By The Jerusalem Post (World News) | Created at 2024-09-28 18:20:12 | Updated at 2024-09-30 05:31:57
1 day ago
Once a restrained adversary, Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah became a target in 2024 as shifting actions prompted Israel to end his long-standing deterrence.
By YONAH JEREMY BOB SEPTEMBER 28, 2024 21:06 Updated: SEPTEMBER 28, 2024 21:09
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, raising his finger.
(photo credit: Mohammad Kassir/Shutterstock)
No top Israeli official would have said this out loud, but from 2006 until October 8, 2023, Hezbollah Chief Hassan Nasrallah was, in many ways, Israel's favorite enemy.
He was incredibly dangerous because he had over 150,000 rockets and many powerful long-range precision rockets, but he was also the ultimate "deterred", predictable, and pragmatic enemy.
It was never that he was ok with Israel's existence, and if he had ever felt he had the power to wipe out the Jewish state, he would have done so years ago.
But unlike many other Arab or Muslim despots who tried to fight Israel, he had learned from the 2006 Second Lebanon War, that a major fight with Israel was simply not worth it and too dangerous.
Escalation
This started to change in March 2023, shifted more on October 8, 2023, and shifted in a more radical way sometime in mid/late 2024, leading to an Israeli decision to kill him instead of keeping him in place as a practical restraint on Hezbollah.
Why did top Israeli defense officials prefer Nasrallah and view him as pragmatic and deterred as enemies go?
From 2006-2023, Israel had 17 years of relative quiet with Lebanon.
In some years, almost nothing has gone on over the border.
In some years there were some increased tensions, but Nasrallah could always be counted on to slow things down and step back from the brink if the temperature in the region got too hot. That was the most one could hope for from an enemy.
Unlike Hamas Chief Yahya Sinwar, who actually invaded Israel, killed 1,200 Israelis, and took 250 hostages, Nasrallah talked for years about sending his Radwan forces to do the same but never did.
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Holding back
Even on October 7, his golden opportunity to raid Israel when it was confused and demoralized, and such an invasion would have split Israeli efforts into defending against invasion on two fronts, he held back.
Nasrallah's decision to fire rockets into northern Israel on October 8 was initially seen as a midpoint but not necessarily a radical change.
He was participating symbolically in support of Hamas's war with Israel but was not using even 1% of his true rocket capabilities besides not invading.
As Israel systematically took Hamas apart, he did nothing to strategically alter the balance to try to save Hamas, though he absolutely could have with his juggernaut rocket arsenal.
There were subtle shifts in how Israelis viewed Nasrallah in March 2023 when he sent a terrorist across the border to carry out an attack deep into Israel near Megiddo.
Hezbollah also started sometimes to fire symbolic volleys of rockets into Israel when there was friction with Gaza in 2023.
Symbolic support
But there were still small measures that only showed that he hoped to start to get credit for the Palestinian cause on a symbolic level.
Throughout the early months of the war, Hezbollah kept its rockets strictly limited to the northern areas closest to the border, areas Nasrallah knew were not strategic for Israel, and he never came near attacking Safed, Acre, or bigger northern cities like Haifa.
It is not 100% clear when the IDF and cabinet started to view him as no longer "useful," no longer deterred, and potentially a real target.
Opposition leader Benny Gantz started to call for ramping up threats and potential attacks on Hezbollah already in June. He called for the government to set September 1 as a deadline to return 60,000 northern residents, meaning that a potential major operation against Hezbollah would have needed to start before then.
By mid-September, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the IDF were committed to a major operation against Hezbollah to start the process of securing the northern residents' return to their homes.
But Nasrallah was given multiple warning shots and chances to live if he had been ready to climb down from his tree and accept a ceasefire on Israel's terms.
Hezbollah's communications network was hit hard on September 17-18; Nasrallah's number three, Ibrahim Aqil, was killed on September 21, and 1,300 targets were hit on September 23. More top commanders and tens of thousands of rockets were hit all of this past week as additional warnings. Nasrallah was unmoved toward a ceasefire that would leave Israel's northern residents secure.
Once almost all of Nasrallah's top advisers and significant portions of his best weapons were destroyed, and he was still unwilling to back down, Netanyahu and the defense establishment had lost patience with him.
He had gone from a rational pragmatist who learned in 2006 not to mess with Israel beyond a certain point to a religious fanatic obsessed with honor and unwilling to back down at any point that Israel would find tolerable for ending the conflict.
Sever the head
Most importantly, Israel concluded that while it might need to invade Lebanon to achieve a lasting and reliable ceasefire, killing Nasrallah might now give a better chance for a ceasefire without the need for an invasion than leaving him alive.
By Wednesday of this past week, a decision in principle was made, earlier Friday there were already hints that Nasrallah was near his end, and by late Friday he was history.
