Following the 2018 elections, Lebanon had a pro-Hizballah Christian president, and the Iran-backed terrorist group and its allies held a majority in the parliament and cabinet. Formally, the ruling coalition included both pro-Iranian and pro-Western groups. But the new government, announced last week, is very different. Jonathan Spyer explains:

Hizballah itself controls only two ministries in the new government. But the Christian Free Patriotic Movement . . . and the Shiite Amal movement, both closely associated with Hizballah, control much of the rest. Smaller parties also associated with this bloc make up the remainder.

In this regard, [the new] government constitutes for the first time an administration that reflects the longstanding power reality in Lebanon. Hizballah has long dominated the key nodes of power in Lebanon when it comes to military and intelligence matters. Its influence is also profound in the economic sector. The overt, formal political administration in the country will now reflect this. Over the last decade-and-a-half, Hizballah has gradually removed all obstacles to its exercise of full-spectrum dominance in Lebanon.

As of this week . . . the ambiguity appears to have disappeared. Formal power in Lebanon now coincides with real power.

The consequences for Israel, at which Hizballah has aimed tens of thousands of rockets, are significant:

In the 2006 [Israel-Lebanon war], the government of then-Prime Minister Fouad Siniora was oriented toward the West. Israel thus faced the difficult task of chasing Hizballah in Lebanon while avoiding harm to the Lebanese state infrastructure. The results were mixed. . . . Given the events of this week in Lebanon, any such attempt at differentiation is unlikely to be repeated. Rather, in a future contest between Israel and Hizballah/Iran, the state of Lebanon under its Hizballah-dominated government will constitute the enemy. This, in turn, will enable Israel to exercise the full range of options available to it from a conventional military point of view.

Earlier this month, an operative working for, or in conjunction with, Hizballah snuck across the Israel-Lebanese border and planted a sophisticated explosive near the town of Megiddo, which killed a civilian when detonated. On Thursday, another Iranian proxy group launched a drone at a U.S. military base in Syria, killing a contractor and wounding five American soldiers. The former attack appears to be an attempt to change what Israeli officials and analysts call the “rules of the game”: the mutually understood redlines that keep the Jewish state and Hizballah from going to war. Nadav Pollak explains how he believes Jerusalem should respond:

Israel cannot stop at pointing fingers and issuing harsh statements. The Megiddo attack might have caused much more damage given the additional explosives and other weapons the terrorist was carrying; even the lone device detonated at Megiddo could have easily been used to destroy a larger target such as a bus. Moreover, Hizballah’s apparent effort to test (or shift) Jerusalem’s redlines on a dangerous frontier needs to be answered. If [the terrorist group’s leader Hassan] Nasrallah has misjudged Israel, then it is incumbent on Jerusalem to make this clear.

Unfortunately, the days of keeping the north quiet at any cost have passed, especially if Hizballah no longer believes Israel is willing to respond forcefully. The last time the organization perceived Israel to be weak was in 2006, and its resultant cross-border operations (e.g., kidnapping Israeli soldiers) led to a war that proved to be devastating, mostly to Lebanon. If Hizballah tries to challenge Israel again, Israel should be ready to take strong action such as targeting the group’s commanders and headquarters in Lebanon—even if this runs the risk of intense fire exchanges or war.

Relevant preparations for this option should include increased monitoring of Hizballah officials—overtly and covertly—and perhaps even the transfer of some military units to the north. Hizballah needs to know that Israel is no longer shying away from conflict, since this may be the only way of forcing the group to return to the old, accepted rules of the game and step down from the precipice of a war that it does not appear to want.