Does Israel Really Believe It Can Win a War Against Hezbollah?

Amal Saad, a leading expert on the Lebanese resistance movement, says all-out war could lead to Israel’s downfall

A speech by Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah is broadcast in Tehran, November 3, 2023. Photo: Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty.

On Monday, flights at Beirut’s airport were canceled as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to carry out a “harsh” military attack on Lebanon, following Saturday’s deadly strike on a Syrian Druze community in the Israeli-occupied Golan town of Majdal Shams. The horrifying incident killed 12 children on a soccer field. 

Israel and the U.S. immediately accused Hezbollah of hitting the town with a Falaq-1 rocket launched from southern Lebanon. Hezbollah has denied it was behind the attack and both it and the Lebanese government have called on the United Nations to undertake an independent investigation. 

The way that blame for this incident unfolded publicly lends itself to competing theories of responsibility. Earlier Saturday, Hezbollah had announced it had launched a series of attacks on nearby Israeli military installations in retaliation for the killing of four Hezbollah fighters in an Israeli air strike in southern Lebanon. When news of the deaths at the soccer field began to emerge, Hezbollah swiftly issued a statement saying that it had “no connection to the [Majdal Shams] incident at all, and categorically denies all false allegations.” Hezbollah charged that an Israeli Iron Dome interceptor missile had missed its target and hit the town. Israel has claimed it identified the Hezbollah commander of the strike. 

“Despite [Hezbollah’s] denials, it's their rocket, it was launched from an area that they control,” said White House national security spokesperson John Kirby on Monday.

Since Saturday, Netanyahu and other senior Israeli officials have weaponized the deaths in the Golan Heights to preemptively justify a larger scale attack on Lebanon. “We are all Druze,” proclaimed a post on the state of Israel’s official Twitter/X account on Saturday. “These children are our children,” Netanyahu said when he visited Majdal Shams on Monday — though the vast majority of the estimated 20-25,000 Druze residents of occupied Golan Heights have rejected Israeli citizenship and have regularly protested Israel’s wars and policies. None of the 12 victims held Israeli citizenship. “Israel will not and cannot let this simply pass on by,” Netanyahu declared. “Our response will come, and it will be harsh.” 

A crowd of residents gathered to confront Netanyahu, chanting at times in Hebrew for him to go away. Others chanted “Killer! Killer!” and accused Netanyahu of coming to “dance on our children’s blood.” Some locals told journalists they did not want to be used by any side as fuel for a war between Israel and Hezbollah and questioned why either would attack their town. 

Families of the Majdal Shams victims refused to meet Netanyahu, according to Ha’aretz. The visit was under a media censorship restriction until Netanyahu departed the town. Ronen Bar, the director of the Shin Bet intelligence agency, accompanied Netanyahu on the trip and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant visited the site a day earlier.

Israel first occupied large swaths of the Golan region in southwestern Syria in 1967 and formally annexed the Golan Heights in 1981. Under international law it remains Syrian territory. In 2019, President Donald Trump reversed decades of U.S. policy and officially recognized the Golan Heights as Israeli territory. No other nations have followed suit. 

Despite written requests from community leaders in Majdal Shams that no Israeli officials attend the funerals, far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich and a handful of other Israeli officials showed up at a funeral Sunday for 10 of the victims. Mourners shouted them down and demanded they leave. Some denounced Smotrich as a “murderer.”

The rise of the Axis of Resistance introduces an array of other forces that could join Hezbollah’s side in a war with Israel.

The Biden-Harris administration, while publicly affirming that Israel would be justified in attacking Lebanon in response to the Majdal Shams incident, has claimed it does not want a wider regional conflict or a full-scale war between Israel and Lebanon. In a call with reporters, Kirby said talk of a broader war was “exaggerated,” adding, “I'm confident that we'll be able to avoid such an outcome.” Hezbollah and Israel have both conducted military strikes on each other since the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attacks, but to date there has been no escalation that has sparked the type of ground and air battles that ensued in 2006 when Israel and Hezbollah fought a 34-day war. 

Since Saturday, Israel has launched a series of attacks in southern Lebanon, though they have been similar in scope to its previous strikes over the past ten months. On Sunday, Gallant said, “Hezbollah will pay a heavy price for this.”

