The assassination of Saleh al-Arouri, deputy head of Hamas's political bureau, in Beirut yesterday puts Hezbollah in a bind, caught between the previous declarations of its leader Hassan Nasrallah about responding to Israel and the current situation in Lebanon.
Al-Arouri and his henchmen were killed in a Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut's Dahieh Shiite Muslim suburb, emphasizing to Nasrallah that his enemies are able to penetrate his own backyard. It is no surprise that the Al-Akhbar newspaper, which is close to Hezbollah, described the assassination as 'crossing a red line' for Nasrallah.
However, Lebanon is shattered and fragmented - economically, socially and governmentally. It is suffocated by the Lebanese constitution which states that the president must be a Maronite Christian. However, since Michel Aoun finished his term in October 2022, the parliament has not been able to choose a successor. At the same time, according to the constitution, the prime minister should be a Sunni Muslim and Najib Mikati has been serving only as interim prime minister for more than a year.
The current government is not in a position to provide Lebanon with solutions in what the World Bank describes as one of the "top three most severe global crises since 1850." The lack of ability to reach agreements on difficult measures that would allow significant foreign aid to restore the country's economy, has led to the costs of any aid package designed for Lebanon to increase exponentially. Losses in the financial and public sectors have jumped from about $44 billion to $72 billion. At the same time, the Lebanese pound has crashed 98%.
The result is that 70% of the population find it difficult to provide for their basic needs and 78% cannot heat their homes. In normal times, Nasrallah has taken advantage of this to recruit poor Shiites to Hezbollah's ranks, but now if his response to the assassination were to be very significant, he could lead all of Lebanon to an all-out war. The Hezbollah secretary general is an arch-terrorist, but he understands the consequences. A third Lebanon war with Israel would seal the death sentence of the Lebanese state. In such a situation, not only the Sunnis and Christians, but also the Shiites would not forgive him.
Will an escalation lead to all-out war?
The challenge that traps Nasrallah after yesterday's incident is added to the trap he was caught in on October 7. The murderous Hamas attack did not only surprise Israel but also caught Iran and Hezbollah unprepared. It can only be estimated what might have happened on the Lebanese border, if Hamas and Hezbollah had opened a coordinated war on October 7, in the same way that Israel was surprised on two fronts in the Yom Kippur War by the Syrian and Egyptian armies.
For Nasrallah this was particularly painful because he understood well that his flagship project, the Radwan force, which has been training for years to conquer Galilee settlements, will require a substantial change. The Israeli concept built around fences and technology at the expense of manpower ended on October 7. In hindsight, this has clearly been very lucky.
If it took several days to clean out all the terrorists from 22 settlements on the Gaza border on flat, open terrain, imagine how much more difficult it would have been with the hillside settlements on the Lebanese border after terrorists had seized Galilee villages.
These two binds put Nasrallah in a position in which he understands that he has to respond and even act in a way that is seen as an escalation. The big question will be whether the escalation will be something that Israel can swallow, or will be something so terrible that it will lead to all-out war.
We will go some way to knowing the answer this evening after Nasrallah speaks at an event to mark four years since the assassination of Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on January 3, 2024.
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