deeply embroiled in the civil war in Syria. At Iran’s behest, it sent in forces to defend key ally Bashar Assad’s regime against opposition Sunni militias, especially the radical Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS. Moreover, Hezbollah has been forced to deploy against radical Sunni efforts to extend the battlefield across the border into Lebanese territory. Hezbollah forces are also involved to a lesser extent in Iraq and Yemen.
Nevertheless, Israel remains Hezbollah’s chief enemy and, in this context, its involvement in Syria produced two significant strategic gains:
• A Syrian readiness to transfer to Hezbollah sophisticated weapons including precision ground-to-ground, anti-aircraft and land-to-sea missiles.
• A second front against Israel from Syria in the Golan Heights area where, with Iranian help, the organization is building a terrorist infrastructure.
This is a very dangerous game. Israel has made it clear that it will not allow the transfer of sophisticated weaponry and, according to foreign sources, has taken action to prevent such transfers – for example, bombing weapons-carrying convoys.
Israel is also taking steps to prevent the construction of the terrorist infrastructure on the Golan front. According to foreign sources, in one of these operations, Jihad Mughniyeh, son of the late Hezbollah terrorist mastermind, Imad Mughniyeh, and an Iranian general were killed. If Hezbollah persists in provoking Israel, this kind of friction could easily escalate to wider confrontation.