Getty ImagesIsrael’s ground invasion of Lebanon is coming to an end in its second week, and Israel’s war has entered its second year. Calls for a ceasefire grew after airstrikes hit Beirut on Thursday night and Israeli military fire injured U.N. peacekeepers in southern Lebanon for a second day on Friday.
A new offensive is being launched in Jabaliya, northern Gaza, despite continued calls for an end to the conflict there. Israel is preparing to retaliate against Iran following last week’s ballistic missile attack, and its allies have urged restraint.
However, Israel will continue on its own path and resist this pressure due to three factors: on October 7, Benjamin Netanyahu and the United States.
In January 2020, Iranian General Qassem Soleimani arrived at Baghdad Airport on a night flight from Damascus. Soleimani was the head of Iran’s notorious Quds Force, the elite covert unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards that specializes in overseas operations.
The group’s name means Jerusalem, and its main rival is Israel, which is responsible for arming, training, funding and commanding overseas proxy forces in Iraq, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories and elsewhere. At the time, Soleimani was probably the second most powerful figure in Iran, behind Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
As Soleimani’s convoy left the airport, it was destroyed by a missile fired from a drone That killed him instantly.
Getty ImagesAlthough Israel provided intelligence to help locate its main adversary, the drone belonged to the United States. The assassination order was given by then-US President Donald Trump, not Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“I will never forget how Bibi Netanyahu let us down,” former President Trump later said in a speech about Soleimani’s assassination. In a separate interview, Trump also said he had expected Israel to take a more active role in the attack and complained that Netanyahu was “willing to fight Iran to the last American soldier.”
While Trump’s version of events was controversial, it was thought at the time that Netanyahu, who praised the killing, feared that direct Israeli involvement could trigger a larger attack on Israel, either directly from Iran or its presence in Lebanon and agents in Lebanon. Israel and Iran are engaged in a shadow war, but both sides are careful to keep the fighting within certain limits so as not to provoke the other into a larger conflict.
More than four years later, in April, Benjamin Netanyahu ordered Israeli planes to bomb a building in the Iranian diplomatic complex in Damascus, killing two Iranian generals and others.
Then in July, the Israeli prime minister Authorizing the assassination of Fouad ShukrHezbollah’s top military commander launches air strikes on Beirut. The current US president responded by swearing at him, according to Bob Woodward’s new book. shock.
“You know, there’s a growing perception around the world that Israel is a rogue state, a rogue actor,” President Biden said. According to reports.
The prime minister, described by one US president as too cautious, was later criticized by his successor as too aggressive.
The difference between the two events, of course, is October 7, 2023 – the bloodiest day in Israel’s history and a catastrophic political, military and intelligence failure.
What unites the two moments, however, is Netanyahu’s defiance of the U.S. president’s wishes.
Both factors help explain the way Israel continues to wage its current war.
Israel’s latest war ended after a few weeks, with international pressure so great that the United States insisted on a ceasefire.
The ferocity and scale of Hamas’s attacks on Israel, and its impact on Israeli society and its sense of security, meant that this war was always going to be unlike any recent conflict.
The death and suffering of Palestinian civilians in Gaza is deeply disturbing and politically damaging for the U.S. government, which has poured billions of dollars’ worth of weapons into Israel. For U.S. critics in the region, the superpower’s apparent inability to influence the largest recipients of U.S. aid is puzzling.
Even as U.S. warplanes participated in repelling an Iranian attack on Israel in April—a clear sign of how Israel’s security is guaranteed by its larger allies—Israel continued to block attempts to change the course of its war.
This summer, Israel chose to escalate its conflict with Hezbollah without first obtaining U.S. approval.
As Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, Netanyahu has learned from more than 20 years of experience that U.S. pressure is something he can withstand, or even ignore. Netanyahu knows that the United States, especially in an election year, will not take actions that would force him to change his chosen course (and believes that, in any case, he is also fighting America’s enemies).
Calculation method is different
Especially when it comes to the latest escalation, the idea that Netanaihu is operating outside the mainstream of Israeli politics is misguided. If any, The pressure he faces is more severe Strike harder against Hezbollah and Iran.
When the United States and France proposed a ceasefire in Lebanon last month, the opposition, Israel’s main left-wing groups, and right-wing parties criticized the proposed 21-day ceasefire.
Israel is now determined to continue the war not only because it believes it can withstand international pressure, but also because Israel’s tolerance for the threats it faces has changed after October 7.
Hezbollah has claimed for years that its goal is to invade Israel’s northern Galilee. Now that the Israeli public has experienced the reality of gunmen infiltrating homes, this threat cannot be contained and must be eliminated.
Israel’s perception of risk has also changed. The region’s longstanding notion of military red lines has disappeared. Several incidents over the past year have until recently threatened to lead to an all-out conflict, with bombs and missiles raining down on Tehran, Beirut, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Israel assassinated the leader of Hamas while visiting the Iranians in Tehran; it also killed the entire leadership of Hezbollah, including Hassan Nasrallah; and it assassinated senior Iranian officials inside a Syrian diplomatic building.
Hezbollah has fired more than 9,000 missiles, rockets and drones at Israeli cities, including ballistic missiles at Tel Aviv. The Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen also fired large missiles at Israeli cities. When the missiles re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere over central Israel, they were intercepted by Israeli defense systems. In the past six months, Iran has launched not one attack on Israel, but two, involving more than 500 drones and missiles. Israel invades Lebanon.
In the past, any one of these could spark a regional war. The fact that they haven’t will change the way Israel’s usually cautious, risk-averse prime minister decides on his next steps.
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