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A third Lebanon War?

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By Matthew Williams:

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The volatile relationship between Israel and Hizbullah has worsened since early 2015 and has threatened to deteriorate into open war. A Third Lebanon War would have significant repercussions not only for Israel, but for the entire region. Lebanon faces a major crisis: it now contains over 1-1.5 million Syrian and Palestinian refugees; and its neighbour Syria is in the midst of a civil war that has left an estimated 240,000 dead,

Tension is growing between Israel and Hizbullah. This was underlined by the violence between the two parties in January-February 2015, which left two Israeli soldiers dead and threatened to escalate into open war. This tension could be the catalyst for the breakdown of the Lebanese government’s capability to control the civil war already spilling over into Lebanon. This is illustrated by the refugee crisis, the presence of extremist cells like ISIS in Lebanon, and the operations of Hizbullah and the Lebanese government forces against such groups.

While a third war has failed to materialise thus far, a future crisis may await in the Levant; indeed, Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Avigdor Liberman has declared that a third war is ‘inevitable’. From Netanyahu’s perspective, the Arab Spring provoked insecurity across the region and Israel had to respond. The insecurity was brought about by the original phase of protests and upheavals that constituted the Arab Spring, the subsequent deterioration of many of these protests into protracted violent conflicts (as exemplified by Syria), and the rise of Iranian influence and involvement in such civil wars across the region. From the outset Netenyahu’s response has been to consolidate Israel’s control over the West Bank by expanding settlements, increasing military spending, strongly condemning Iranian involvement in these various conflicts, and reinforcing ‘the bunker mentality of Israel’s right-wing government’[1] in what has become an unpredictable regional environment.

However, the Knesset has endured a difficult year in 2015, calling into question the sustainability of this strategy. The Iranian nuclear deal has left Israel’s coalition government exposed to heavy criticism, with both parties from the left and the right describing the deal as a major foreign policy disaster. Politicians across the political spectrum fear that Netanyahu’s coarse diplomatic approach to the matter has not only produced a foreign policy disaster for Israel, but also damaged relations with the Obama administration through heavy-handed criticism.

The potential removal of sanctions on Iran, a key sponsor of Hizbullah, will be a significant cause for concern amongst the Israeli security services, as the lifting of embargoes on conventional arms will be perceived as an opportunity to strengthen Hizbullah both financially and militarily. Sources close to the organisation have argued that ‘additional Iranian support would not come in the form of weaponry, but rather in the form of institutional resources — schools, hospitals and roads — increasing local support, while propping up Shiite militias and regime forces in neighbouring Syria.’[2]

However, the implications of the Iranian nuclear deal, while important in changing the future dynamics of the Hizbullah-Israeli conflict, serves to distract attention from the way that Hizbullah has established a degree of parity with the Israeli military that was absent in the 2006 Lebanon war.

According to Jeffrey White, Hizbullah has unilaterally expanded its missile capabilities alongside significant innovations in its defensive layout in southern Lebanon, while their military support for Bashar al-Assad has meant that the group has gained considerable potential in offensive strategy.[3] Israeli intelligence has estimated that Hizbullah ‘would likely…sustain fire of around a thousand rockets and missiles per day, dwarfing the approximate daily rate of 118 achieved in 2006.’[4] Such an increase in military power means that in the event of an attack major damage would be dealt to Israeli civil and military infrastructure, as well as the killing of scores of Israeli civilians.

Covert Iranian support for Hizbullah, while prevalent, has been over-emphasized by Western media. According to Uzi Rubin, it was ‘Syrian rockets (that) played the major role in the Second Lebanon war (2006), while Iranian rockets were practically absent from it’ and ‘few if any Iranian rockets hit Israel throughout the entire (2006) campaign.’[5] Whether or not Iran covertly supports Hizbullah or not in the next war will not determine the group’s capacity to do formidable damage to Israel.