While the Netanyahu regime has consistently threatened war against Lebanon over the past 10 months and specifically against Hezbollah, many leading regional analysts believe such action would result in catastrophe for Israel, militarily and politically. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, far less sophisticated and armed groups, have managed to wage a nearly 10-month insurgency against Israeli ground forces in Gaza while enduring sustained bombardment from U.S.-provided weapons. 

Iran has also shown a willingness to attack Israel. The rise of the Axis of Resistance, which, in addition to Iran, includes Ansar Allah (the Houthis) in Yemen, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, as well as the Syrian government and the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, introduces an array of other forces that could join Hezbollah’s side in a war with Israel.

I discussed all this today with Amal Saad, one of the leading experts on Hezbollah and the Axis of Resistance. Saad is a lecturer on international relations and politics at Cardiff University in the UK and author of Hizbu’llah: Politics and Religion and The Iran Connection: Understanding the Alliance with Syria, Hizbu’llah and Hamas. She is currently in Lebanon.

My Interview with Amal Saad

Jeremy Scahill: You've suggested that you do not believe that Hezbollah was behind this attack in the occupied Syrian Golan.

Amal Saad: Yes. So I said that Hezbollah, it's very unlikely that they are behind it, not just because they issued the statement. Yes, it was uncharacteristic, and it was the first time they've issued such a statement—I don't know about ever—but they have not issued such a statement once since October 8 [when Hezbollah announced it would engage in “solidarity” strikes against Israel in support of the Hamas-led October 7 attacks]. So that indicated, obviously, the seriousness of the situation and that they were indeed denying responsibility for the attack. 

But also beyond that, just on the basis of logic and precedent and so on. First of all, this town, Majdal Shams, it's not Israeli territory. It's occupied Syrian territory and its inhabitants are Syrian Druze. The majority of them have refused to take Israeli citizenship and to serve in the army. And they are staunch supporters of the resistance axis. They've supported Bashar al Assad's government in Syria. They've supported Hezbollah and Hamas. And so it would be extremely absurd for Hezbollah to attack its own allies. 

Now, beyond that as well, I would say, I don't think Hezbollah would attack Israeli civilians either in terms of a deliberate target. They would not attack them because that would lead to all-out war. That's very, very provocative. And I know that [Hezbollah General Secretary Hassan] Nasrallah has quite recently actually threatened Israel with such retaliation, saying if you keep targeting our civilians, we're going to have to do the same sort of thing. But even then, I don't think Hezbollah would seek out civilians and massacre them like that. They would probably target civilian objects, which is very different from targeting civilians, and we still haven't seen that to be fair. We haven't seen any real civilian casualties in Israel [from Hezbollah attacks]—there have been quite few. So based on these factors, I think it's very unlikely that it would be a deliberate strike at least.

Jeremy Scahill: It seems that the dominant theories are: either it was a misfire or a mistake on Hezbollah's part or it was an Israeli failure of its Iron Dome system and one of Israel’s munitions hit the soccer field. I've also seen people suggest that it's a false flag, that Israel intentionally hit the town and they wanted to blame it on Hezbollah.

Amal Saad: There are several theories, but I think the one that is less of a theory and more empirically backed is that it was an Israeli interceptor missile that misfired, was trying to intercept an incoming rocket. And I say it has some empirical evidence for this because on Arab TV, and obviously, we didn't see this in Western media, but we saw several reports talking to eyewitnesses who said they actually saw that interceptor missile from the Iron Dome strike the target. And one correspondent said that an Israeli paramedic told her that, but he said he couldn't say it on air because he would be arrested. So there have been several such reports, and it does seem like the most likely explanation. 

But there is also the possibility that other [anti-Israel resistance] groups were responsible for this. And Hezbollah is not alone in fighting Israel. Ever since they established this so-called solidarity front, there have been several other groups, in fact, some secular, some Islamist. One of them is, for example, Jamaa Al-Islamiya, the [Lebanese Sunni] Islamic group, which has been involved quite a bit recently in these cross border strikes. And their members have been targeted by Israel quite often. So they may have potentially mistakenly hit that target. If it was another group, it was obviously a mistake. That was not going to be a deliberate target for anyone.

Jeremy Scahill: If it was, though, a Hezbollah misfire, is there a precedent for Hezbollah taking responsibility if they inadvertently kill civilians?

