Deterrence works, but only until war recurs

The predictability of the sequence of events between Israel and Hizbollah in the last two weeks played out like clockwork.

While there are some unknown motivating factors about the Israeli air attack in the Golan Heights on January 18 that killed six Hizbollah men and an Iranian general, there was no such imprecision about the events that followed.

Hizbollah retaliated on January 28 by lethally attacking an Israeli army patrol in the occupied Shebaa Farms region, along the Lebanese-Syrian-Israeli borders, and Israel responded the same day by shelling a range of areas in south Lebanon, killing a Spanish UNIFIL peacekeeper.

For half a day last Wednesday, much of the world speculated whether the tit-for-tat attacks would spiral out of control into another full-fledged Israel-Hizbollah war, as happened several times before in recent years.

The fact that this has not happened now is an important marker that tells us much about the new mutual deterrence condition that now defines this hostile relationship.

The tit-for-tat attacks did not lead to a full war because of two main reasons, I suspect: They followed the almost scripted sequence of how to conduct such attacks that Israel and Hizbollah signed on to some years ago, and they reveal the significant deterrence on both sides against waging all-out, indiscriminate warfare as they did in 2006, and as Israel and Hamas did last year.

The 1996 understanding and the 2006 UN Security Council Resolution 1701 spell out constraints on both sides’ military attacks, designed to allow them to hit each other’s targets in a limited manner but without destroying civilian infrastructure or killing civilians in population centres.

That process worked perfectly this time, as all the attacks either hit military targets or isolated non-populated border regions. Each side retaliated as it said it would.

The message from the two mighty warriors Israel and Hizbollah was that they would not allow themselves to be attacked without fighting back, but they would avoid large-scale war and death.

The reason for this must be the massive deterrence pressures that constrain them both from reigniting full-scale war across civilian and military targets.

The Israelis know that Hizbollah’s perpetually improving capabilities in rocketry, protecting their launchers, communications, field tactics and other military areas mean that an all-out war would be very costly for some parts of Israel, including possibly shutting down the national airport as happened briefly during the Gaza war.

A war also — as happened in previous ones — is unlikely to destroy Hizbollah or wipe out its military capabilities, given its nature as a civilian-based fighting force operating in its own territory.

The Israeli population will not support a war of choice that is not required to secure the country from an actual threat.

Hizbollah, for its part, has to think hard before engaging in another total war against Israel, for similar reasons.

Israel would inflict immense damage across all of Lebanon, as it did in 2006, causing large-scale civilian refugee flows and adding to the pressures of the 1.4 million or so Syrian refugees in the country.

War would also provide an opportunity for takfiri militants like the so-called Islamic State and Jabhat Al Nusra to attack along Lebanon’s northeastern borders, which would be a catastrophic blow to the country.

The political condemnations of Hizbollah within Lebanon would also be loud and strong, if it were seen to be waging a war of choice that was not necessary to ward off a real threat or attack from Israel.

This Israeli-Lebanese equation is rather straightforward and clear, but what makes this latest round of military exchanges fascinating is that it started in the Syrian Golan Heights, which has always been the quietest for Israel.

I have yet to hear a definitive explanation of why Israel attacked the Hizbollah-Iran convoy on the Golan Heights in the first place, though speculation is plentiful.

What we can conclude, I suggest, is that we would not be in this situation had Israel seriously studied and responded to the 2002 Arab Peace Plan that provided an important opening to negotiate a permanent, comprehensive and mutually just peace accord between it and the Arab states.

Why Israel and the US ignored that historic offer remains unclear; what is certain is that Israeli-Lebanese-Syrian-Iranian tensions and active warfare would not have been a recurring problem, as in fact they are, had Israel responded to the Arab peace plan.

The capacity of the unresolved Palestine issue to destabilise and radicalise the Middle Eastern region and lead it into recurring wasteful wars is very much in play here.

The deterrence condition between Hizbollah and Israel only postpones active warfare if the underlying causes of the confrontations are not addressed.