Israel Tiptoes Toward Conflict With Lebanon’s Hezbollah
From drone strikes to psyops, Israel’s widening campaign to weaken Iranian ally escalates tensions
AVIVIM, Israel—A widening campaign by Israel to blunt the threat posed by Iran’s ally Hezbollah, and the pushback from beyond Israel’s borders, are raising the risk that the two sides will stumble into another war.
In what is known in Israel as the war between the wars, Israel has been hitting targets in Syria for years to try to prevent Tehran from moving military supplies to its Lebanese ally. More recently, raising the risk of conflict, it expanded that effort to Lebanon and Iraq.
Hezbollah responded last week, firing antitank missiles into this small farming community on the Lebanese border.
Israeli military officials said Hezbollah had crossed a line by firing into a civilian area rather than a closed military site. “These are places Hezbollah shouldn’t take the war between wars because it will end in a war,” an Israeli military official said.
Israel has widened the campaign as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fights to hold on to his post, facing a re-election bid on Tuesday.
Mr. Netanyahu speaks regularly about Israel’s need to combat Iranian aggression, but Israel has acknowledged only some details of the military campaign.
Israel has relied on high-tech surveillance to track what its officials say are Hezbollah’s efforts to manufacture precision-guided missiles and build tunnels into northern Israel.
The campaign also includes psychological operations. Last week, Israel staged the evacuation of an apparently wounded soldier to trick Hezbollah into claiming Israeli casualties after its strike on Avivim. The attack left two circular craters and a large patch of charred grass.
At the nearby Shebaa Farms, a small strip of disputed land controlled by Israel that borders Lebanon and the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, the combatants have grown accustomed to exchanging fire. The approximately 10- square-mile area is surrounded by missile nets and jamming equipment, among other defenses intended to intercept incoming fire from Hezbollah.
Elsewhere along the Lebanon-Israel border, Israel uses drones and other means of surveillance and intelligence collection to monitor Hezbollah’s activities. Mannequins have been positioned in jeeps to dupe Hezbollah on where Israeli forces are stationed.
Even before last week’s flare-up, hostilities were high. Lebanese President Michel Aoun called a late-August drone attack in a Beirut suburb the equivalent of a declaration of war that “allows us to resort to our right to defend our sovereignty.” He appealed to the U.S. and France to intervene to calm the situation.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah vowed Tuesday to strike Israeli military vehicles in its next attack.
Current and former Israeli officials acknowledge that Israel’s campaign is adding to tensions. But they say the alternative scenario is unacceptable: allowing a foe to obtain missile technology that could overwhelm Israel’s defenses and enable sneak attacks.
“If someone is not ready to risk anything, he will not gain anything,” said Yaakov Amidror, who was Israeli national security adviser from 2011 to 2013 and is now at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security. “Here we might lose the ability to defend ourselves if they succeed to build on top of what they already have.”
Sparring continued this week when the Lebanese group said Monday it had downed an Israeli drone, and Syrian-based militias fired rockets at Israel following a report that an airstrike had killed Tehran-supported militants near the Iraq-Syria border. Israeli officials said the drone fell because of a technical problem.
Hezbollah and Israel have fought two full wars, most recently in 2006. Israeli forces experienced 18 years of bloody guerrilla warfare while holding a security zone in southern Lebanon, before withdrawing in 2000.
In 2006, after Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid, Israel launched a massive assault on Lebanon, during which Hezbollah fired thousands of rockets at northern Israel. The 34-day war resulted in the deaths of 165 Israeli soldiers and civilians and at least 1,100 Hezbollah fighters and Lebanese civilians.
Israeli officials believe Hezbollah has since expanded its arsenal and capabilities. They say the paramilitary group is trying to manufacture new precision-guided missiles and convert some of its 130,000 unsophisticated rockets into these more precise weapons to target Israeli military and civilian sites. Hezbollah denies the charge.
Hezbollah has a few dozen precision-guided missiles, mostly smuggled in from Syria, according to Israeli officials. Hezbollah isn’t able to produce them in significant numbers yet, they say.
Israel’s efforts to reverse Hezbollah’s progress toward more advanced missiles have ended a fragile lull in the conflict.
Analysts say a conflict could break out at any time.
“Don’t pay too much attention when they say they want to avoid war,” said Jacob Nagel, head of Israel’s National Security Council from 2016 to 2017 and a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “If something will happen, the reaction isn’t if the sides want war or not, the reaction is keeping with their best interests.”
The margin for miscalculation is already narrow. On Sept. 1, one of several antitank missiles fired from Lebanon narrowly missed striking an Israeli military vehicle with five people inside, a second Israeli military official said.
“Both sides are acting, hoping that it will be limited to below the escalation line,” said Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israel’s military intelligence who is now executive director of the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University. “But they can miscalculate.”
—Dov Lieber in Tel Aviv and Nazih Osseiran in Beirut contributed to this article.