Amal Saad: Yes, that's a good question because in 2006, there was such an incident during the July war when Hezbollah, one of its rockets, mistakenly landed in a Palestinian town. And not only did Hezbollah issue a statement taking responsibility and apologizing, but Nasrallah himself personally apologized on TV and paid condolences to the victim's family. [In that incident, Hezbollah rockets killed two Arab children in Nazareth. “In my name and on behalf of my brothers, I apologize to this family,” Nasrallah said in an interview broadcast on Al Jazeera. “Of course, the word apology is not sufficient. I bear full responsibility. That was not intended at all.”] So Hezbollah has a history of claiming responsibility, of admitting to such errors. And I think that also lends more credence to its argument, or rather its assertion, that it was not behind this. 

I think another point also that we need to look at is sort of the timing of this as well. Last week, Hezbollah issued the third in a series of drone footage videos. It was surveilling a specific military base over Israel and it was threatening Israel that we will target this military base. In previous such videos, they threatened others, not just military, but also civilian targets. Why would Hezbollah do all that to deter Israel from striking it, if it was just going to provoke Israel a couple of days later with this? It makes absolutely no sense, as Hezbollah knows that Israel, if it has decided to launch an all-out war, if that decision has been taken, and we're all assuming it's not a likely scenario, but there is always a possibility that such a decision has been taken. If it has, then why would Hezbollah want to give Israel ammunition to escalate further? Even if it's not to launch an all-out war, but to escalate further against itself, that makes absolutely no sense. And the purpose of that video was to deter such a strike. So it makes no sense that it would be deliberately targeted. 

Now, again, going back to was it an error? You know, some people said that Hezbollah, just like seconds earlier, had issued a statement declaring responsibility for striking something in the Golan which was 3 km away from Majdal Shams. I tried to sort of get to the bottom of this. It's very hard to tell, but it's not very likely that they would miss by that far. I spoke to military experts who—and I think this is much more convincing—who said that if it was the Falaq-1 [missile], because Hezbollah used the Falaq-1 to strike that target that they announced in the statement, an Israeli brigade. And if they had used the Falaq-1, we would have seen a much larger crater, and the crater was much smaller than would be expected from such a heavy warhead, which is 53 kilos. It would be much, much bigger and there would be much more destruction.

Jeremy Scahill: Why then is Israel so quick to seize on this and to blame Hezbollah? Do you really believe that Israel wants a full war with Hezbollah?

Amal Saad: There are two reasons it could be doing this. I think the more likely one isn't that it wants a full war. First of all, it wants to deflect attention away from its own genocidal crimes and killing of children on a daily basis. Now, just one or two days earlier, it had struck a children's school and scores of children were massacred. So this is very convenient for Israel, and this has [allowed Israel] to say, ‘Look, Hezbollah is a child killer.’ So it definitely serves a propaganda purpose. There is definitely that element. In terms of what kind of military or strategic value can it derive from this, I think it can use this to pressure Hezbollah through its allies, Western mediators and so on. And they have been doing this. They have been now pressuring Hezbollah not only to not respond to Israel, to absorb an Israeli strike, but also to stop all the clashes across the border. So it's used to apply this sort of pressure on [Hezbollah] because it assumes that there will be a lot of internal as well, pressure domestically, from the state, from the population. And, in terms of the state, I wouldn't say that's been forthcoming. So there is that element of pressure, of propaganda value. 

And third, it would allow Israel then—there could be this bank of targets it has, military targets which it hasn't dared to strike before because it's a bit risky, perhaps, because there would be quite significant strikes in areas outside of the usual sort of zone of operations. It might be outside of that and they may now think they can get away with it, with striking those targets, if it looks like it's engaged in a counter strike, because this is the first time that we see that happen in this conflict so far, that Hezbollah has denied responsibility and Israel is saying, nonetheless, we have the right to counter strike. So I do think they're trying to milk this as much as they can. 

Now, there's always the possibility with Israel, because we're not dealing here with a rational actor necessarily, we can't take for granted Israel's rationality, I think, and there is always the possibility that an irrational decision will be made and one that tries to drag the U.S. into a wider war because it would have to do that if it wants to strike Hezbollah and risk all out war, it would need U.S. military support, in fact. So there could always be that possibility. 

