Hezbollah Responds to Israeli Sabre Rattling

Posted on June 6, 2015

Is the Jewish state about to launch a new war in Lebanon?

Hezbollah has been scoring some major victories in the fight against ISIS. Thus, from the Jewish state’s perspective, a new war in Lebanon at this time would make strategic sense. A couple of recently published articles would suggest the Israelis may well be planning such a war, possibly sometime this summer.

The first one, published on May 12, appeared in the New York Times, written by Jewish reporter Isabel Kershner. Here is an excerpt:

Maps and aerial photography provided to The New York Times by Israeli military officials this week illustrate, they say, that Hezbollah has moved most of its military infrastructure into the Shiite villages of southernLebanon and around their perimeters. Israel says this amounts to using the civilians as a human shield.

Without knowing when the next war will break out, or what might precipitate it, the Israelis are blunt about the implications: They will not hesitate to strike at those targets, so southern Lebanon will most likely be the scene of widespread destruction.

Effectively, the Israelis are warning that in the event of another conflict with Hezbollah, many Lebanese civilians will probably be killed, and that it should not be considered Israel’s fault.

The article goes on to quote an unidentified “senior Israeli military official” as vowing, “We will hit Hezbollah hard, while making every effort to limit civilian casualties as much as we can.”

The theme of trying to “limit civilian casualties” is continued in the second article, published June 3 in the Jerusalem Post. Here the writer quotes a “senior military source” (perhaps the same one who spoke to the Times?) as saying that Israel plans to “evacuate” at least a million residents from Lebanon before launching its military strike on Hezbollah.

This talk of evacuating millions of people in Lebanon probably is intended as a dose of psychological warfare, and of course Nasrallah labels it as such in the above video. At any rate, here is the excerpt from the Jerusalem Post:

Discussing a new strategy for dealing with Hezbollah’s battle doctrine of using civilian built-up areas as military bases to rain death and destruction upon Israel, the source spoke as the IDF approached the conclusion of a weeklong drill simulating conflict on multiple fronts, including the Israel Air Force practicing striking of large numbers of targets and simulating conflict in northern combat arenas.

Although the Home Front Command’s role in that drill, which focused on civilian defenses, dominated media coverage of the exercise, the source stressed that the IDF had spent recent days quietly rehearsing large-scale offensive capabilities.

The IDF is training for the eventuality of war even though Hezbollah is unlikely to open a front against Israel at this time given the Shi’ite terrorist organization’s entanglement in Syria where 5,000 to 7,000 of its fighters currently are engaging Sunni rebel groups.

“If we have no choice, we have to evacuate 1 million, 1.5 million residents in Lebanon, and act,” the source said. “Hezbollah should not plan to fire on us and try to kill our civilians, and expect that we would respond by acting according to standards it seems to think only exist here.”

Failure to evacuate the civilian population would result in many thousands of non-combatant deaths, according to IDF assessments.

I suspect Israel has no plans on evacuating “millions” of civilians from Lebanon this summer. Moreover, I don’t think Israeli concerns over civilian casualties stem from anything other than a wish to avoid complications over a war crimes investigation that might ensue–and of course, as the record shows, the Jewish state has more than enough power to quash, neutralize, or sully the findings of any possible investigation.

Nasrallah’s comment that Israel “has been based upon killing and destruction since it was founded” and that its “hostile and terrorist nature will not change” is, of course, an accurate analysis and a reasonable assumption.

But that doesn’t seem to matter to Saudi Arabia. The Gulf Kingdom and the Jewish state are making it pretty clear for one and all to see that they consider each other allies.

In the photo below we see two men shaking hands in a photo op which took place this past Thursday at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington:

The man on the left is Dore Gold, an official with the Israeli Foreign Ministry; and on the left we have Anwar Eshki, a former Saudi general. The Times of Israel described it as “an extremely unusual public meeting of high ranking Israeli and Saudi officials.”

My guess is that a new Israeli war in Lebanon–whether it happens this summer or at some point further down the road–is just about inevitable.

For a more in-depth report on Nasrallah’s most recent speech, click here.