An ill-timed military campaign designed to weaken Hizbullah, while considered legitimate to the hawkish Israeli government, will provide more problems than solutions for Israeli security, as well as increasing problems for its European allies, and further destabilizing the wider region. The conflict would exacerbate the humanitarian crisis in the Middle East and Europe and present Western leaders with yet another war in the Middle East to navigate.

The Lebanese government and Hizbullah are already struggling to provide for a huge number of refugees, which has produced a major socio-economic and humanitarian crisis in Lebanon. This is not an entirely new phenomenon. The Palestinians and its refugee population have, historically, had a difficult relationship with the Lebanese population. But the Syrian refugees provide a new and unpredictable dynamic to this relationship between local and refugee populations.

If Lebanese civil and military infrastructure and its civilians are treated in an indiscriminate manner by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) in the pursuit of Hizbullah, it will create a new humanitarian crisis by displacing thousands of Lebanese civilians while undermining governmental capacity to provide for its Palestinian and Syrian refugee populations. In the second Lebanon War (2006) the IDF severely damaged Lebanese civil infrastructure and displaced 900,000 Lebanese civilians, as well as killing over one thousand.[6]

A war now would have far greater impact, making these statistics pale by comparison. Not only is the regional context significantly less stable than it was in 2006, but there is also a more belligerent government in power in Isreal. Netanyahu’s coalition is drifting towards an open embrace of ethno-religious nationalism. It continues to introduce increasingly discriminatory policies against Israeli Arabs and Palestinians, and perseveres in its use of draconian military tactics, many of which have invited international condemnation.

In the second Lebanon War, according to Human Rights Watch, ‘94 attacks show that Israel often, even though not deliberately attacking civilians, did not distinguish between military objectives and civilians or civilian objects.’ The heavy casualties and critical damage resulting from these attacks illustrated ‘the failure of the IDF to take adequate safeguards to prevent civilian casualties’ in the fight against Hamas during the 2014 Gaza War, the IDF obliterated entire areas of the Gaza Strip, much of which remains in ruins, leaving thousands of Palestinians homeless and dependent on a trickle of humanitarian aid. This seems to demonstrate that the IDF has barely changed its military conduct.

Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian refugees will be caught in the cross-fire and thousands will be forced to flee. These refugees would struggle to enter Israel – Netanyahu has reaffirmed the Knesset’s policy of zero tolerance on providing asylum for refugees, who he contends will destabilise the geographic and demographic integrity of Israel. The alternative for these refugees fleeing a third Israeli-Lebanon war is Assad or ISIS, an unrealistic alternative that may force thousands to flood to Turkey, Jordan or to Europe. This will exacerbate the ongoing migrant/refugee crisis there and further destabilise a the fragile Balkan countries.

A third Lebanon War would additionally increase Israeli isolation while providing an opportunity for ultra-violent extremist splinter groups affiliated with Islamic State and radical jihadist cells to strengthen their position in a disordered eastern Lebanon. Eastern Lebanon remains fiercely contested by Lebanese Armed Forces and Hizbullah fighting against insurgents associated with ISIS who have been pushed into Lebanon by the Syrian military.

These are plausible scenarios as Israel’s stature in the international community continues to slide, as typified by the wide-spread international condemnation of the brutal Gaza War, Netanyahu’s souring relationship with Barack Obama, and the anti-Arab rhetoric he used against Israeli Arabs to swing the March elections in Likud’s favour.

Is the war inevitable? As Ari Shavit notes, a balance in military deterrents could prevent an escalation. However the precarious January crisis proved that small incidents can escalate into open hostility (the second Lebanon war was an even graver example). Amidst the unpredictability of the radically changing Middle East and the unprecedented changes occurring in Israeli society and politics, conventional military deterrents may not be enough in the long-term.

The remaining solution is for Israel to reform its diplomatic approach in the region and with the international community, and for Western policymakers to make serious efforts to reach out to the new (and legitimate) and conventional regimes in the Middle East. This could prove decisive in preventing an escalation in hostilities and mediating a swift ceasefire between the two parties should conflict break out, meaning that impact of the war upon Lebanon and Israel would be limited.

