New ‘Theatrical’ Clash between Hezbollah, Israel Reflects Anxiety to Maintain Rules of Engagement

Smoke rises as seen from Marjeyoun, near the border with Israel, Lebanon August 4, 2021. (Reuters)
Smoke rises as seen from Marjeyoun, near the border with Israel, Lebanon August 4, 2021. (Reuters)
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New ‘Theatrical’ Clash between Hezbollah, Israel Reflects Anxiety to Maintain Rules of Engagement

Smoke rises as seen from Marjeyoun, near the border with Israel, Lebanon August 4, 2021. (Reuters)
Smoke rises as seen from Marjeyoun, near the border with Israel, Lebanon August 4, 2021. (Reuters)

Observers in Lebanon were drawn to the recent exchange of fire between the Israeli army and Hezbollah party.

Israel had retaliated on Friday to rockets fired by Hezbollah by striking open areas in the disputed Shebaa Farms. Hezbollah initially claimed that it had carried out its attack in response to Israeli raids at dawn on Thursday. Israel had carried out those raids in retaliation to rocket attacks, fired by unknown sides, from southern Lebanon towards its territories.

Observers were eager to find out if Israeli jets had taken part in the strikes in order to determine who had won this round in determining the rules of engagement between Israel and Hezbollah.

The party believes that it is essential to maintain these rules even at the risk of the eruption of a war that it wants to avoid with Israel. The party even released an official statement to deny that Israeli jets had taken part in the strikes.

This week’s “virtual confrontation” is the latest between the two sides since Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000. Since then, the “open war” between the foes has transformed into a sort of tango, whose steps are determined by unwritten and undeclared rules that have been named “rules of engagement”.

Those rules were even in place during the peak of the 2006 war. At the time, Israel only struck certain areas in Beirut and its suburbs. It very rarely went beyond those lines. It was said at the time that Israel would strike one side of the road and not the other even though both were Hezbollah territory.

Head of Middle East Center for Studies and Research, Hisham Jaber said Hezbollah and Israel were in agreement over respecting the rules of engagement that they agreed upon years ago.

It appears that the red line is their refusal to engage in an all-out war, he noted. If one side were to stray too far beyond the rules, then the other would “remind” them of what an escalation may lead to. This is what happened in the past two days.

New Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett wanted to convey a message to his people that he is different than his predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu. He ordered an air strike on an open area in Lebanon in response to rocket attacks by Palestinian factions. Hezbollah responded the same way – by also firing at open areas.

Most significant was their choice to fire at the disputed Shebaa Farms area, which Beirut views as Lebanese territory, while Israel deems it Syrian. By attacking disputed land, both sides have avoided forcing each other into engaging in a wider conflict.

Israel’s strikes ultimately had no strategic value, but Hezbollah was forced to respond to avoid surrendering to Israel’s air force. Jaber said the party was forced to retaliate in order to save face in front of its supporters and maintain the morale of its fighters.

Ever since the 2000 withdrawal, Hezbollah has been trying to draw its rules of engagement. It views the Shebaa Farms as occupied Israeli territory, so it has focused its military operations there. Even during the 2006 war, the party met each Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs with a strike on Haifa and when Israel struck Beirut, the party targeted Tel Aviv.

When Israel killed six Hezbollah fighters, including prominent member Imad Mughnieh and an Iranian military commander, in the occupied Golan Heights in January 2015, the party retaliated ten days later by attacking an Israeli military patrol in Shebaa.

When Israel killed Hezbollah operative Samir al-Kuntar in Syria’s Jaramana in December 2015, the party responded by attacking an Israeli vehicle in Shebaa in January 2016.

After a failed Israeli drone attack on Beirut’s southern suburbs in August 2019, the party responded a month later with an attack on an Israeli military vehicle in the settlement of Avivim. Israel retaliated by attacking border regions. Moreover, the Israeli army at the time farcically placed dummies in a remotely-controlled vehicle so that the party could attack it and allow both sides to end the clash to their satisfaction.



