After the cross-border exchanges broke out between Hizbullah and Israel on 8 October last year there were no signs of their snowballing into a massive attack against southern and eastern Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut.

All were cautioning against the slide into a full-scale regional war, and pressures on both sides compelled them to calibrate their strikes. This measured approach was known as the “rules of engagement.”

Hizbullah’s purpose in confronting Israel from the north was to reduce the force of the Israeli revenge against the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas after 7 October. The vehemence of the Israeli assault suggested that it was determined to bomb Gaza into non-existence. By opening another front, Hizbullah hoped at least to slow that scenario by forcing Israel to redeploy some of its forces to the north.

In his first speech about three months after the war began last year, Hizbullah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah denied that the group’s intervention signalled the start of an expanded war. He said that Gaza was the central front, while the Lebanese front and the strikes from the Iraqi Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) and the Ansar Allah (Houthi) Movement in Yemen were supporting Gaza.

However, he did suggest the possibility of escalation should Israel launch a ground invasion into Gaza or threaten Lebanon.

For a while, Israel’s responses to shelling from Lebanon were limited and targeted the sources of missile fire. It seemed as if Hizbullah had convinced the Israeli Occupation that restraint in Gaza was the rational option. However, a few weeks later, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) pressed ahead with their threatened ground offensive, partially penetrating Gaza from several directions while carrying out heavy and indiscriminate bombardment of various sectors of the Strip.

At the outset of the cross-border exchanges, Hizbullah targeted IOF locations in Lebanese territories occupied by Israel, such as the Shebaa Farms, the Kfar Shuba Hills, and the town of Ghajar. Then it began to expand in response to Israeli escalation.

First, it let units from the Qassam and Saraya Al-Quds Brigades operating in Lebanon shell locations inside Israel. These were joined by the Fajr Forces of the Lebanese branch of the Jamaa Islamiya. Hizbullah thereby signalled that it had forged a diverse military alliance, lending weight to its threat of opening a major front.

Hizbullah showed that it could deftly leverage its strategic weight, not only to ease the military pressure on the Palestinian resistance but also to strengthen the resistance’s hand in the negotiations over a ceasefire and a hostage/prisoner exchange. It established a model of active and effective support for the Palestinian resistance that elicited widespread admiration.

The tactic of infiltrating across the border to abduct IOF soldiers to hold for prisoner exchanges was patented by Hizbullah in the Truthful Promise Operation in 2006, which sparked the Israeli aggression against Lebanon that year. Two years later, a prisoner exchange deal was brokered by Germany, closing the issue of Lebanese resistance fighters in the Occupying Power’s prisons.

Hizbullah never had an intention of dragging Lebanon into a full-scale war. The planning and timing of the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation carried out in southern Israel was purely Palestinian. It was driven by several priorities, foremost among them the need to free Palestinian prisoners in the Occupying Power’s jails, to end the stranglehold of the economic siege on Gaza, and to bring the Palestine cause back to regional and international attention before it was buried by US-sponsored normalisation projects.

Lebanon was focused on negotiations over a maritime border demarcation agreement with Israel. The negotiations had been going on intermittently for two years, and Hizbullah was as aware as other Lebanese actors of the fragility of the Lebanese economy and its need for energy resources.

Therefore, Hizbullah took pains to follow a strategy that would leverage its well-known military potential to compel Israel to negotiate and reach a ceasefire. The conclusion of a temporary truce and hostage/prisoner exchange deal in late November 2023 was a sign that Hizbullah’s strategy was effective, despite the losses it sustained in Southern Lebanon in IOF attacks.

Hizbullah further demonstrated its desire to avert a full-scale war by limiting its strikes against IOF military and intelligence sites to a depth of seven to 10 km inside Israel. Israel initially limited its responses to a similar depth and to military targets, apart from when it targeted civilian vehicles and journalists whom it claimed it had mistaken for Hizbullah fighters.

During this period of limited exchanges, Israel conveyed messages to Hizbullah via Western officials such as French envoy Jean-Yves Le Drian, US envoy Amos Hochstein, and a senior German intelligence official. Their mission was to push for a separate deal on the Lebanon front so that Israel could focus on decimating Gaza.

The envisioned deal entailed the withdrawal of Hizbullah’s forces to the north of the Litani River in Lebanon, transforming the south into a demilitarised (and possibly inhabitant-free) zone, and the bringing in of international forces to implement UN Security Council Resolution 1701 in coordination with the Lebanese army.

Hizbullah naturally refused to negotiate a separate deal. It was aware of Israel’s designs and unwilling to let the IOF unleash the full ferocity of its collective punishment against the Palestinians. Nevertheless, it was not entirely opposed to implementing Resolution 1701, and it had implemented it after 2006 without suffering a loss in its influence or military control of the south. The question was not so much the substance of a deal but the timing.