The Arab-Israeli conflict dynamic remains a dangerous blind-spot in the current Middle Eastern crisis that cannot be neglected. For Israel, a protracted war with Hizbullah would not only be a costly military confrontation, it would also further damage Israel’s standing amongst its western allies. These allies suspect that Netanyahu’s unilateral attempts to secure national security will trigger a destabilising conflict between Israel, Lebanon and Hizbullah, thereby undermining one of the West’s wider strategic objectives in the Middle East: the containment of the regional violence and instability.

Future military and diplomatic hostilities between Israel and Hizbullah are inevitable. What is crucial is how Israeli politicians, Western policymakers, and Hizbullah’s leadership contain this rivalry to limited and intermittent confrontations. This will decide whether or not the conflict will ignite a regional inferno.

Matthew Williams recently completed his MA in Conflict, Security and Development in the Department of War Studies and King’s College London. You can follow him on Twitter @Matthew431 or view his personal website www.archivesofconflict.wordpress.com/

[1] Muriel, Ausseberg, “The Arab Spring and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Vicious Cycle of Mutually Reinforcing Negative Repercussions,” in An Arab Springboard for EU Foreign Policy eds. Sven Biscop, Rosa Balfour and Michael Emerson (The Royal Institute for International Relations): 86.

[2] Alessandra, Masi, “Will A Nuclear Deal With Iran Strengthen American Enemies Across The Region?,” The International Business Times, July 14th, 2015, accessed September 18th, 2015, http://www.ibtimes.com/will-nuclear-deal-iran-strengthen-american-enemies-across-region-2008602.

[3] “A War Like No Other: Israel vs. Hezbollah in 2015,” last modified 29 January 2015, accessed September 14, 2015, http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/a-war-like-no-other-israel-vs.-hezbollah-in-2015.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Uzi, Rubin, “The Rocket Campaign against Israel during the 2006 Lebanon War,” The Begin-Sada Center for Strategic Studies, 71 (2007): 6-7.

[6] “Israel accused over Lebanon war,” last modified September 6, 2007, accessed September 14, 2015, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6981557.stm.

Hezbollah in Syria: a game of high stakes

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By Kitty Veress:

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Hezbollah members mourn during the funeral of a comrade who was killed in combat alongside Syrian government forces in the Qalamoun region. Photo: Times of Israel (published under fair use policy for intellectual non-commercial purposes)

The Western world has been quick to label Hezbollah’s involvement in Syria and Iraq as nefarious and threatening while failing to consider the wider strategic implications. A more comprehensive perspective is needed to evaluate the risks and opportunities the extremist Shi’ite group faces in its support of the Syrian regime. The potential benefit of establishing itself as a regional power and battle-hardening its troops needs to be weighed against Hezbollah’s risk of physical and ideological overexpansion that might expose the group’s vulnerabilities and ultimately endanger Lebanon’s defence capabilities.

Hezbollah

Created in 1982, Hezbollah was originally a resistance group against the Israeli occupation in Lebanon. Since then it has become a prolific global terrorist organisation that has proven its ability to attack anywhere in the world through a wide network of cells. Hezbollah has adapted to domestic and regional dynamics, asserted its position by strengthening its grip on Lebanese politics, and expanded its military influence in the region. The extremist group remains a strong political player with an ability to paralyze Lebanese political institutions and obstruct the appointment of key positions.

Thanks to its state-sponsor Iran, Hezbollah has grown into the strongest military force in Lebanon, with its own division of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and a breadth and variety of both short and long-range military-grade weapons, such as Syrian Scud-D missiles, that can reach deep into Israeli territory. The group’s involvement in regional crises in Syria, Iraq and Yemen marks an ideological and tactical shift towards regional power that renews the threat to American interests and to their allies in the Middle East.

