Israel and Hezbollah lurch closer to war

North Israel is a series of ghost towns — abandoned houses and scorched forests from Hezbollah missiles. Parts of south Lebanon have been hit so hard by Israeli bombs that they’ve been reduced to rubble. Tens of thousands of residents have been driven from homes on both sides.

A steady, if ugly, tit-for-tat between Israel and Hezbollah since the October outbreak of the Gaza war has been shifting into something more alarming.

Record numbers of Hezbollah projectiles — some 900 — have hit Israel this month and its chief says he’s overwhelmed by volunteers ready to fight Israel “without any rules, restraints or ceiling.” Israel, meanwhile, is carrying out deeper and more destructive attacks in Lebanon and its northern military command has just approved a battle plan for the country.

While Iran-backed Hezbollah and Israel say they do not want a full-blown war, concern is higher than ever they’re stumbling into one — or will deliberately start one. Israelis advocating it believe that such a conflict could be kept short, a matter of weeks. Others are far more pessimistic.

The Middle East could be in for “a major regional war, rising oil prices and plunging financial markets,” Aaron David Miller, a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Senior Fellow and former State Department Arab-Israeli negotiator, told Bloomberg TV. “No one wants to see anything like that.”

Senior U.S. and French diplomats have visited Jerusalem and Beirut as part of an intense push to stave off escalation that could draw in Iran, along with its allied militias in Iraq, Syria and Yemen as well as the U.S. President Joe Biden is especially keen to avoid a new war so close to November’s elections. While Washington doesn’t communicate directly with Hezbollah, it uses Lebanon’s speaker of parliament, Nabih Berri, as a conduit.

The plan to end hostilities hinges on Hezbollah moving its fighters from the border. While U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which was passed in 2006 after the last round of combat between Israel and Hezbollah, requires it to be some 30 km (18 miles), negotiations are starting with 10 km. They would be replaced by international forces and members of the Lebanese army while a panel would address disputes over the shared boundary line.

But Hezbollah says the current round of tension has a source — the war in Gaza — and a solution — a Gaza cease-fire. Only once Israel and Hamas put down their arms, Hezbollah says, will it be open to its own border negotiations.

Berri told a U.S. envoy, Amos Hochstein, last week that the most he can do is lean on the group to reduce tensions by not firing too deeply into Israeli territory, according to a Lebanese official briefed on the talks. Visiting Washington this week, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant is being urged to give diplomacy a chance and hold off any military expansion.

“One rash move, one miscalculation could trigger a catastrophe that goes far beyond the borders and, frankly, beyond imagination,” warned United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres last week. “Let’s be clear. The people of the region and the people of the world cannot afford Lebanon to become another Gaza.”

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