Apr 24, 2014

Sources close to Hezbollah told Al-Monitor that Israel filing a complaint with the UN Security Council against Lebanon has convinced Hezbollah that the party had made the right calculations and had the right forecasts. The sources revealed the nature of those calculations and their objectives.

They questioned why Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah revealed in an interview on April 7 in Beirut that the explosive device that targeted the Israeli army post in the occupied Shebaa Farms on March 14 was the work of Hezbollah. They base their answer on the fact that Hezbollah entered the Syrian war alongside the regime forces to confront fundamentalists and extremists there.

Since then, Hezbollah has been trying to address several negative consequences of that involvement. First, by not giving the impression to its supporters and its base that it has redirected the “central cause” from the south to the north. Second, by constantly directing messages to Israel that its forces fighting in Syria are not from among those assigned to confront the Israelis in southern Lebanon. And third, by forming an image of confidence that the party has enough human and material resources to fight on more than one front at the same time without its strength being reduced anywhere.

By this logic, about two months after Hezbollah fighters took control of Qusair, near Homs, on June 5, 2013, an Israeli patrol infiltrated Lebanese territory in Labbouneh, near the seashore, on the night of August 7, 2013, and was hit by two explosive devices. The Labbouneh operation was clearly the work of Hezbollah, although it chose to keep quiet about it for more than eight months.

In the same vein, with Hezbollah fighters busy fighting in the Syrian area of Qalamoun in the past two months, it seemed that Israel chose to put out feelers for Hezbollah again. On the night of Feb. 24, Israeli aircraft raided a site in Janta, in the Bekaa Valley in east Lebanon, near the Syrian border. The raid seemed like an Israeli attempt to change the prevailing rules of engagement with Hezbollah since the Second Lebanon War and the issuance of UN Security Council Resolution 1701 on Aug. 13, 2006.