The regional footprint

Hezbollah’s engagement in Syria is not based on rash decision-making but is rather a sign of the trademark methodical approach that has ensured the group’s survival over more than three decades. Openly operating in Syria since 2013, Hezbollah assists the Assad regime and wages what is essentially a counterinsurgency campaign against inferior enemy rebel factions. In response to ISIS’ territorial expansion, Hezbollah also sent troops to Iraq in early 2015 to back local Shi’ite militias leading the fight against the Sunni extremist group. Although the West publicly minimizes the role that foreign Shi’ite fighters play in the coalition’s battle against ISIS, Hezbollah’s formidable military posture and its ability to foster support against a common enemy beyond its Shi’ite constituency render it an essential part of the fight against Sunni extremism.

Recent open source footage chronicles Hezbollah’s pro-Assad battlefield actions and illustrates the commitment and fierceness of the group’s operations: Youtube videos show military battles against both al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, as well as against ISIS, after Hezbollah began an offensive within the Syrian Qalamoun Mountains along the Lebanese-Syrian border.

In addition to its advanced weapons cache, Hezbollah continues to tactically innovate, the prime example being its employment of commercial short-range UAVs. The drones assist in the planning of assaults, conduct reconnaissance and support real-time combat operations via live feeds.

A recently revealed UAV airstrip in the Lebanese Beka’a valley, close to the Syrian border, underlines the role of technological innovation in Hezbollah’s operations as well as the group’s longer-term commitment to defending the Assad regime. While Hezbollah has employed Iranian-made drones against Israel since 2004, its construction of an airstrip as well as its switch to commercial drones against other non-state actors proves how seriously the group takes its involvement in Syria.

The stakes

Hezbollah’s engagement in Syria was undoubtedly requested by Iran, its main sponsor, who directed Hezbollah to support its prime regional Shi’ite ally by fighting the Syrian opposition and Sunni extremists alike. Yet Hezbollah’s involvement also reflects deep personal stakes because it could be immeasurably damaged were the Syrian regime to fall. By bolstering Assad’s forces, the Shi’ite group preserves its relationship to the state and ensures that important logistical and weapons supply routes are kept accessible. At the same time, it fends off an expansion of Sunni extremism that threatens to spillover into neighbouring countries.

Risks and opportunities

Hezbollah’s active regional presence comes with a plethora of consequences that will be decisive for the group’s future. Success on the battlefield will bolster Hezbollah’s reshaped identity as living proof that the group has evolved from merely a defender of Lebanese Shi’ites against Israel to a defender of the Shi’ite faith within the entire region. In an echo of the Arab World’s overwhelmingly supportive reaction to Hezbollah after the second Lebanon War in 2006, an effective Syria campaign would exponentially boost the group’s regional influence and elevate it into a key stakeholder in the Middle East. A successful extension of Assad’s grip on Syria would keep the Iranian-led Shi’ite Axis intact and continue to allow Hezbollah a logistical safe-haven to sustain smooth operations.

Military successes would further maintain Hezbollah’s position within Lebanon and promote continued, self-sustained domestic recruitment into the organisation. A worry, especially promulgated by Israel, is that Hezbollah’s engagement in Syria could battle-harden its troops who will gain valuable skills and combat experience that will give them an edge in potential future conflicts with its primary enemy Israel. This concern is not unwarranted, as the group is already bolstering its military capabilities by cleaning out Syria’s weapons depots and stockpiling them in southern Lebanon. However, due to its deep commitments in Syria and other regional crises, it would seem suicidal for Hezbollah to embark upon an offensive against Israel at this time.

At the same time, continued involvement in Syria without visible successes may lead to a rift between Hezbollah’s leadership and its followers. Since its involvement in domestic politics in 1992, the group has become more accountable to its constituency who – with unprecedented magnitude – have voiced concerns about the legitimacy of the Syrian intervention. The leadership is being forced to justify the sacrifice of Shi’ite lives in a conflict that at present does not pose any immediate threats to Lebanon, thereby straining the coherency of Hezbollah’s narrative. While imposing speeches by Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah continue to maintain widespread and fervent support among its members, rebellion within its own ranks may become a more pressing issue as the conflict moves on without resolution and battle-weariness sets in.

