An Israel-Hezbollah War Solves Nothing — And Nobody Can Stop It

-Analysis-

PARIS — Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s longtime top leader, has spoken out at every important moment since October 7, including at every setback suffered by his movement. And this week, it goes without saying that he suffered a humiliating setback, with the Israeli operation that detonated pagers and walkie-talkies across Lebanon, and even Syria, killing at least 37 people and wounding thousands more.

The Hezbollah leader described this unprecedented Israeli operation as “a declaration of war,” and asserted that Israel had “crossed all red lines.” But as in his previous speeches, he merely promised to retaliate in due course, without going any further.As if to taunt him further, Israeli fighter planes flew over Beirut just before he spoke; meanwhile, other jets carried out up to 70 raids on Lebanese and Syrian territory on Thursday.

Israel wants to show the whole region its strength and that it’s not afraid of the Shiite movement.

This is real warfare, with the highest death toll in Hezbollah’s ranks since October 7 — but it’s also psychological warfare, which is an integral part of this confrontation.

Hezbollah and Israel face complex but different dilemmas.

Declaration of war, without a caveat 

Lebanon’s pro-Iranian movement knows it must strike back if it is not to lose face completely, and even threaten its hegemonic position on the Lebanese political scene. But even if Nasrallah speaks of a “declaration of war”, he still doesn’t want to engage in a major confrontation with the Jewish state, from which he would emerge weakened — especially after having demonstrated his vulnerabilities in broad daylight.

Wars in Lebanon rarely go as planned.

Israel’s dilemma is different: there is great temptation to launch a massive assault to destroy Hezbollah’s weapons and infrastructure in Lebanon. It has even grown stronger in recent days, with the promise that tens of thousands of evacuated residents of northern Israel will be able to return safely to their homes. This is difficult to achieve without a war with Hezbollah.

But Israel’s American allies don’t want it, and Israeli opinion itself is lukewarm. The past experiences of wars in Lebanon shows that they rarely go as planned…

Strategic void

What can prevent the war from spreading? We’d like to be able to answer that it’s the realization that an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah won’t solve anything. Certainly not the fate of the hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza, which many Israelis would like to be a priority — nor the regional balance of power, which would not be durably affected.

Hezbollah is playing up its position as Iran’s spearhead in the Middle East

In fact, none of the players in this dangerous face-off has any real strategy. Hezbollah is playing up its position as Iran’s spearhead in the Middle East, which requires a military posture, not diplomacy. A posture is not a strategy.

The Israeli government, for its part, does not want to give in to American pressure to conclude with a ceasefire in Gaza, which would probably lower tension on the other fronts.

And now Israel has got the attention of the whole world with “Operation Explosive Pagers,” worthy of a Hollywood action thriller. But that hasn’t changed the fact that it still has no good argument that its security would be strengthened by a war with Hezbollah in Lebanon. That leaves the region with an impasse that is both violent an all-consuming.