Israel’s attack on pagers belonging to Hezbollah on Tuesday was a tactical success that had no clear strategic impact, analysts say.
While it embarrassed Hezbollah and appeared to incapacitate many of its members, the attack has not so far altered the military balance along the Israel-Lebanon border, where more than 100,000 civilians on either side have been displaced by a low-intensity battle. Hezbollah and the Israeli military remained locked in the same pattern, exchanging missiles and artillery fire on Wednesday at a tempo in keeping with the daily skirmishes fought between the sides since October.
Although Tuesday’s attack was an eye-catching demonstration of Israel’s technological prowess, Israel has not initially sought to capitalize on the confusion it sowed by initiating a decisive blow against Hezbollah and invading Lebanon.
And if the attack impressed many Israelis, some of whom had criticized their government for failing to stop Hezbollah’s strikes, their core frustration remains: Hezbollah is still entrenched on Israel’s northern border, preventing tens of thousands of residents of northern Israel from returning home.
“This is an amazing tactical event,” said Miri Eisin, a fellow at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, an Israel-based research organization.
“But not a single Hezbollah fighter is going to move because of this,” said Ms. Eisin, a former senior intelligence officer. “Having amazing capabilities does not make a strategy.”
Israelis are divided about whether the attack was born from short-term opportunism or long-term forethought. Some believe that Israeli commanders feared that their Hezbollah counterparts had recently discovered Israel’s ability to sabotage the pagers, prompting Israeli commanders to immediately blow them up or risk losing the capability forever.
Others say that Israel had a specific strategic intent. Israel may have hoped that the attack’s brazenness and sophistication would ultimately make Hezbollah more amenable to a cease-fire in the coming weeks, if not immediately.
“The goal of the operation, if Israel was behind it as Hezbollah claims, may have been to show Hezbollah that it will pay a very high price if it continues its attacks on Israel instead of reaching an agreement,” said Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israel’s military intelligence directorate.
Hezbollah began firing on Israel in early October in solidarity with Hamas, after its Palestinian ally raided southern Israel, prompting a large-scale Israeli counterattack on Gaza. Since then, Hezbollah has tied its fate to that of Hamas, vowing that it will not stop fighting until Israel withdraws from Gaza.
Given the connection, officials either side of the border have hoped for months that a truce in Gaza would lead to a parallel agreement in Lebanon. American and French mediators, led by Amos Hochstein, a U.S. envoy, have shuttled between Beirut and Jerusalem, preparing the ground for a truce between Israel and Hezbollah in the event of a deal in Gaza.
With negotiations over Gaza now at an impasse, the Israeli leadership may believe it has to take more ambitious action against Hezbollah to persuade the group to disentangle its fate from that of Hamas, analysts said. In recent days, the Israeli leadership has intensified its public focus on Hezbollah, with the country’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, warning this week that “military action” was “the only way” to end the conflict.
“The point is to disconnect the war Hezbollah declared on Israel from the war with Hamas,” Mr. Yadlin said.
The operation gives Mr. Hochstein “another tool to use when speaking with Hezbollah: ‘You better reach an agreement, or you’ll face a more substantial and surprising attacks,’” Mr. Yadlin added.
Some are more skeptical, arguing that Hezbollah is unlikely to change course, even if it has been degraded and disoriented by the attack.
Hezbollah views itself as the most influential Iranian ally in the Middle East and would try to avoid creating the perception that it had abandoned Hamas, according to Sima Shine, a former senior officer in the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency.
“I don’t see it happening,” said Ms. Shine, an analyst at the Institute for National Security Studies, an Israeli research organization. “It is very important for them to be the head of all the proxies in the region, the one who gives direction to others, the one who trains others from time to time.”
More generally, the attack also highlighted the dissonance between the discipline of Israel’s intelligence agencies, which have the ability to plan operations months or even years ahead, and the messy short-term thinking of Israel’s political leadership.
The attack followed days of reports in the Israeli press about an intention by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to fire his defense minister, even as Mr. Gallant was overseeing the planned operation in Lebanon.
“This is a very strange situation,” Ms. Shine said. It shows “such a gap between the politicians and the security establishment.”
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