On Sunday, Hizballah launched a missile at an Israeli military base, destroying a vehicle but failing to harm any soldiers. The IDF responded by firing some 100 artillery shells at Hizballah positions in Lebanon. Writing before those events, Shmuel Rosner reflected on the series of exchanges of fire between the Jewish state and the Iran-backed guerrilla group that led up to them, as well as various attempted and successful terrorist attacks from Gaza and the West Bank:
Israel is active on five fronts: the West Bank, where violence is contained and yet the situation is volatile; Gaza, where violence threatens to erupt daily; Syria, where Iranian forces keep trying to form a base against Israel that Israel won’t allow; Lebanon, where pro-Iranian forces feel compelled to act in response to Israeli actions; and Iraq, where Israel reportedly operates as part of the war against Iranian expansion.
The situation [in Gaza] shouldn’t be confused with a lull between conflicts or cease-fires. It is . . . a low-intensity, constant war. And what is true for Gaza is truer for Iran. . . . Iran seeks to become the dominant force in the region and admits that such dominance is supposed to lead to, among other things, the destruction of Israel. Israel doesn’t want to be destroyed, so it acts to preempt Iranian attempts to gain dominance.
What made [last] week unique was the increase in the level of seriousness of the actions. For the first time, Israel was outed in such a clear way as a reported aggressor in Iraq. For the first time, Iran was ready to launch missiles from Syria toward Israeli targets. For the first time in a long while, an Israeli was killed by a hidden explosive device—a means of guerrilla warfare. For the first time since the 2006 Lebanon war, Israel is accused of launching an attack in Beirut.
This is not just intensification in numerical terms. This is intensification in qualitative terms—more and not quite the same.
Read more on Jewish Journal: https://jewishjournal.com/rosnersdomain/303680/israel-has-become-a-five-front-war/