Israel maneuvered itself into a dangerous Military Position

Amid Israel’s ongoing war on Hamas, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been threatening to expand the Gaza conflict into Lebanon against Hezbollah.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the country’s Channel 14 Television that Tel Aviv is ready to move some forces to the north to confront Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah. Could Tel Aviv wage a war on two fronts?

From an Israeli perspective it would be very hard to imagine a double front war, even though we know that within the Israeli Cabinet of war, there are many ministries who are willing to try to open the second front with Hezbollah, Dr Lorenzo Trombetta, Beirut-based scholar and analyst specializing on the Middle East, told Sputnik.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Hezbollah fighters have increasingly exchanged strikes across Lebanon’s southern border since the beginning of Tel Aviv’s Gaza war launched over Hamas’ attack on October 7, 2023.

If current Israel-Lebanon tensions were to spiral out of control, this could impose a heavy toll on both countries in this conflict, Joseph Helou, assistant professor of political science and international affairs at the Department of Social and Education Sciences at the Lebanese American University, told Sputnik.

From the outset of the Arab-Israeli conflict in 1948, the entire Middle East has been, to varying degrees, a powder keg fraught with continuous rounds of conflict.

And now the Israeli prime minister seems to be making aggressive moves to render future conflicts very costly in terms of human lives and material losses.

Once Israel struck the Iranian Consulate in Damascus, Syria, on April 1, and intensified attacks on villages in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah beefed up its own drone attacks.

Recent developments have shown that Hezbollah possesses advanced techniques to command operations via Iran-made drones, the scholar said, and recalled that Hezbollah officials have publicly stated that only part of their military panoply has been used so far.

Hezbollah has developed enormous capabilities in terms of techniques and military strategies, not only weaponry, which makes a conflict between two strong actors quite destructive.

Increased capabilities on both sides of the conflict places the situation on high alert, rendering any real impact assessment of military operations very tentative. Hezbollah has bypassed and even destroyed Israeli defenses on several occasions.

The only solution to the current crisis is a political agreement between Israel and the Lebanese government that keeps Hezbollah away from the border.

An agreement whose principles are already known and accepted by the parties, but Hezbollah insists on not signing it as long as the war in Gaza continues.

Hezbollah has repeatedly warned it would step up military actions unless Israel stops killing Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip. So, Hezbollah has intensified attacks over Israel’s bloody Rafah invasion.

Last week Hezbollah Secretary General Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah played down Israel’s threats to launch an all-out war against the resistance group, warning that it has a 100,000-strong military force capable of waging military actions against Israel in all three domains – land, air and sea.

Nasrallah added that the movement does not want a total war with Israel and called for a complete and permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

Hezbollah released a nine-minute video last week, filmed from an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) which penetrated Israeli air defenses and returned to Lebanese airspace without being detected.

The footage shows sensitive civilian and military locations in and around Haifa, one of Israel’s largest cities. According to some estimates, Hezbollah has up to 150,000-200,000 rockets and missiles and has also mastered the use of unmanned vehicles.

While conceding that the Israeli military capabilities are very strong and very high, Trombetta expressed doubts about Tel Aviv’s chances of succeeding in a next war against Hezbollah.

Technically speaking, Hezbollah has drones and mainly it showed recently, during May and June, its abilities to launch soil-air missiles that can hit or can counter not only Israeli drones, the Hermes 450 and Hermes 900, but also Israeli jet fighters.

So first of all, Hezbollah could try to increase its abilities to defend the Lebanese territory with these surface-to-air missiles.

Hezbollah has beefed up its military stockpiles with new weapons over the past 18 years.

It has also gained extensive military experience during the war against ISIS and other Zionist terrorists in Syria and has had access to capabilities and competencies used by conventional armies.

The CSIS also noted that the geography of southern Lebanon offers advantages for Hezbollah guerrillas, including positions on rocky hills where they can hide and fire rockets, unmanned aircraft systems and anti-tank guided missiles at Israeli positions on the border.

The Israeli Reichman University Institute for Counter-Terrorism assumes that Hezbollah could fire up to 3,000 missiles a day and overwhelm Israel’s air defenses.

The researchers warned that intensive attacks would deplete the Israeli stockpiles of surface-to-air missiles within a few days of combat, exposing the nation to further Hezbollah missile and drone attacks.

They argued that Tel Aviv is unprepared for an all-out war with the resistance force.

We should include also the fact that in case Israel will launch a war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, it is very possible, it is very likely that Iran and other Iranian allies in the region will activate their forces against Israel and the US interests.

Yemen’s Houthi-led government, the Iraqi Islamic Resistance and others could come to Hezbollah’s aid in the event of an all-out Israeli attack on Lebanon.

Sputnik / ABC Flash Point News 2024.