In addition to the risk of internal division, Hezbollah also faces potential over-exertion by waging a multi-front campaign that could overstretch its forces and limit its operational capacities. While this may at first seem beneficial to Western national security interests, a weakening of the Shi’ite group would expose Lebanon’s defence capabilities, which depend on Hezbollah as the first line of defence. A weakened Hezbollah might also tempt ISIS to direct some elements towards Lebanon, especially in the face of Hezbollah’s propagation of anti-Sunni sentiment. Extreme battlefield attrition could thus render the group unable to defend Lebanon and make its home base an attractive target for the high-flaming sectarian tensions fostered by ISIS.

Conclusion

Hezbollah has repeatedly proven its adaptability to changing domestic and regional dynamics, which demonstrates the group’s strength and unpredictability. Yet the intervention in Syria pushes the group into a somewhat reactive position, as Hezbollah’s fate now hinges on Assad’s perseverance and on ISIS’ success or failure. Should Hezbollah manage to push back the Sunni extremist factions, the prospective rewards are likely to elevate the group’s domestic and regional standing beyond anything it has ever experienced. However, the risks of failure are great, as an unsuccessful mission in Syria threatens to unravel the group’s reputation for strong ideological and organisational coherence. In a worst-case scenario, Hezbollah’s risky enterprise could daisy-chain Lebanon into the events in Syria and push the country into the black hole of sectarian violence.

Kitty Veress is a recent graduate from the M.A. Security Studies Program at the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. Her research focuses on non-state violent actors and the nexus between psychology and terrorism. She currently lives in Washington, DC, and is about to take up her PhD studies at King’s College London’s War Studies Department on the topic of European foreign fighters and their decision-making processes. Follow her @Kitonia

An elusive stalemate: Israel and Hezbollah along the tri-border

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By Sebastian Maier:

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Hezbollah soldiers. Photo copyright: Associated Press (published under fair use policy for intellectual non-commercial purposes)

When the Israeli Air Force on 12 January 2015 allegedly carried out a sortie against a Hezbollah military convoy in the south western Syrian district of Quneitra, news spread quickly that among the victims was a prominent figure of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force special unit, General Allah Dadi. The purported Israeli air strike on the al-Amal Farms also killed Jihad Mughniyeh, son of the late Hezbollah intelligence commander Imad Mughniyeh, who in February 2008 died in a car bomb in the Syrian capital of Damascus. Merely two weeks after, Hezbollah lived up to expectations and retaliated by ambushing Israeli military vehicles, killing two and wounding seven soldiers close to the Israeli-occupied Sheba’a Farms on the Golan Heights.

In the grand scheme of things, the reported airstrike and Hezbollah’s act of reprisal are hardly surprising. Quite the contrary, in order to understand these events, one has to look to the inception and evolvement of what has become a well-entrenched animosity taking place across one of the Middle East’s most precarious theatres: the Syria-Lebanon-Israel tri-border area.

The prelude: Hezbollah’s early years

When Israel in 1978 first staged a military incursion into southern Lebanon, few considered it a harbinger of what was to come. With the outbreak of the 1982 Lebanon War, the Israeli occupation, and Hafez al-Assad’s efforts to establish a Ba’athist Pax Syriana on its neighbouring country’s soil, Lebanon’s sectarian fractures became deeply entrenched.

While the Israelis pushed northbound into the outskirts of Beirut with the support of the South Lebanon Army (its Christian proxy), the emerging Islamic Republic of Iran came to the fore and seized an opportunity to spread Iran’s influence in the region. Iran deployed 1,500 Revolutionary Guards to Lebanon, with the strategically crucial Beqa’a Valley as their final destination. In doing so, Tehran turned this fertile land into a Shia militant hotbed, ultimately paving the way for the birth of its Lebanese surrogate, ‘the Party of God’, or Hezbollah.

