Hezbollah and Israel: A strategic dance for combatants

Mourners react during the funeral procession for Ali and Ibrahim Bazzi and Ibrahim’s wife Shourouk Hammoud in southern Lebanon. Picture: AFP

The death of two Australian brothers, Ali and Ibrahim Bazzi, from an Israeli airstrike in the southern Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil, and the subsequent claim by Hezbollah that Ali Bazzi was one of its fighters, highlights the deadly, months-long, low-level military campaign being waged on Israel’s northern border.

Hezbollah is Iran’s close ally and Lebanon’s most powerful political, and arguably military actor. A key element of Iran’s “Resistance Axis”, it trained its weapons on Israeli forces in the north the day after Hamas’s attack against Israel and has continued to engage in a tit-for-tat since. It has lost more than 100 fighters and killed about a dozen Israeli soldiers. Tens of thousands of Israelis have been evacuated from towns in the north to avoid the fighting.

The conflict in Israel’s north lacks anything approaching the intensity of that in Gaza, but by tying down Israeli forces that could be used elsewhere – and further straining Israeli resources because of the need to deal with those internally displaced from the north – it achieves both a practical benefit for Hamas and a symbolic effect by giving substance to Tehran’s claims of an anti-Israeli regional alliance.

It is a delicate strategic dance that both sides need to perform. Hezbollah must be careful to operate within generally accepted, but unwritten rules governing this “warm war”. Hezbollah targets only military objectives, Israel does likewise and confines its targeting to the border region. Actions outside these parameters normally receive a commensurate response.

Recently Israeli language about Lebanon and what to do on its northern border has strengthened – previous demands that Hezbollah forces move away from the border region have been replaced by warnings that time for diplomatic solutions were running out and that the Israeli military was prepared to force Hezbollah away.

Neither side sees advantage in a ground manoeuvre campaign on the Israeli-Lebanese border. Israel would be hard-pressed to conduct simultaneous incursions in Gaza and southern Lebanon, and Hezbollah is wary of inviting physical damage to a Lebanon whose economy is already in ruins from political mismanagement.

The memory of 2006 still lingers in the minds of Hezbollah’s leadership. Then, Hezbollah initiated a month-long war with Israel where it matched Israel militarily but the retaliation from Israel did untold damage to the Lebanese economy.

The stronger language emanating from Israel may well be to dissuade Iran or its allies from responding to the killing of Iranian brigadier Reza Mousavi in a missile strike in Syria earlier this week, presumably launched by Israel.

The appearance of an Australian citizen on a Hezbollah martyrdom announcement and his burial draped in a Hezbollah flag also shows that Islamic State and al-Qa’ida are not the only radical Islamist groups with Australian connections.

Australia previously listed only the Shi’a Muslim Hezbollah’s External Security Organisation as a terrorist organisation but since the end of 2021 that listing has been extended to Hezbollah as a whole. The organisation has conducted fundraising in Australia in the past and another Australian citizen, Meliad Farah, posted photos on social media of him operating as part of a Hezbollah unit in Syria. He was later tried in absentia and sentenced to life in prison by a Bulgarian court for his part in the bombing of a bus carrying Israeli tourists at Burgas in 2012. A reminder, if it was needed, that in a globalised world Australia simply cannot disconnect itself from events in the Middle East.

Rodger Shanahan is a Middle East analyst and former army officer with extensive operational and diplomatic experience in the region.