Paul Wood
The American general David Petraeus famously asked of the invasion of Iraq: ‘Tell me how this ends.’ That’s the question as Israeli bombs and missiles fall on Lebanon and the few missiles Hezbollah has sent in response are intercepted. Iran’s ‘axis of resistance’ seems paralysed with indecision. Does Benjamin Netanyahu take this as a win, the vindication of the enormous chance he took by opening a new northern front? Or, like a gambler intoxicated by success at the tables, does he press on? More airstrikes, followed by an invasion of Lebanon… and then the bombers fly on to Iran?
Some Israelis commentators are already calling this the Third Lebanon War (after the wars of 1982-2000 and 2006). That’s a fair description, given how many Lebanese have been killed, at least 600 at the time of writing. How long these punishing airstrikes continue depends, in part, on how many of Hezbollah’s rockets have been destroyed, and how many Israel’s war cabinet believe must be destroyed before the campaign can pause. One Israeli journalist, Ben Caspit, tweeted to say a political source was briefing that half of Hezbollah’s long-range rockets were gone – but the military had said otherwise and that ‘most of the work is still ahead of us’.
A convincing win for Netanyahu would be for the intense American mediation efforts under way to produce a new understanding with Hezbollah, one that ends rocket fire into northern Israel. Those efforts are being led by an American-Israeli former businessman, Amos Hochstein, who once served in the Israel Defence Forces. He doesn’t talk directly to Hezbollah because it’s proscribed by the US as a terrorist group. Instead, he goes through Shiite politicians in Lebanon. The message to them – and to Hezbollah – is said to be that the US won’t be able to restrain Israel if it comes to an all-out war.
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