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.
The Biden administration is no doubt cognizant of these dynamics and has poured significant diplomatic capital into preventing escalation. U.S. officials have had to work overtime over the last several days. On July 27, a rocket strike on a soccer field in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights killed a dozen children, the deadliest attack inside Israeli territory since October 7. Israeli politicians were aghast. “Lebanon should burn,” Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen tweeted. ”We are approaching the moment of an all-out war against Hezbollah and Lebanon,” Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said. Former IDF chief of staff Benny Gantz, who left Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wartime cabinet in early June, was breathing fire: ”Israel must respond to this incident, it must have a comprehensive plan of action. It is possible to hit Lebanon hard and to tear it apart.”
The urgency to respond only became more pressing as time went by. On July 30, another civilian in northern Israel was killed in a rocket attack claimed by Hezbollah.
It didn’t take long for Netanyahu to retaliate. On July 30, an Israeli drone strike in the Dahiya, Hezbollah’s Beirut stronghold, targeted Fuad Shukr, one of Hezbollah’s most senior military officials and a man who is also wanted by the FBI for involvement in the 1983 truck bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut. The Israelis have pointed to Shukr as a man heavily involved in attacks against Israel in the past, including the strike on the soccer pitch several days ago.