Are Israel and Hezbollah about to go to war?

One of the curiosities of the Hezbollah - Israel conflict is that both operate within certain unspoken “red lines” — that is, both sides are aware of what kind of action would provoke a wider conflict.

That was a lesson that was learned the hard way in 2006, the last time the two fought. The war was sparked when Hezbollah launched a surprise cross-border raid to kidnap two Israeli soldiers. It had hoped to use the soldiers to pressure Israel to release Lebanese prisoners, but instead it prompted a fierce Israeli invasion that led to the deaths of nearly 1,000 Lebanese civilians. Forty-four Israeli civilians were also killed by Hezbollah rockets.

The spark for that war was a miscalculation on the part of Hezbollah of where the red lines were. Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, has said publicly that he did not believe the operation would provoke the reaction it did, and would not have carried it out if he had.

Since then, both sides have been careful to not make another mistake that would lead to war. The incidents of the last few weeks have certainly tested those parameters, but they have not been so transformed as to make war an immediate possibility.

Israel has carried out a number of attacks against Hezbollah targets in Syria to stop the transfer of weapons. And Hezbollah’s responses to those attacks have until now come from inside Syria, too — against targets in the Golan Heights.

What made the clashes of the last two weeks different was that the strike that killed two Hezbollah operatives in Syria and the drone attack in Beirut were, in the eyes of Hezbollah, beyond those agreed red lines.

But even so, Hezbollah’s response was carefully calculated in order not to spark a war. Although the attack targeted the Israeli military on the Lebanon border — a rare occurrence — it was a limited attack. Hezbollah could have struck any number of high value targets, but instead chose a single Israeli military vehicle.