With this consolidated supply route over Shia territory, ranging from Tehran through Damascus into Southern Lebanon, the foundation had been laid for Hezbollah. In the coming years it relied on this route to violently resist the Israeli occupation while pursuing its integration into Lebanese politics.[1] As a consequence, after a 15 year-long low-level war of attrition, in 2000 Israel’s prime minister Ehud Barak called for the unilateral withdrawal of troops from what had become a protracted battlefield in Southern Lebanon. It was no longer the cordon sanitaire the Israelis had originally set out to create. Playing into Hezbollah’s hands, this manoeuvre subsequently fuelled the perception that the politicians in Israel were trying to sell an obvious surrender as a strategy.

Lessons of the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War

The years after the withdrawal do not represent a period of peaceful coexistence along the Lebanese border. Occasional skirmishes prevailed on the meadows of the Sheba’a Farms. Then on 12 July 2006, Hezbollah mounted a cross-border raid leading to the killing of 8 Israeli soldiers and the abduction of two reservists. This was supposed to represent a stepping stone towards securing the release of Druze Samir al-Quntar, the Lebanese former Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) member, who was imprisoned by Israel for his involvement in the 1979 Nahariya kidnapping attack. The raid by Hezbollah sparked the outbreak of the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War.

Other factors that led to the War were Israel’s determination to change the rules of the strategic deadlock along the border, and Hezbollah’s increasing influence on Hamas, who in June 2006 had abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit. What’s more, there were rumours that Hezbollah were on the brink of achieving first-strike capabilities.[2]

With the Israeli military campaign one week old, Ehud Barak admitted that the Israeli occupation in Lebanon may have led to the creation of Hezbollah:

‘When we entered Lebanon, there was no Hezbollah. We were accepted with perfumed rice and flowers by the Shia in the south. It was our presence there that created Hezbollah.’[3]

Soon it became clear that Israel’s military had lost its deterrent edge against an enemy who could blend irregular warfare with the weaponry and capabilities that were generally the preserve of regular armies.

As a result, in the later stages of the hostilities, Israel tried to alter the perception of Hezbollah at the receiving end by applying an iron fist policy of massive retaliation. On 22 July 2006 the Israeli Air flattened the Shia Dahiya suburb, a Hezbollah stronghold, in Beirut’s southern outskirts. Ever since, the term ‘Dahiya’ has been used to describe a strategic watershed experience for the Israeli military. The draconic air campaign was intended to be a disproportional punishment in order to restore credibility and to induce ‘a calm built on fear, not on political settlement.’[4]

Israel map

Hezbollah, however, endured the pounding by absorbing the damage, and continued their operational resistance. Indeed, it even managed to drag Israel back into waging a ground incursion into Southern Lebanon, a battlefield with negative connotations hard-wired into Israel’s military history.[5] To that end, Israel’s firepower, and Hezbollah’s ability to exploit Israel’s ‘Lebanese mud-syndrome’[6] cleared the way for a realignment of their animosity.

Both sides managed to seriously damage each other, which explains the relative quietude and restraint along the Israeli-Lebanese border ever since. Israel’s calculus stems from a pragmatic realization that only an escalatory response can achieve the temporary absence of violence along its borders. Hezbollah, for its part, internalized the art of blending into civilian areas and concealing its operating squads in order to hide and disperse. It decreased its own vulnerability but raised the probability of Lebanese civilians coming into the firing line.

Another front opens up: Hezbollah’s engagement in Syria

In April 2013, the Arab Spring now a distant memory, Hezbollah’s Secretary General Nasrallah made a public vow of fidelity to Assad. This came only a few days after visiting Tehran.[7] He made no secret of the fact that his fighters had gone to support the Shia-sect Alawite regime. Nasrallah, in an attempt to rally domestic support across sectarian lines, justified the deployment of his troops over the border by declaring that Hezbollah would only fight Sunni extremists, who would otherwise threaten Lebanese Shia and Christians.

The true reason for helping Assad is different: besides Tehran, Damascus still counts Hezbollah’s amongst its most important allies. If Assad were to fall, Hezbollah’s resilience in its struggle against Israel would be at stake, as would its strategic foothold in the Levant. For Assad, the involvement of Hezbollah’s troops in Syria is vital in containing a variety of anti-regime forces and the surge of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS).

