Between August 2006 and October 2023, the Israeli-Lebanese border region was for the most part stable. Despite the occasional rocket attack or mortar round, residents on both sides of the U.N.-demarcated Blue Line were able to go about their daily lives in relative peace. The month-long war in the summer of 2006 between Israel and Hezbollah—the Lebanese militia and political party—was so disastrous for both that an unwritten regime of deterrence was soon established. Neither Israel nor Hezbollah wanted to re-live the experience.
Then came October 7, the day Hamas invaded southern Israel, butchered about 1,200 people and took some 250 hostages back to Gaza. Less than day later, the Israeli-Lebanese front heated up again, with Hezbollah using a small portion of its considerable firepower to target small towns and cities in Israel’s far north. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah justified the group’s actions as a way to force Israel to devote more troops to the north, diminishing what the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) could do in Gaza. Hezbollah thereby sought to burnish its anti-Israel credentials in a way that wouldn’t compel Israel to launch a full-scale war in Lebanon.
This was always a dicey decision. Entering a war is one thing; managing escalation dynamics is something else entirely. The risk over the last 10 months has been that a particularly deadly strike inside Israel or Lebanon could alter the calculations of the combatants to such an extent that a full-scale war became likely, if not inevitable.
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