Israel-Gaza war
Attacks in the Red Sea. An airstrike in Baghdad. Given the cross-border conflict with Hamas, is greater violence inevitable?
Mohammad Atout, a Palestinian resident of Beirut's Burj al-Barajneh refugee camp, was eating with his children on Tuesday evening as news broke in the Lebanese capital that Saleh al-Arouri, deputy head of Hamas' political bureau, had been assassinated.
“Someone told me there was an attack [in Beirut]. Moments later the television said it was Arouri. Then people took to the streets. It hit her very hard. He was an important leader for us.”
In the cafe he owns, which faces a street decorated with Palestinian banners, his customers watched Al Jazeera footage of the war in Gaza.
“We never thought the Israelis would dare to do something like this in Beirut,” says Atout. He believes that the reason Arouri was killed was Israel's failure to find and kill Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip, including the movement's leader, Yahya Sinwar.
He suspects that Arouri, whose office was hit by rockets, was a minor result – his assassination was a cover for Israel's slow progress toward its stated war goals.
“This move came out of anger at their lack of progress. They are trying to show that they are achieving something,” he says – although he remains unconvinced that the increasing escalation will lead to an all-out war between Hezbollah and Israel.
Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, gives a televised speech after the attack on Lebanon. He called the attack a “violation.” Photo: Mohamed Azakir/Portal
That is the question that has dominated debate in Lebanon and across the region in the days since Arouri's killing, even as a tenuous sense of normality has returned following the attack in the sprawling southern suburbs of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold. While streets that were empty immediately after the strike have returned to life, concerns remain. The sentiment was summed up by outgoing Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati, who spoke Friday of “the danger of attempts to drag Lebanon into a regional war… with serious consequences, especially for Lebanon and neighboring countries.”
As Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets into northern Israel on Saturday morning, saying the barrage was just its initial response to Arouri's killing, Mikati's warning received additional resonance. The cross-border exchanges highlighted the fact that three months later, Israel's war against Hamas is beginning to spread across the region.
Since October 8, limited exchanges across the border – including airstrikes and drone strikes – between Israel and Hezbollah and other factions in Lebanon have become commonplace, causing casualties on both sides. Iran-backed groups in Iraq have stepped up their attacks on U.S. military bases, while Yemen's Houthis — which, like Hamas and Hezbollah, have long enjoyed Iranian support — have launched long-range drones and threatened commercial shipping along key routes in the Red Sea. Last week, the Islamic State claimed responsibility for two explosions that rocked a crowd in southern Iran, killing at least 84 people, while a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad killed the commander of an Iran-backed Shiite militia.
But it is in Lebanon in particular that the situation has become most dangerous, undermining a fragile understanding between Hezbollah and Israel that has persisted since the highly destructive Second Lebanon War in 2006.
When Hezbollah's secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, gave two nationally televised speeches last week after Arouri's assassination, he made explicit reference, and not for the first time, to the “rules” that have tempered the sometimes performative violence between the two sides. Amid the threats and rhetoric, these rules have long defined how far a side was willing to go, whether in targeted attacks or retaliation, without escalating into all-out war.
And across the region, in areas where the Gaza conflict has spilled over, Israel's war with Hamas has served to exacerbate pre-existing tensions.
The problem in Lebanon is that both sides have failed to implement the United Nations-ordered ceasefire that ended the 2006 war and allowed Hezbollah fighters to withdraw from the border.
What is clear is that the assassination of Arouri, following the first Israeli attack on the Lebanese capital since 2006, has brought the mutual “balance of deterrence,” to use Nasrallah’s phrase, to the brink of collapse.
And while some have argued that the killing of a senior Hamas official (rather than a Hezbollah member) gives Hezbollah some leeway, Nasrallah reiterated on Friday for the second time in three days that his group was now forced to retaliate, adding adding that this was not the case. The entire Lebanon would be exposed to Israeli attack.