The consequence of Hezbollah’s involvement in Syria is that the group is very busy. Another escalation with Israel and it may be forced to engage on two fronts simultaneously. This would divert and overstretch its military capabilities, and could even push Lebanon to the brink of collapse. This is exacerbated by the massive influx of Syrian refugees, who have become a huge social burden for the country.

Nasrallah, the former hero of the Arab masses, has thus embarked on a dangerous path. Celebrated for his achievement in forcing Israel’s pullout in 2000 and resisting a military incursion 6 years later, he has now risked further deepening the region’s broader Sunni-Shia divide. In addition, despite possessing an impressive rocket arsenal, it appears unlikely that Hezbollah could survive another round of Israeli escalation as long as it is caught up in the Syrian quagmire.[8]

Israel is attempting to navigate through an increasingly troublesome landscape on its northern front, and so for now it seems to be determined to adhere to a containment policy against Hezbollah. In 2013, when the risk of violence increased in the Shia Crescent, Israel sent a clear message by carrying out air strikes targeting military transport in the outskirts of Damascus, which Israel claimed to be supplying Hezbollah.

Finally, the events in January 2015 can be considered the latest reminder of a strategic stalemate along the border. The law of talion, ‘an eye for a tooth’[9], which represented the Israeli strategy during the hostilities in 2006, set the pattern for the conflict. Israel and Hezbollah now tacitly adhere to an even-tempered rationale. In the foreseeable future it will be tit-for-tat, rather than all-out war, that will characterise the ever volatile tri-border area.

Sebastian Maier graduated in January 2015 from the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, with an MA in Intelligence & International Security. He lives in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

NOTES

[1] Saad Ghorayeb, A., Hizbu’llah: Politics and Religion (Pluto Press London UK, 2001), pp.112,113.

[2] Norton, A.R., Hezbollah- A Shorty History (Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 2007), pp.133,134.

[3] Ibid. p.33.

[4] Rapoport, M., Flaws in Israel’s ‘punish and deter’ strategy, Middle East Eye, 10 July, 2014.

[5] Even before Hezbollah’s inception hostile actions against Israel had been carried out from Southern Lebanese soil, e.g. by armed terrorists, including 1000 Libyan and 500 Syrian volunteers. In: Gilbert, M., The Arab-Israeli Conflict- Its history in Maps ( London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1984), p.77.

[6] Lieberman, E., Reconceptualizing Deterrence: Nudging Toward Rationality in Middle Eastern rivalries (Abingdon, Routledge, 2013), p.197.

[7] The Daily Star, Lebanon, Nasrallah met Khamenei in Iran, to make speech May 9, April 22, 2013.

[8] Levitt, M., Hezbollah’s Syrian Quagmire, PRISM, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, September 2014.

[9] Byman, D. L., An Eye for a Tooth: The Trouble with Israeli Deterrence,  ForeignPolicy.com, 23 July, 2014.

Is Lebanon next? The threat of a Syrian conflict spillover

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By Lorena Fortuno

Last month, Wissam al-Hassan, a senior Lebanese security official who had worked to counter Syrian influence in Lebanon, was killed in a large explosion in one of Beirut’s Christian neighbourhoods.

The murder of Al Hassan was highly significant as he was one of the main investigators of the car bomb explosion that killed former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005 in which Hezbollah and the Syrian regime may have been involved. He was also the leader of the investigation that led to the arrest of the former Lebanese Information Minister, Michel Samaha, accused of planning attacks against Sunni objectives and of pursuing Syrian interests in Lebanon.

This episode, the first of its type since 2008, immediately created tensions in an already severely fragmented country, as it was considered by some a Syrian-backed attack aimed to spread the sectarian and political violence of the Syrian conflict into Lebanon and exacerbate tensions between Shiite and Alawites in favour of the Syrian regime, and Sunni factions that support Syrian rebels.

