Hezbollah says it can and will fight until a ceasefire in Gaza is agreed, here’s a look at the scenarios.
Beirut, Lebanon – Hezbollah is preparing for different scenarios as the low-level conflict between it and Israel threatens to spin out into something larger.
Feeding the idea of Israel shifting military focus from Gaza to Lebanon have been statements from officials including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who said on Sunday that Israel is winding down operations in Rafah and will redirect to Lebanon.
Serious Israeli military action on Lebanon would drag in regional and possibly international actors.
Israel’s attacks to date have displaced nearly 100,000 people from their homes in south Lebanon and killed at least 435 people, some 349 of them named by Hezbollah as its members.
Hezbollah appears to be sticking to its guns, matching Israeli rhetoric with its own, and intensifying its cross-border attacks – which have so far killed 15 Israeli soldiers and 10 civilians, according to Israel.
The two have been trading attacks across the border since the day after Israel launched a war on Gaza on October 7, the day a Hamas-led operation in Israel killed 1,139 people, according to the AFP news agency.
“I don’t think Hezbollah will accept [negotiations] in absence of a ceasefire [in Gaza],” said Amal Saad, the author of two books on Hezbollah. “The war will be ongoing.
“Nasrallah has said they will keep fighting until Hamas is victorious and if Hamas is weakened and undermined then Hezbollah won’t sit on [its] hands,” she said.
“There’s a strategic objective here … Hezbollah will not leave Hamas on its own.”
The idea of a ceasefire seemed to have hit a snag as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hardline coalition partners demanded a “complete defeat of Hamas” before an end to the war.
However, some Israeli officials have expressed doubts about the idea of a complete defeat of Hamas, underlining that Hamas is an idea and ideas cannot be eradicated.
Ceasefire or bust
Military spokesperson Daniel Hagari expressed such doubts on June 19, while National Security Council head Tzachi Hanegbi said the same on Tuesday, less than a week later.
Whether in tacit acceptance of that idea or for other considerations, Israel is now talking about a lower-intensity phase, in which, it claims, its military would continue to target Hamas in Gaza while looking for a political alternative to the group in the enclave.
On June 19, he said his group has more than 100,000 fighters and that many heads of regional armed groups had offered more fighters to join the fight against Israel, offers he rejected as Hezbollah is “overwhelmed” with cadres already.
A day before his speech, Hezbollah released drone footage taken over the Israeli city of Haifa, an implicit threat that the city could be targeted.
Another recent video by Hezbollah showed what appears to be a series of targets inside Israel and the Mediterranean Sea.
“Hezbollah is displaying and simulating to Israel its options [to widen the] war … [this will make Israel] understand that the repercussions are seriously costly,” Imad Salamey, a political scientist at the Lebanese American University, said.
Nasrallah also threatened Cyprus, an island nation that is in the European Union but not NATO, should it support Israel in war.
Cyprus responded that it does not cooperate militarily with Israel in any conflicts.
“Since October 8th, Cyprus has been a key location where Israeli reservists fly into and then go on to Israel,” Seth Krummrich, a former special forces officer who is now at Global Guardian risk management firm, told media.
Israel has used Cypriot territory for training drills in the past.
The threat was Nasrallah’s way of signalling “to the European Union to refrain from supporting Israel in any way, which may implicate [its] member states,” Salamey said.
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