“We cannot remain silent about a violation of this gravity,” he said, “because it means that all of our people will be exposed.” All of our cities, villages and public figures will be exposed.” The impact of silence is “far greater ” than the risks of retaliation, he added. A reaction is now inevitable, he emphasized.
But even as he spoke, Nasrallah's words were being analyzed by analysts, officials and journalists to weigh rhetoric and intent: to determine whether Hezbollah, as many have suggested over the past three months, is trying to avoid a full-scale confrontation.
Aside from Arouri's killing, analysts view the limited conflict on the border as a negotiation over unresolved issues from the 2006 war, with Nasrallah himself signaling on Friday – perhaps significantly – that Hezbollah was open to a “solution” once the War in Gaza is over and presented it as a “historic opportunity” to regain areas long occupied by Israel.
Like Cold War Kremlinology, unraveling Nasrallah's cautious ambiguities is as much art as science. Did he smile more, some asked last week, while others tried to identify the audiences for different parts of his message.
Was there talk of a solution targeting the US to suggest that Hezbollah was pragmatic? In Israel? Was he speaking only for Hezbollah or for a broader group of pro-Iranian proxies as he laid out a vision for the future of the region as US influence declines?
For Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at Chatham House, the surprise return of U.S. special envoy Amos Hochstein to Beirut last week signaled the possibility that there is a move beyond border violence and talk of a larger war Violence could ensue efforts to find a mutually acceptable way out.
She added that a “face-saving” solution could be in the works that would save both sides from the brink, even as Israel's Defense Minister Yoav Gallant Hochstein said the window for a diplomatic solution was small and closing.
Vakil argues that escalation is neither in Hezbollah's nor Israel's interest. “The big difference between what happened after October 7 and the war in 2006 is that Hezbollah has changed its calculus and its willingness to take risks… It now has much more to lose.”
“Hezbollah has become much more of a key institutional player in a very fragile Lebanese political system. Hezbollah cannot be seen as the catalyst for Lebanon's formal collapse. Once it goes from being a non-state actor to being part of the state, there is accountability.”
On the Israeli side, too, for all the talk about high military readiness and the declared ability to fight on two fronts, there is an emerging consensus that the country – amid the serious economic and social consequences caused by October 7th and the… Subsequent war on Gaza – would also prefer to avoid expanding the conflict.
Houthi supporters gather to remember rebels killed by the US Navy in the Red Sea. Photo: Khaled Abdullah/Portal
However, there are other factors that weigh against this analysis.
Since the fighting on the border has already displaced tens of thousands of evacuees on both sides, there is a risk that the conflict – which currently has no end in sight – will develop its own dynamics.
The transformation of northern Israel into a depleted, militarized zone, rocked by daily explosions, is generating growing political momentum to resolve the issue of the northern border with Lebanon, whether through a negotiated settlement or through military means.
Already over the last three months, the geographical reach of the attacks, at least on the Israeli side, has penetrated ever deeper into southern Lebanon.
That Nasrallah found it necessary to speak out on the issue twice in three days underscores both the urgency of Hezbollah's response and the pressure that Arouri's killing is placing on the movement. Nasrallah had to explicitly justify the risks facing Lebanon and what benefits those risks could bring.
“Hezbollah must respond quickly because in the context of a war you have to restore the balance of deterrence,” Amal Saad, an expert on the group, told the Financial Times last week, adding that it must include “a qualitative” escalation in scale and intensity, but [fall] just before a high-intensity war.”
And regardless of whether the military and diplomatic posturing ultimately represents just a dangerous negotiation or not, it is clear to many that there is a risk of a fatal “miscalculation” on both sides, which even Israel's military planners in Kirya in Tel Aviv cannot have predicted or by Nasrallah and his advisors.
In his cafe on Saturday morning, Atout reflected on Hezbollah's emerging response.
“The Arab countries are doing nothing for the Palestinians. We only have God, ourselves and the Shiites fighting for us. Wherever there are Shiites [such as Hezbollah] There are people who are active.”
And at least for now, the reality of cross-border exchanges is clearer than the rhetoric surrounding it.
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