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Fighting on Israel’s northern border will continue, albeit within largely accepted rules of behaviour. Hezbollah can’t portray itself as a resistance movement against Israel if it isn’t seen to be engaging in the current fight. And the fact that Israel has to retain assets in the north that it could be deploying in Gaza does mean that Hezbollah’s limited engagement is of benefit to Hamas. But Hamas should not expect Hezbollah to do anything that risks an overwhelming response from the Israelis. For all the rhetorical support for the Palestinian cause, there are limits to what Hezbollah will sacrifice in pursuit of it.
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This adherence to the rules of the game is likely to continue for the foreseeable future with changes in intensity along the way. However, the problem with a relatively ill-defined set of rules defining “acceptable” military action by Hezbollah is their very lack of definition. Nobody knows exactly what the red lines are.
In the past few days, though, Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, made those lines clear: “If Hezbollah decides to enter the war, it will long for the Second [2006] Lebanon War … It will be making the mistake of its life. We will strike it with strength that it cannot even imagine and the significance to it and to the country of Lebanon will be devastating.”
So while it is unlikely that Hezbollah will open any second front on Israel’s northern border in support of Hamas, the attack of October 7 was unprecedented in its ferocity. Israel’s ground operation will generate enormous anti-Israeli hostility in the region. Given the febrile atmosphere that pervades the region currently, the possibility of accidentally breaching the accepted rules of the game are magnified. Hezbollah, however, does not see unfettered support for Hamas as a hill it wishes to die on.
Dr Rodger Shanahan is a former army officer, Middle East analyst and the author of Clans, Parties and Clerics: the Shi’a of Lebanon.
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