Beirut, Lebanon – Hezbollah is preparing for different scenarios as the low-level conflict between it and Israel threatens to escalate into something bigger.
The idea that Israel is shifting its military focus from Gaza to Lebanon has been fueled by statements from officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said on Sunday that Israel is reducing its operations in Rafah and will redirect them to Lebanon.
Serious Israeli military action against Lebanon would draw in regional and possibly international actors.
Israel's attacks to date have displaced nearly 100,000 people from their homes in southern Lebanon and killed at least 435 people, some 349 of them named by Hezbollah as its members.
Hezbollah appears to be sticking to its guns, matching Israeli rhetoric with its own and stepping up its cross-border attacks, which have so far killed 15 Israeli soldiers and 10 civilians, according to Israel.
The two have been trading cross-border attacks since the day after Israel launched a war in Gaza on October 7, the day a Hamas-led operation in Israel killed 1,139 people, according to the AFP news agency.
Ceasefire or bankruptcy
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has repeatedly said in speeches since October that his group will stop its cross-border attacks on Israel only when the latter agrees to a ceasefire in Gaza.
Even if Israel focuses most of its military attention on Lebanon, analysts believe Hezbollah will hold firm in its position.
“I don't think Hezbollah will accept [negotiations] in the absence of a ceasefire [in Gaza]“The war will continue,” said Amal Saad, author of two books on Hezbollah.
“Nasrallah has said that they will continue to fight until Hamas emerges victorious and if Hamas is weakened and undermined, then Hezbollah will not sit still. [its] hands,” he said.
“There is a strategic objective here… Hezbollah will not leave Hamas alone.”
The idea of a ceasefire appeared to have hit a roadblock as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's hardline coalition partners demanded a “complete defeat of Hamas” before ending the war.
However, some Israeli officials have expressed doubts about the idea of a total defeat of Hamas, stressing that Hamas is an idea and that ideas cannot be eradicated.
Military spokesman Daniel Hagari expressed such doubts on June 19, while National Security Council chief Tzachi Hanegbi said the same on Tuesday, less than a week later.
Whether out of tacit acceptance of that idea or other considerations, Israel is now talking about a lower-intensity phase in which, it says, its military would continue to attack Hamas in Gaza while seeking a political alternative to the group in the enclave.
A lower-intensity war in Gaza would, in theory, allow a focus on Lebanon, although that would require the Israeli military to face the challenging prospect of engaging on two fronts.
Projecting strength
For his part, Nasrallah has been flexing his group's muscle and holding firm.
On June 19, he said his group has more than 100,000 fighters and that many regional armed group leaders had offered more fighters to join the fight against Israel, offers he rejected because Hezbollah is already “overwhelmed” with cadres.
A day before his speech, Hezbollah released drone footage taken over the Israeli city of Haifa, an implicit threat that the city could be a target.
Another recent Hezbollah video showed what appear to be a series of targets inside Israel and the Mediterranean Sea.
“Hezbollah is showing and simulating to Israel its options [to widen the] war … [this will make Israel] “I understand that the repercussions are very costly,” said Imad Salamey, a political scientist at Lebanese American University.
Nasrallah also threatened Cyprus, an island nation that is part of the European Union but not NATO, if it supports Israel in the war.
Cyprus responded that it does not cooperate militarily with Israel in any conflict.
“Since October 8, Cyprus has been a key location where Israeli reservists fly out and then head to Israel,” Seth Krummrich, a former special forces officer who now works at risk management firm Global Guardian, told Al Jazeera.
Israel has used Cypriot territory for training exercises in the past.
The threat was Nasrallah's way of telling “the European Union to refrain from supporting Israel in any way that might imply [its] Member States,” Salamey said.
Contingency plans
As both sides escalate the situation and lay their cards on the table, Hezbollah will have a couple of contingency plans in place.
“Hezbollah most likely has a strategy prepared in case of a limited and protracted war in southern Lebanon and has probably prepared a strategy in case there is a broader, large-scale war,” said Karim Emile Bitar, a professor of international relations at Saint Joseph University. in Beirut, he said.
A limited war would be what Salamey called a “low-intensity asymmetric war of attrition” that bleeds “the enemy through low-cost, efficient and effective skirmishes” – basically a continuation of the current conflict.
A full-scale war could lead to intensified attacks across Lebanon, including on infrastructure such as Beirut airport, as Israel did in 2006.
Some analysts believe a limited ground invasion of southern Lebanon is possible, although it would cause heavy casualties on both sides.
For Bitar, Hezbollah likely does not want that option. “Hezbollah, as well as the Iranian regime, realizes [an escalation] “It would be extremely risky and devastating for Lebanon,” he said.
Intensified threats and military actions are taking place in parallel with diplomatic negotiations.
US special envoy Amos Hochstein was recently in Tel Aviv and Beirut, where he allegedly passed Hezbollah messages through Lebanese parliament speaker and Hezbollah ally Nabih Berri.
According to unnamed Western diplomats who spoke to Axios, Hochstein told Hezbollah that it would be a mistake to assume the US could prevent Israel from starting a wider war.
At the same time, Hezbollah and Israel are passing messages through French diplomats, Bitar said, seeking “a way out or a strategy to save face.”
If these negotiations could result in “assurances to Israel that Hezbollah allies would not be present within a 6 to 10 kilometer radius [4-6 mile] radio [from the border] and that they have no intention of using the [Hezbollah’s elite] Radwan forces to attack Israel” Hochstein’s efforts may bear fruit, Bitar said.
The parallel tracks of diplomacy and military action are interconnected.
Still, there is an oft-repeated fear that a miscalculation could force an escalation with neither side willing to give its opponents a chance to declare a moral victory.
A war could still be avoided if it were not for the aforementioned miscalculation or a political decision by Israel to go ahead based on internal considerations.
For its part, Hezbollah has remained steadfast in its position of demanding a ceasefire as the only precondition for stopping the fighting.
“We are in a situation where internal political considerations prevail on both sides,” Bitar said.
“Hezbollah is aware that the majority of Lebanese, including a significant portion of its own supporters, do not want a new war,” he added.
“Both sides are taking these factors into consideration, however, we are in a situation that is extremely volatile and any miscalculation by either side could lead to a new full-blown crisis. [escalated conflict] in the region.”
