Israel ramps up ‘game of chicken’ with device attacks on Hezbollah

The deadly pager and hand-held radio attacks in Lebanon this week, along with subsequent strikes on military leaders, raised fears that a larger Israeli attack on Hezbollah is imminent and a wider war is inevitable. 

At least 37 were killed and thousands wounded in Lebanon by the low-tech device explosions Tuesday and Wednesday, while strikes Friday took out top Hezbollah commanders in another escalation in the conflict. 

Israel is also increasingly hinting that it is ready for a bigger fight against Hezbollah as operations wind down in Gaza against Palestinian militant group Hamas. 

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said this week that forces were now entering a “new phase” in the 11-month fight against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, while Israel’s Security Cabinet officially set a war objective of returning its some 60,000 displaced residents to the northern border with Lebanon. 

The rapid attacks in the past few days all point to Israel pivoting its war focus to Hezbollah, but it’s unclear if a more dramatic escalation, such as a ground invasion, is forthcoming.  

The pager and radio attacks may have been carried out because Hezbollah got wind of the plot, rather than being a “prelude to an imminent ground operation,” said Jonathan Spyer, director of research at the Middle East Forum. 

“An ideal time to have done this would have been 24 hours from a major ground incursion, when Hezbollah would have been cast to very deep disarray,” Spyer said of the pager and radio attacks. “And my sense of this is that’s not what’s currently happening. We may well be escalating toward war, but I don’t think we’re necessarily on the way towards [an] imminent, large-scale, Israeli ground incursion.”            

Israel has so far committed most of its resources to Gaza, where it has fought Hamas for nearly a year.  

But Hezbollah has been firing across the border almost as long, representing a significant security threat that is becoming increasingly difficult to resolve diplomatically.  

While the war in Gaza is not yet over, Hamas has been degraded and no longer poses the threat it once did, freeing up Israeli resources. Israel this week moved an elite paratrooper and combat unit, the 98th Division, to the north, according to The Associated Press. That unit played a key role in Gaza operations.

Gallant said Friday that his troops “will continue to pursue our enemy in order to protect our citizens.” 

“The sequence of actions in the new phase will continue until our goal is achieved: the safe return of the residents of the north to their homes,” he wrote on social platform X.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu echoed that statement in a post of his own, writing that “Our goals are clear, and our actions speak for themselves.”

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who admitted the pager and radio explosions were a “painful blow” to his forces, and amounted to a declaration of war, dared Israel to come into Lebanon in a closely watched speech Thursday.

“Nothing, neither military escalation nor killing, nor assassinations nor a full-scale war, can return the inhabitants to the border,” he said in the speech. 

If a ground invasion is not imminent, it’s unclear why Israel, which has not publicly acknowledged its role in the pager and radio attacks, triggered the explosives this week and carried out major airstrikes, a significant escalation in the conflict. 

Yousef Munayyer, head of the Palestine and Israel program and a senior fellow at Arab Center Washington DC, said Israel may be “ratcheting up the pressure through a variety of different tactics aimed at Hezbollah in an effort to leverage a negotiating position” and “to get them to back off.” 

“I don’t think either party wants a full-blown war because of how costly it would be [but] the Israelis in particular seem to be increasingly tolerant of that likelihood and that’s why we are seeing them take the steps that they took,” he said. 

“There’s a game of chicken going on here that is increasingly dangerous, and the Israelis are experimenting to see if they can push Hezbollah to a point where they will back off, short of a ground invasion,” Munayyer added. “But it’s just hard to see that happening, and it’s also hard to see a ground invasion, frankly, leading to anything other than an ultimate stalemate [and] a tremendous amount of casualties on both sides.” 

While the conflict has evolved, the potential costs remain the same for Israel, should it move into Lebanon: It would have to commit a significant number of troops in a fight that would likely be worse than a 2006 engagement with Hezbollah, in which both sides walked away with huge losses and few victories. 

Hezbollah has grown stronger since 2006 and has amassed some 150,000 rockets that threaten Israel.  

Israel may stand a better chance against Hezbollah this time because it has a more limited objective than in 2006, with the goal now to establish a safe zone so residents can return, said Seth Krummrich, a retired Army colonel who once served as chief of staff for special operations command at U.S. Central Command and has in the past advised the Lebanese armed forces. 

“There is a set, achievable goal. The trick is going to be defending them from Hezbollah, and whatever Hezbollah decides do is going to drive the Israeli response,” he said. 

But Krummrich, now vice president at international security firm Global Guardian, cast doubt on a Lebanon invasion resolving the tensions in the Middle East, including in Gaza.  

He argued that a true strategic victory for Israel would be to reach a normalization deal with Saudi Arabia, which became harder this week after the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, said he required a two-state solution between the Israelis and Palestinians. 

“I don’t see people recognizing what the win here is and moving towards it,” he said of a Saudi normalization deal. “They will put Israelis back into their homes [by fighting Hezbollah] but it’s just going to further isolate them.” 

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters Friday that war is “not inevitable” between Israel and Hezbollah “and we’re going to continue to do everything we can to try to prevent it.” 

“Our intensive diplomacy efforts continue,” Kirby said. “We believe, continue to believe, that a diplomatic solution is the best way forward.” 

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin called Gallant on Friday and “strongly reemphasized the importance of reaching a diplomatic resolution that enables residents to return safely to their homes on both sides of the border,” according to a Pentagon readout. 

The U.S. envoy negotiating an agreement between Hezbollah and Israel, Amos Hochstein, met with Israeli officials this week, but that meeting was undercut by the pager and radio attacks. 

Diplomacy appears to be a depleting track with a Gaza deal in splinters. Israel and Hamas cannot agree on key details, and Hezbollah will not stop firing if there is no peace in Gaza. 

Israel is also hesitant of the U.S. plan pushed by Hochstein, which involves enforcing a United Nations resolution that calls for only Lebanese soldiers, not Hezbollah, to be deployed south of the Litani River. 

Avraham Levine, media director and geopolitical speaker at the Israeli-based think tank Alma Research and Educational Center, said since that resolution has never truly been enforced, Israelis are hesitant to trust any diplomatic solution. 

“Nothing changed, nothing whatsoever,” he said of the resolution after it was implemented. “So why would I trust the same solution to work this time?” 

But Munayyer at the Arab Center said it may still be preferable to getting bogged down in a long conflict that may benefit Iranian-backed groups. 

“There’s a reason for everybody to doubt that any diplomatic agreement would bring a resolution, and at best, it probably brings a short-term resolution,” he said, but “if you are going to fail diplomatically or fail militarily, failing diplomatically comes at a much lower cost.”