ESCALATION: In response to Hizbullah’s refusal to disengage the Lebanese from the Gaza track, Israel decided to raise the costs of Hizbullah’s continuing to support the Palestinian resistance.

The IOF began its escalation in January 2024 with a series of targeted assassinations, killing the deputy leader of Hamas, Saleh Al-Arouri, in the southern suburbs of Beirut on 2 January and, a few days later, killing the head of Hizbullah’s Radwan Force, Wissam Al-Tawil.

A second round of escalation was followed by a period of calm that lasted to April this year. Then Israel not only escalated again but also broadened the scope of its escalation to include Iranian military leaders. The likely aim was to force Tehran to pressure its ally Hizbullah into making a separate deal. In April Israel bombed the Iranian Consulate in Damascus in Syria, killing seven people, including Mohamed Reza Zahedi, a senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander who had been responsible for coordinating Iranian support for Syria and Lebanon.

The Israeli strike against a diplomatic compound set the world on edge in anticipation of an inevitable Iranian response. In fact, the response, when it came two weeks later, was cautious and carefully calibrated. It included a volley of more than 300 low-grade rockets and drones that travelled slowly enough to be intercepted by US and French warships before they could reach their targets in Israel.

In mid-April, Hizbullah launched the Arab Al-Aramshe attack using drones and rockets that were not intercepted by Israeli air defences, hitting a secret Israeli intelligence headquarters in the north, and killing an officer and injuring 18 others. Some days before, Hizbullah had repelled several IOF attempts to cross into Lebanon, although these were probably probes to test the strength of Hizbullah’s ability to protect Lebanon’s borders.

Israel instigated the next round of escalation in June with another series of assassinations. Foremost among the victims was Abu Talib, a key commander of the Lebanese resistance. Hizbullah responded with a barrage of missiles targeting IOF artillery and armoured units in northern Israel and the Occupied Golan Heights. Yet, even up to this stage the two sides appeared eager to return to the original “rules of engagement” and to their routine cross-border exchanges.

Despite the continued assassinations of its military leaders, Hizbullah appears to have been unaware of the extent of the intelligence breach it had suffered. Israel seized on the inauguration of new Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian as another opportunity to escalate and to send a message to the Iranian axis. There were back-to-back assassinations of Hizbullah commander Fuad Shukr in the southern suburbs of Beirut and late Hamas Political Bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on 30 and 31 July.

Hizbullah responded about two weeks later, during which the Israeli defences had been on full alert. It struck Israel’s notorious military intelligence Unit 8200 in the Galilot Complex north of Tel Aviv. One aim was to establish a new deterrence equation stating that if Israel struck a suburb of Beirut, Hizbullah would hit back at a suburb of Tel Aviv. But Israel appears to have concluded that if Hizbullah took so long to respond to a strike, a sudden onslaught in rapid succession would paralyse it completely.

By this time, Hizbullah understood the extent to which its security had been compromised. But before it could unearth the source, it was struck by a rapid succession of attacks, starting with the terrorist pager-bombings that killed and wounded thousands of innocent bystanders. Israel then carried out more bombings of the Lebanese capital to kill Radwan Force leaders, intensive bombardments of Southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley, further bombing of Beirut to kill Ali Karaki (who was at first missed) and Ibrahim Qubaisi, culminating with the killing of Hassan Nasrallah himself last week.

As Hizbullah geared up for new challenges, Israel waved the possibility of striking a French and US-mediated agreement with Lebanon for a three-week truce to coordinate a deal between Lebanon and Gaza. When Hizbullah showed its willingness to deescalate, Israel bombed its headquarters in Beirut and assassinated Hassan Nasrallah.

ISRAELI KILLING: In its latest wave of attacks against Lebanon, Israel has killed at least 1,700 people and injured more than 8,500. Most of the dead and wounded were civilians and medical rescue teams. The intensive bombardments of the south, the Bekaa, and Beirut’s southern suburbs have displaced nearly 100,000 people.

Hizbullah now faces many urgent priorities, not least of which is the need to fill the vacancies in its military and political leadership. Most of the assassinated figures were from Hizbullah’s founding generation, so the transition will entail a generational shift in the hierarchical structure.

Hizbullah has resumed its missile fire against Israel within hours of each Israeli attack, demonstrating that its capabilities are unaffected. It has expanded the range of its missile fire to as far south as Israeli settlements east of Occupied Jerusalem. However, its most significant response will be its readiness to meet the anticipated Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon and inflict painful losses on the invading forces.

At that point, Hizbullah will be able to restore the balance of deterrence and strengthen its hand when negotiating a peace settlement.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 10 October, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly