There are lots of reasons for both ensuring a war not be played out. But there is also a possibility a war could be played out. Let’s analyze the possible scenarios so we can understand the possible future relation between Israel and Hezbollah.
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For Israel, having a war with Hezbollah would risk its Covid fight at home while considering another lockdown due to Delta Variant and further strain its relations with United States. A major conflict with Hezbollah require to call all reserves which would ultimately disrupt the economy amid of covid-19 recovery. A war would compel the Iron Dom to be extended from its southern border to Gaza to its northern border with Lebanon. A war also implies to strain the relations with United States. While Washington offers to help Lebanon with $100 m. to boost its economy, such attempt would be seen as major barrier to its stability plan in Middle East.
But a war with Hezbollah also makes a sense. Hezbollah sends rockets to Israel and new Prime Minister popularity is tested. According to Iranian intelligence, Israel forces are trained to attack on Hezbollah on ground. That implies that IDF (Israel Defence Forces) train themselves not only with possible air strikes but also with ground forces. Thus emphasize a complicated plan is on the plan. If Israel chooses to go a war with Hezbollah, it should a quick and direct strike on Hezbollah targets. Any war that Israel would decide to act, would be due to necessity. Therefore, there should be a clear political objectives to stop Iran by altering the Lebanese politics, to paralyze Hezbollah’s ability by striking the Hezbollah’s military junctures and political leadership hideouts and to compel Iran and Hezbollah into accepting its terms unconditionally. While US is withdrawing from the region and Israel security concerns are growing, Israel might preferring striking on Hezbollah. However such strike would complicate the nuclear talks with Iran in amid of new hawkish president, Ebrahim Raisi.
From Hezbollah side, avoiding war makes sense especially in amid of covid-19. In town of Chouya in southern Lebanon, villagers stopped Hezbollah using rocket platform and handled it over Lebanese army in protest for Hezbollah using town location to attach Israel. Its position also has been hurt due to collapsing Lebanon economy. Moreover, its deployed forces in Syria are involved in Syria civil war make it impossible for Hezbollah to engage in wide scale war with Israel since the economic harm to Lebanon and Hezbollah would be devastating.
For Hezbollah, there are no incentives to start a war with Israel. The Syrian war kept them occupied where as covid-19 has hurt the financial support to back its operations. Moreover, any war with Israel would impact the people economically which would yield losing local support in Lebanon.
Therefore, we can only talk any war if Israel might start and that should be only justified with decisive and historical victory. Otherwise, Israel would be heavily impacted in any case. However, there are more reasons not to have any military conflict for now, at least during covid-19 era. As Geopolitic Compass, we do believe that there might be military conflicts between those two sides but a wide spread war is unlikely to happen. However, if it happens, Israel would be first to strike.