Legal Threats Close in on Israel's Netanyahu, Could Impact Ongoing Wars

The International Criminal Court (ICC) building is pictured on November 21, 2024 in The Hague. (Photo by Laurens van PUTTEN / ANP / AFP) / Netherlands OUT
The International Criminal Court (ICC) building is pictured on November 21, 2024 in The Hague. (Photo by Laurens van PUTTEN / ANP / AFP) / Netherlands OUT
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Legal Threats Close in on Israel's Netanyahu, Could Impact Ongoing Wars

The International Criminal Court (ICC) building is pictured on November 21, 2024 in The Hague. (Photo by Laurens van PUTTEN / ANP / AFP) / Netherlands OUT
The International Criminal Court (ICC) building is pictured on November 21, 2024 in The Hague. (Photo by Laurens van PUTTEN / ANP / AFP) / Netherlands OUT

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces legal perils at home and abroad that point to a turbulent future for the Israeli leader and could influence the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, analysts and officials say.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) stunned Israel on Thursday by issuing arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former defense chief Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the 13-month-old Gaza conflict. The bombshell came less than two weeks before Netanyahu is due to testify in a corruption trial that has dogged him for years and could end his political career if he is found guilty. He has denied any wrongdoing. While the domestic bribery trial has polarized public opinion, the prime minister has received widespread support from across the political spectrum following the ICC move, giving him a boost in troubled times.
Netanyahu has denounced the court's decision as antisemitic and denied charges that he and Gallant targeted Gazan civilians and deliberately starved them.
"Israelis get really annoyed if they think the world is against them and rally around their leader, even if he has faced a lot of criticism," said Yonatan Freeman, an international relations expert at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
"So anyone expecting that the ICC ruling will end this government, and what they see as a flawed (war) policy, is going to get the opposite," he added.
A senior diplomat said one initial consequence was that Israel might be less likely to reach a rapid ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon or secure a deal to bring back hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza.
"This terrible decision has ... badly harmed the chances of a deal in Lebanon and future negotiations on the issue of the hostages," said Ofir Akunis, Israel's consul general in New York.
"Terrible damage has been done because these organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas ... have received backing from the ICC and thus they are likely to make the price higher because they have the support of the ICC," he told Reuters.
While Hamas welcomed the ICC decision, there has been no indication that either it or Hezbollah see this as a chance to put pressure on Israel, which has inflicted huge losses on both groups over the past year, as well as on civilian populations.
IN THE DOCK
The ICC warrants highlight the disconnect between the way the war is viewed here and how it is seen by many abroad, with Israelis focused on their own losses and convinced the nation's army has sought to minimize civilian casualties.
Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States, said the ICC move would likely harden resolve and give the war cabinet license to hit Gaza and Lebanon harder still.
"There's a strong strand of Israeli feeling that runs deep, which says 'if we're being condemned for what we are doing, we might just as well go full gas'," he told Reuters.
While Netanyahu has received wide support at home over the ICC action, the same is not true of the domestic graft case, where he is accused of bribery, breach of trust and fraud.
The trial opened in 2020 and Netanyahu is finally scheduled to take the stand next month after the court rejected his latest request to delay testimony on the grounds that he had been too busy overseeing the war to prepare his defense.
He was due to give evidence last year but the date was put back because of the war. His critics have accused him of prolonging the Gaza conflict to delay judgment day and remain in power, which he denies. Always a divisive figure in Israel, public trust in Netanyahu fell sharply in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas assault on southern Israel that caught his government off guard, cost around 1,200 lives.
Israel's subsequent campaign has killed more than 44,000 people and displaced nearly all Gaza's population at least once, triggering a humanitarian catastrophe, according to Gaza officials.
The prime minister has refused advice from the state attorney general to set up an independent commission into what went wrong and Israel's subsequent conduct of the war.
He is instead looking to establish an inquiry made up only of politicians, which critics say would not provide the sort of accountability demanded by the ICC.
Popular Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth said the failure to order an independent investigation had prodded the ICC into action. "Netanyahu preferred to take the risk of arrest warrants, just as long as he did not have to form such a commission," it wrote on Friday.
ARREST THREAT
The prime minister faces a difficult future living under the shadow of an ICC warrant, joining the ranks of only a few leaders to have suffered similar humiliation, including Libya's Muammar Gaddafi and Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic.
It also means he risks arrest if he travels to any of the court's 124 signatory states, including most of Europe.
One place he can safely visit is the United States, which is not a member of the ICC, and Israeli leaders hope US President-elect Donald Trump will bring pressure to bear by imposing sanctions on ICC officials.
Mike Waltz, Trump's nominee for national security advisor, has already promised tough action: "You can expect a strong response to the antisemitic bias of the ICC & UN come January,” he wrote on X on Friday. In the meantime, Israeli officials are talking to their counterparts in Western capitals, urging them to ignore the arrest warrants, as Hungary has already promised to do.
However, the charges are not going to disappear soon, if at all, meaning fellow leaders will be increasingly reluctant to have relations with Netanyahu, said Yuval Shany, a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute.
"In a very direct sense, there is going to be more isolation for the Israeli state going forward," he told Reuters.