Rym Momtaz
Hizbullah is attempting a delicate balancing act in its response to Israel, seeking to resist American deterrence, maintain pressure on Israel and achieve domestic political gains, all whilst avoiding a regional war.Three months into the Israeli military offensive in Gaza, tension at the Israel–Lebanon border is at its highest, and the risk of war is spreading.
As the hostilities have increased, and Israel’s attacks have grown more brazen, Hizbullah’s margin of manoeuvre has become increasingly constrained. Its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has gone to great lengths in all four of his speeches since the Hamas-led 7 October 2023 attacks against Israel to project a sense of strategic restraint and strength. But the growing number of Israeli strikes deep inside Lebanese territory and rising Hizbullah casualties could force an unpredictable escalation.
Mounting pressure
In recent weeks, Israel has intensified its threats against Lebanon as the Israeli government faces growing domestic discontent over the war in Gaza, where its military has failed both to decapitate Hamas and demonstrably degrade its capabilities, as well as to free any hostages. In late 2023, South Africa lodged a case at the International Court of Justice accusing Tel Aviv of genocide.
On 6 January 2024, Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant threatened that the Israeli military could attack Beirut with the same force it has used in Gaza. And Israeli military attacks in Lebanon have grown more escalatory in intensity and geographic scope. Attacks attributed to Israel hit Hizbullah’s stronghold in the southern suburb of Beirut for the first time since their 2006 war, killing top Hamas commander Saleh al-Arouri. Israel has deliberately shelled the United States-funded Lebanese Armed Forces, and Israeli attacks on civilians and journalists in south Lebanon have been condemned by human-rights groups as evidence of possible war crimes.
Hizbullah has displayed a restrained military response so far, while attempting to capitalise on the situation to make political and diplomatic gains. The US is currently seeking to provide a diplomatic resolution that would settle the outstanding border disputes between the two countries, intensify investment in Lebanon’s gas exploration and reconfigure the presence of Hizbullah’s fighters on the Israel–Lebanon border. Hizbullah has taken this opportunity to stake out a maximalist position while conditioning any negotiations on the cessation of the offensive in Gaza. However, it is clear from the content and tone of Nasrallah’s four speeches since 7 October that the pressure to act more forcefully is mounting.
A calibrated response
To keep his constituency onside and ensure the survival of the party, Nasrallah has repeatedly highlighted how effectively Hizbullah’s muted actions have constrained Israel’s margin of manoeuvre, while also addressing – in increasingly personal and emotional terms – the hardships faced by his constituency as a result of Israeli attacks. His most recent speech on 5 January 2024 ended with an unusually long, emotional address to the people of southern Lebanon, thanking them for their steadfastness and sacrifice. Tens of thousands of Lebanese people have been forcibly displaced from the south due to Israeli attacks over the past three months.
Nasrallah has also reminded his followers that Hizbullah has not acted alone, but rather as part of a coordinated, multi-pronged response across Iran’s network of influence in the region. Instead of opening simultaneous direct fronts against Israel – as they had intimated they might in their threats of a ‘unity of fronts’ prior to the 7 October attacks – Tehran’s affiliated armed groups have deployed the strategy asymmetrically, widening the scope of pressure to include not only Israel, but also US troops in the region and the global economy.
In light of the swift and unexpected deployment of deterrent US forces in the region in the immediate aftermath of the 7 October attacks, Hizbullah has limited itself to relatively low-key attacks that nevertheless have been intense enough to pull away Israeli military resources from the Gaza front, alleviating some pressure on Hamas and other armed groups. Meanwhile, Tehran-backed Iraqi militias have escalated their attacks against US troops in Iraq and Syria. And the Houthis’ attacks on vessels in the Red Sea have meant that maritime trade through the Suez Canal has all but ground to a halt, diverting cargo along eighteenth-century routes around the Cape of Good Hope.
Through these actions, Iran, Hizbullah and other actors in Tehran’s network of influence have attempted to preserve Hizbullah as the principal instrument of deterrence, while applying indirect pressure on Israel through aggressions against US troops and by causing disruption to international markets. This strategy has paid off so far, but only partially. It casts doubt on the utility of maintaining all the current US bases in Iraq and Syria, and global trade has suffered from the blocking of the Red Sea. But with the death toll in Gaza now exceeding 22,000 people (the majority of whom are civilians) and facing an Israeli escalation in Lebanon, Hizbullah’s domestic constituency is growing restive.
As a result, Nasrallah has doubled down on Hizbullah’s tactics in each new speech. On 5 January, for instance, he asserted that the group now has a ‘historic opportunity to liberate all of the Lebanese territory’, and he set out what appears to be a maximalist negotiating position regarding the United States’ proposed demarcation plan.
No comments:
Post a Comment