Jeremy Scahill: When you say that there are targets that Israel might want to strike that are outside of the normal zone of their military attacks on Hezbollah, what types of targets are you referring to?

Amal Saad: Well, I mean, I personally don't know, but they could be, not in terms of just strategic value, it could be their location. So, for example, the Bekaa is kind of more off limits than these border areas in the south. So they might strike the Bekaa, for instance. They have done such strikes, but not anywhere near as many as in the south. So the Bekaa is more off limits. And Hezbollah has adopted a new equation. Whenever Israel strikes the Bekaa, [Hezbollah] strikes the Golan in response. So they might, there might be certain parts of the Bekaa it hasn't struck. It might be another area altogether. I don't really know. But I don't think Beirut would be—if we assume [Israel] doesn't want to risk a war, I don't think they would come near Beirut. But again, here it's very difficult to foresee the extent to which Israel is being rational here because it might actually also not just be not rational, it might also be extremely foolish and think that if it does strike Beirut, Hezbollah would kind of absorb it if it's a military target. We don't know. I doubt that. I doubt that. And I know the U.S., according to various reports, has warned Israel not to strike Beirut or heavily populated areas. So that they will most likely, I think, subscribe to those kind of limits.

Jeremy Scahill: There were even some rumors that Israel was contemplating bombing Beirut airport.

Amal Saad: I saw that. I don't really—I think that Israelis make a lot of noise and there's a lot of accounts on Twitter which spread so much disinformation and they’re people who are not—sometimes journalists, sometimes activists or whatever, and even Israeli officials. I mean, they spread so much misinformation and rumors, and even Western governments. For example, what they've been doing recently is alerting their citizens and urging them to leave Lebanon. It's not a new trend. It's been going on since the start of the war, but these past two days have been crazy. They've started sending texts to American citizens, France has joined the fray, Germany, many other countries, all Western, urging them to leave in a way that they haven't before. And this is part and parcel of the intimidation campaign. It's to put pressure on the Lebanese, which in turn puts pressure on Hezbollah and sort of threatens them with a huge response on Israel's part. So, there is that at work as well.

Jeremy Scahill: How does Hezbollah view this kind of insane moment in the context of American politics where you have Joe Biden, who's been a lifelong dedicated promoter of Israel, a self-described Zionist, he's now stepping down from seeking another term. You likely now have Kamala Harris versus Donald Trump. You have Netanyahu clearly playing his own game in part based on American politics. What's your best sense of how the Hezbollah movement sees the US role in this, given the political uncertainty of the next few months in the United States?

Amal Saad: I think Hezbollah, especially Nasrallah, has on several occasions declared that the U.S. is ultimately responsible for all of this. And Hezbollah sees Israel as a proxy of the U.S. Now, yes, [Israel] does have some sort of room for maneuver. As a proxy, it’s not entirely beholden. I don't think [Hezbollah leaders] view it that way. And they do see Netanyahu as having his own kind of personal agenda and reasons for not always abiding by the wishes of the U.S. But at the same time, they don't believe the U.S. is serious enough about preventing an escalation. I think they do tend to believe that it's not in the U.S.’s interests. And they have said as much. This is not my own analysis. This is what they've said publicly, that the U.S. doesn't want an all-out war. However, they also don't think it's doing enough to prevent one. And that's sort of the contradiction here.

In terms of candidates, I think it's quite difficult. There is, and if you speak to people here—it's not just Hezbollah—people are generally unsure about who would be the worst candidate because in one sense, how much more Zionist can you get than Biden? So in terms of Trump—we've seen Trump make a lot of contradictory messages. There have been instances where he hasn't been as conciliatory towards Israel as in other cases, so it's a bit confusing. However, he is also the same president who assassinated [Iranian General] Qassem Soleimani and [Iraqi resistance commander] Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis [in a drone strike in Baghdad on January 3, 2020]. So he is not risk averse. He's even irrational, some would say. And I think that's very true. And so the idea of: would Kamala be better than both Biden and Trump? I think there is a general sense—I’m not talking about Hezbollah here, but generally in Lebanon—that she might be the lesser evil based on some of her statements so far and some reports. But I don't think Hezbollah is banking on any specific candidate in the same way that Israel is banking on Trump winning.

