Fighting between Hezbollah and Israel escalated over the weekend, despite diplomatic efforts to ease tensions between the two countries and thwart expected Hezbollah and Iranian attacks on Israel.
Saturday’s Israeli attack was one of the bloodiest for civilians since fighting began in October. Israel said it struck a Hezbollah arms depot in Nabatieh, southern Lebanon, killing 10 Syrian workers and their families. Hezbollah responded with a barrage of 55 missiles on the town of Ayelet Hashahar in northern Israel.
Three UNIFIL peacekeepers were also slightly injured on Sunday when they were caught in an explosion while on patrol in the Lebanese border town of Yarin. A UNIFIL source said the soldiers were likely wounded in an Israeli airstrike nearby, but that the incident was still under investigation.
Ten months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has made the threat of all-out war higher than ever after Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel in “solidarity” with Hamas’ October 7 attack.
Hezbollah and Iran have vowed revenge against Israel for the assassinations of Hezbollah military chief of staff Fuad Shukr in Beirut and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. Israel has not claimed responsibility for Haniyeh’s killing but has a history of carrying out targeted assassinations across the region.
Hezbollah released a video on Friday showing trucks loaded with missiles driving through a city-sized network of tunnels, the first time the group has shown its well-known network on camera.
A Hezbollah source said: “The enemy [Israel] They want war and they are always trying to put pressure on us, so we are prepared for all possibilities,” he said, adding that the group’s rocket capabilities are “very large” and that what was shown in Friday’s video was “just a drop in the bucket of what Hezbollah has.”
The United States and other Western countries have engaged in intense diplomacy to urge de-escalation since the twin assassinations in Beirut and Tehran. U.S. special envoy Amos Hochstein visited both Tel Aviv and Beirut this week, and emergency talks on a ceasefire in Gaza were held in Doha last week.
But Western diplomats in Beirut said they had not been informed of Hezbollah’s promises of retaliation against Israel and that Hezbollah had given no clues about “where or when” an attack would take place.
The media-savvy group has maintained an unusual silence in public. Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah has said anticipating attacks is “part of the punishment” for Israel, in keeping with the group’s historic doctrine of “strategic ambiguity,” and has revealed little about its military capabilities or its intentions to maintain a deterrent.
Neither Britain nor the United States can speak directly to Hezbollah officials and must convey their messages through intermediaries in the Lebanese government or Hezbollah’s ally party, Amal, a game of diplomatic telephone that further complicates Western efforts to gauge the Lebanese group’s thinking.
The credibility of Mr Hofstein, the diplomat leading efforts to stop fighting between Hezbollah and Israel, has also taken a hit in Lebanon, with Hezbollah media accusing him of “deceiving” Lebanese officials by giving false guarantees ahead of Mr Shoukr’s assassination in Beirut.
“Hezbollah does not see Hofstein as a credible negotiator,” said Qassem Kassir, an analyst close to Hezbollah, adding that nevertheless “there is no alternative to U.S. diplomats at this point.”
The Doha talks were launched primarily to thwart attacks by Hezbollah and Iran, which both say the fighting is engineered to pressure Israel into a ceasefire in Gaza.
The talks appear to have postponed retaliation against Israel, but Hezbollah has said attacks will take place regardless of a ceasefire in Gaza.
Hezbollah’s deputy secretary-general, Naim Qassem, stressed on Thursday that it would carry out a “completely separate” response from the fighting in Gaza, but that Hezbollah would halt operations against Israel if a cease-fire were to be established.
British and French foreign ministers David Lamy and Stephane Séjournet warned in the Observer on Sunday that the region was facing a “dangerous moment”.
“One miscalculation could see the situation deteriorate into a more serious and intractable conflict,” they wrote.
