“We can plunge Lebanon completely into darkness and dissolve Hezbollah’s power within days,” Benny Gantz said in June at a conference at Reichman University in Herzliya, Israel. Tensions were already high, with Israeli authorities warning the Lebanese extremist group, which has close ties to Iran, of “repercussions.”
In fact, it would not be difficult at all for Israel to plunge Lebanon into darkness. The country’s electricity grid, already crippled by decades of mismanagement and the country’s economic collapse, is barely functioning as it is. A few well-timed airstrikes could put an end to that. And that would cost Hezbollah, a terrorist organization but a political party in Lebanon, dearly.
But it is extremely doubtful that Israel will be able to dismantle the military might of Hezbollah (which is often that of Hamas) in a few days. Ever since the inconclusive war of 2006, both Israel and Hezbollah have been planning… revenge. Now they seem closer than ever. And it could be long, bloody and with the potential to drag all the major powers into it, evolving into a regional and eventually global conflict.
The deadly attack on the Golan Heights
Israel reached in the early hours of this Sunday Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, then the rocket attack on a stadium in the Golan Heights, which left 12 children dead.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) blamed the attack on Hezbollah after the rocket was fired from Lebanon. Hezbollah categorically denies any involvement. In any case, the attack was the deadliest on Israel’s northern border since October 7, when a horrific Hamas terror attack triggered the Gaza war. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Hezbollah “will pay a heavy price.”
The UN called for “maximum restraint” from all sides in order to avoid a wider war that would “plunge the entire region into an unprecedented catastrophe”. The BBC is now trying to verify reports that Hezbollah told the UN that the stadium blast was caused by an Israeli interceptor missile.
Majdal Shams is one of four villages in the Golan Heights, home to some 25,000 members of the Arabic-speaking Druze religious and ethnic group.
How strong is Hezbollah?
Its arsenal includes, according to Israeli estimates, at least 150,000 missiles and rockets. Israel estimates that the group has launched just over 5,000 since October, meaning that, as Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said in a speech last week, much of its arsenal remains intact.
According to CNN, Israeli authorities were surprised by the sophistication of the extremist group’s attacks. These include systematic precision strikes on several Israeli checkpoints along the border, the downing of major Israeli high-flying drones and attacks on Iron Dome batteries.
Perhaps the biggest surprise for Israel, however, was the 9-minute video (taken by a drone) that Hezbollah released online of highly sensitive political and military infrastructure in and around the northern city of Haifa.
Highly trained army of terrorists
In addition to its weapons, Hezbollah has at least 40,000 to 50,000 “fighters” at its disposal. Nasrallah recently claimed that there are more than 100,000. Many of them gained combat experience fighting alongside regime forces in the Syrian civil war.
According to military analysts with deep knowledge of events in the Middle East, Hezbollah is highly trained and disciplined, unlike many other extremist groups.
Unlike Gaza, Lebanon is not surrounded by hostile neighbors. It has strategic depth, with friendly regimes in Syria and Iraq and, of course, direct access to Iran.
Israel regularly strikes targets in Syria that it believes are involved in arms transfers to Hezbollah, but all indications are that these strikes have been only partially successful.
In the event of a full-scale war, both sides would be capable of inflicting significant pain on the other.
“Fire and blood”
Earlier this year, Reichmann University published a report titled “Fire and Blood: The Chilling Reality Israel Faces in a War with Hezbollah.”
It presents a grim scenario in which the group (also backed by Iran) would fire between 2,500 and 3,000 rockets and missiles a day for weeks at Israeli military installations, as well as densely populated cities in the center of the country. In the entire 34-day war of 2006, Hezbollah is estimated to have fired around 4,000 rockets – an average of 117 per day.
How would Israel respond? On July 13, 2006—less than 24 hours after the war began—Israeli warplanes bombed and destroyed Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International Airport. It is widely expected that if war breaks out now, the airport will again be one of Israel’s first targets. But unlike in 2006, Hezbollah may be able to strike Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport by 2024.
In 2006, Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city, was within range of Hezbollah missiles. This time, those rockets are expected to hit Israel much deeper.
Change in strategic balance
Looking at the Middle East, the strategic balance that has long favored Israel is shifting, experts say.
Its enemies are no longer corrupt and incompetent Arab regimes, but a range of non-state actors – from Hezbollah and Hamas to Islamic Jihad, the Houthis in Yemen and other militias in Iraq and Syria. And of course, there is always the great rival: Iran, which would hardly remain aloof from a possible conflict between Israel and Lebanon.
The same would apply to US and Western interests in the Middle East in general. Many believe it would be the first step towards a world war.