“Israel” Unable to Understand Hezbollah’s Logic: The Group’s Determination to Respond Is An Example

In between these, the “Israeli” enemy leadership found in this Lebanese internal situation an opportunity – at the political, financial, economic and medical levels – to seize in order to strengthen its deterrence and extend its operational initiative, based on estimations, which are widely stated in the “Israeli” Foundation, that it is not in the interest of Hezbollah to engage in a military confrontation with “Israel”, especially in this situation.

In opposition to this view, Hezbollah position concerning its determination to respond in a way that forces the enemy soldiers to pay in blood shocked and surprised the “Israeli” leadership. This is in contrast with the entity’s estimations that those developments would allow the “Israeli” leadership to create a new equation in the face of Hezbollah and Lebanon.

In the same context, based on the “Israeli” story, Tel Aviv bet that the events in the Shebaa Farms and al-Manara settlement would be an opportunity for Hezbollah to, as they call it, “get down the tree” or get away with its actions. In the sense that Hezbollah can score fictitious retaliation attempts that reflect its determination to take revenge. Thereby, the decision maker in Tel Aviv gets the message. However, the problem is that Hezbollah has issued a statement, after the Shebaa Farms event, in which it stressed that retaliation is inevitable. Subsequently, after the al-Manara event, Hezbollah Secretary General His Eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah declared in his speech that he is determined to a retaliation that forces enemy soldiers to pay in blood. This confused the estimations and statements of the political and security institutions in Tel Aviv. It also increased their fears to the point that some wondered that “Hezbollah is acting like it is not facing an internal war”, indicating that the Resistance group’s deterrent and operational performance in the face of “Israel” is contrary to all their estimations, and even to the actual reality in Lebanon.

On the impact of the gap between the enemy estimations concerning the effects of the Lebanese reality on Hezbollah’s choices and the readiness of the latter for the revenge, the “Israeli” newspaper “Israel Hayom” revealed that the army is trying in this period, “with only partial success”, to get into “Nasrallah’s head”. The issue that the army is trying to solve is that Hezbollah doesn’t want to aggravate the situation, but it is, at the same time, determined to retaliate, which might obviously escalate the situation.

In an attempt to answer the question, the “Israeli” army introduced several options, and it seems that it is searching for explanations in a “box of ideas” which seemed unable to understand choices made by Hezbollah in various situations. In the same framework, this conflict appeared in the assessment of the strategic situation of the “Israeli” entity’s occupation army, which should be presented to the government. In this assessment, the occupation army saw that “Israel’s” enemies are deterred and confused, so they will not get into a battle with “Israel”. At the same time, the “Israeli” army stressed that Hezbollah is determined to avenge the martyrdom of its fighter, hence why the “Israeli” entity’s occupation army will remain on high alert.

However, it is noted that the “Israeli” army leadership doesn’t notice that Hezbollah doesn’t want to escalate the situation, but not at any cost. In the sense that in case “Israel” imposed a military confrontation, Hezbollah will engage in a way to strengthen its deterrence. In other words, it seems that the occupation army leadership confuses between the fact that Hezbollah doesn’t want to start escalating the situation, and the fact that the Resistance group will engage in the escalation when it finds that it is the only choice in the face of an “Israeli” aggression against Lebanon.

Accordingly, one reason behind the “Israeli” enemy leadership’s failure in understanding the Hezbollah’s way of thinking and its logic concerning priority-setting and perception of challenges, is made obvious.

However, there remains the fact that the “Israeli” leadership will later face the consequences that its soldiers are forbidden to walk amid Hezbollah fire range in the occupied Palestinian territories near the border with Lebanon. In order to prevent mistakes, numerous military checkpoints aimed at stopping any soldier in military uniform heading to that area had been deployed. In contrast, the “Israeli” leadership allowed “civilians” to go there, bearing in mind that Hezbollah will retaliate on soldiers only. The settlers turn may come later, only in case the enemy dared to target Lebanese citizens.