Israel Gets Another Win Against Hezbollah

It looks like Israel and Hezbollah are signaling a de-escalation after a heavy exchange of fire early Sunday between Israel and Iran-backed Shiite terrorist group. Hezbollah had launched hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel as around 100 Israeli war planes struck targets in Lebanon.

Israel had launched what it called “preemptive strikes” against Hezbollah, which “struck and destroyed thousands of Hezbollah rocket launcher barrels” and killed a top Hezbollah commander.

Israel said it carried out the strikes in self-defense after identifying that Hezbollah was “preparing to fire missiles and rockets toward Israeli territory.” “We removed a wider threat, probably also a future threat in some areas,” IDF spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said Sunday.

Hezbollah then launched retaliatory strikes, which it claimed ended in “complete success,” despite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying that the Israeli military intercepted “all of the drones that Hezbollah launched to a strategic target in the center of the country.”

It is pretty clear that Hezbollah does not have the capacity to hurt the IDF in a significant way, but needs their supporters to believe that they can. They need to save face, without provoking the IDF to degrade them even more. Claiming they have “accomplished” a mission is their attempt to do that.

We have been anticipating an escalation between Israel and Hezbollah to start for a while now. Now that it has finally come, it has gone pretty well for Israel. Killing a top Hezbollah leader, degrading their forces, and showing Hezbollah that they cannot go stride for stride with them to such a degree that Hezbollah is reduced to pretending they had a successful strike on Israel and is now “finished” with their retaliation, is a success.

It’s almost certain that this isn’t the end of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict. But for now, Israel has another win.