On Wednesday, Palestinian militants in southern Lebanon launched rockets into Israel—one of several such incidents in recent weeks. The IDF responded with artillery fire and airstrikes. Then, on Friday, Hizballah—which controls southern Lebanon, and has a great deal of power over the country as a whole—fired nineteen rockets into northern Israel. The IDF again responded with artillery fire directed at unpopulated areas. Yaakov Katz comments on this “dangerous and complicated” situation:
The IDF spokesperson, Brigadier General Ran Kochav, went so far as to explain that the fact Hizballah fired its . . . rockets into open fields meant that the Lebanese terrorist group was deterred and scared of a larger conflict with Israel. If that wasn’t the case, he told reporters in a briefing on Friday, it would have attacked population centers.
Is this true? We don’t know. What we do know is that this is a dangerous way to think, since it sets up Israel to allow its northern border to turn into something like the border with Gaza. There, for years, Israel restrained itself after rocket attacks. If it responded, it hit sand dunes or makeshift Hamas observation posts. Nothing too serious. This [strategy] normalized rocket fire into sovereign Israel. So long as no one was hurt or killed and so long as the rocket fire was sporadic, Israel could restrain itself. Did [this policy] make sense? Maybe. Did it also erode Israel’s deterrence? Definitely.
What comments like Kochav’s potentially do, when coupled with a mild military response, is to create for Hizballah a feeling that it—like Hamas—can normalize rocket attacks against Israel’s north. This would be disastrous for Israel but difficult to stop. Too strong a response could lead to a larger escalation—something Israel does not want—while too weak a response could lead Hizballah to learn a bad lesson, something Israel also does not want.
Read more on Jerusalem Post: https://www.jpost.com/opinion/hezbollah-is-testing-israel-and-so-far-its-succeeding-analysis-676119