Proof of this mounting tension can be found in the numerous recent clashes between pro-Syrian and anti-Syrian groups in Tripoli, the country’s second largest city, where the army is also fragile because of its sectarian composition and has been obliged to intervene in an effort to restore order.

On the other hand, the events of this last week have also exposed the fragility of the current Lebanese government and its institutions, starting with Prime Minister Najib Mikati’s resignation attempt, and an army that’s struggling to put sectarian divisions aside to act in the greater Lebanese interest.

For the moment it is not possible to know who was behind Friday’s blast, but this event has certainly highlighted the risk that the Syrian conflict could widen to other Middle Eastern states.

Lebanon, as Fawas Gerges says, is the most vulnerable of all of Syria’s neighbours. It has the most intimate links with Syria. For the Lebanese, the escalation of the Syrian crisis is not only reverberating on the Lebanese street, it’s also paralyzing institutions, deepening and widening existing cleavages and making a conflict spillover an imminent possibility.

But, is a spillover scenario really viable in Lebanon? Even though Syrian politics and events have proved to be crucial and even determinant to Lebanon in the past, Lebanese society and Lebanese politics seem to be, as David Enders writes, stable in its instability, at least for the time being.

Lebanese stability has always been vulnerable to religious groups’ dynamics since the end of the Lebanese Civil War. These dynamics have changed from a mainly inter-religious confrontation between Catholics and Muslims to an intra-religious one between different Muslim factions who get support from different States: Sunnis represented by the anti-Syrian March 14 Group, who are mainly supported by Saudi Arabia and Qatar and Shiites represented by the pro-Syrian March 8 Alliance, including Hezbollah and also Alawite factions, who are supported by Iran at the regional level.

Christian political groups on the other hand divide their support between the two Muslim groups but mainly find themselves in a stalemate as they they have to deal with the Sunni and Shiite intervention in the Syrian conflict, political internal tensions and regional influences acting on Lebanese politics.

The possibility of a face-to-face encounter between the Hezbollah dominated group and the March 14 forces would without a doubt facilitate conflict spillover into Lebanon and in a sense would be as Frédéric Charillon wrote, a reproduction/extension of the Syrian process. Nonetheless the possibilities of these politically fuelled confrontations, like the ones taking place in Tripoli and Beirut for the last few days, of increasing into a large scale civil war conflict are if not remote, limited.

First of all, none of the coalitions in Lebanon has started a campaign to alter the internal balance of power to favour their position on the Syrian conflict, especially after murder of Al Hassan that might have provided some momentum. Instead, Lebanese high-ranking army officials, who are mainly Sunni, asked the different political groups to keep calm after the incident in the name of national interest and in order to keep the steady but highly sensitive equilibrium between factions.

Moreover, Hezbollah, now one of the most powerful political parties in Lebanon, is finally beginning to consolidate its internal power in the country and this process would be compromised if civil war were to be unleashed. Even when Hezbollah is supporting the Syrian regime and has intervened directly in the fighting, they have been doing so cautiously in order to protect their stakes.

Economic interests of the Lebanese political elites, as Jesus A. Nuñez Villaverde remarks,  also play a part in peacekeeping as they are directly involved in the housing, reconstruction and luxury tourism business that has been growing in Lebanon since the Israeli retreat in 2000.

Finally, clashes between factions have been sporadic and isolated, and they are likely to remain so, partly due to Lebanese demographics. As David Enders points out, there are not many places in Lebanon where Sunni and Shiite factions live closely together as they do in Tripoli or Beirut, this makes conflict outbreaks less likely and easier to control.

In conclusion, it is undeniable that both pro-and anti-Syrian factions are already deeply enmeshed in their neighbour’s conflict. However, even if some Lebanese are actively supporting the opposition or the regime, Lebanon can’t afford another armed conflict or the formation of what Catherine Ashton described as a “political vacuum,” as the cost would be too high for all Lebanese stakeholders.

For the moment, a violent spillover in Lebanon is unlikely but not impossible; it will all depend on how the situation in Syria keeps evolving and on the will of political factions in Lebanon in maintaining their current balance of power and thus protecting their interests.