Jeremy Scahill: If Israel does commit and they do want war with Hezbollah, what does that look like from the Lebanese side, based on the history of these conflicts and wars and Hezbollah's response to Israel? If Israel does send in ground forces or engages in a very heavy, wider bombing campaign, what could we expect Hezbollah's response to look like?

Amal Saad: Well, I think the Israeli intelligence is quite aware because I've read a lot of these analyses in Israeli and U.S. intelligence reports and others, which is that Hezbollah—first of all, I don't think we would see what we saw in 2006. I don't think Israel would even get to invade Lebanon in the same way. I don't think it would be able to stage a ground incursion, definitely not of that magnitude. And Israel would not be in a purely offensive position. Israel would be also in a defensive position because Hezbollah would also infiltrate and make incursions into Israel proper. So, it's going to look very different, just in terms of the overall strategy of the war, that it will be an offensive defense on Hezbollah's part. It won't just be defense.

Secondly, the fact that Hezbollah has now fully conventionalized, it's no longer even a hybrid force. I've spoken to military experts here, and I've been curious myself to see what they think. Where is [Hezbollah] on the spectrum of guerrilla to conventional army? Is it sort of in the middle, like in 2006? They've said, “No, it's actually a fully fledged conventional force now. But obviously it has these sort of capabilities of an irregular armed force. It still retains them and has that experience.” So we're talking here about a much more sophisticated military organization with well over 100,000 fighters, well over that number, over 150,000 missiles and rockets. You know, back in 2006, Hezbollah had just a few thousand fighters, far fewer rockets, much less sophisticated missiles and rockets. Basically everything that Iran has, all the weapons Iran has, you can be certain Hezbollah has them, too. That's what we know. And that's aside from the things that Hezbollah is manufacturing domestically, like it's drone technology—it's manufacturing its own drones now. So, we're talking here about a vastly different military creature than 2006.

And, again, the tactics will not just be purely defensive. They will be offensive. And that's not even factoring in other actors in the resistance axis who are itching to join the fight and have declared their intent to send hundreds of thousands of fighters, such as the Houthis [from Yemen], to Lebanon.

From all the information I've been gathering, it would actually lead to the unraveling of the Israeli state. We're not talking here about just a defeat for Israel like in 2006. It would be the sort of defeat that would actually lead to its demise. This is why, when we talk about “the great war,” which is not a matter of if, it's when, when that war happens, which is an inevitability, [Hezbollah] have always said that that is going to be the war that will change the face of the region. So, we are talking here about a scenario which would definitely lead to the destruction of a lot of Lebanon — no one is discounting that or belittling that. But at the same time, it would lead to the destruction of Israel and while it would lead to the destruction of Lebanon in material terms, that destruction would not lead to the unraveling of the Lebanese state in the same way that it would lead to the unraveling of the Israeli or Zionist regime. I think that's one way of looking at it.

Jeremy Scahill: Short of an all-out war between Israel and Lebanon, what does the future of the resistance axis or the axis of resistance look like? This has been an unprecedented moment. You don't have Arab nation states stepping in to say, ‘We’re going to defend the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank and Jerusalem militarily,’ but you do have a multifaceted response that is also multinational and involves both state and non-state actors. What does the future look like for this resistance axis?

Amal Saad: Well, this is the consolidation phase of the resistance axis. It first emerged in Syria, I would say, like in 2014 especially—that was sort of its peak, 2015, but it wasn't as large as it is today. It didn't include Hamas, obviously, and it didn't include the Houthis. Today it's a much larger axis in terms of state and non-state—I don't even know if we should call them non-state. They're quasi-states and sometimes, you know, virtual states like the Houthis are now Yemen. I think it's a misnomer to call it a non-state actor. This is the consolidation phase. This war has been actually sort of a testing grounds for how tightly knit this alliance is, weapons and training, transfer of weapons, military knowledge, weapons manufacturing, you name it. Coordination, both tactical and strategic. It's taken root here. So we can only assume that level of coordination and cooperation and consolidation among its ranks will only grow stronger, not only, by the way, on the level of political elites or the different militaries of these organizations, but we're talking about the popular level as well, that the massive constituencies that each of these actors has is almost fully behind this alliance. 

So I think we're in for a further deepening of this alliance, and we're going to start seeing how it sort of significantly departs from any Western alliances or any alliances we've known so far. It's going to need its own model, its own theoretical model, to study it and to understand it. It's a new paradigm, really.