Hezbollah currently has the advantage over its enemies in Lebanon. Its power and rule – direct and indirect – over events in the country are undisputed. At the present time, there is no political or military power able to challenge Hezbollah in Lebanon. Its power, however, can also be its weak point. Realization by the new United States administration that aid to Lebanon in effect constitutes aid to Hezbollah could lead to reconsideration of economic and military aid to Lebanon. This is likely to have a negative impact on the...
Recent security incidents to Israel’s north and south brought the country’s attention back to its most explosive fronts. On both fronts the IDF faces terror organizations, Hezbollah and Hamas, that have institutionalized and taken on characteristics of states. Despite the lack of interest in escalation on the part of all relevant parties, deterioration on both fronts could lead to an outbreak of hostilities. Israel’s supreme interest is security and quiet on its borders. Hezbollah and Hamas have not given up on the intent to...
UN Security Council Resolution 1701 of August 11, 2006 ended the Second Lebanon War and outlined the security regime that has been in effect for the past decade between Israel and its northern neighbor. To support the Lebanese government in fulfilling the resolution, UNIFIL, the temporary UN force in Lebanon (first established in 1978 by UN Security Council Resolution 425), was expanded from 2,000 soldiers before the 2006 war to 12,000 troops of higher quality. In the decade since its reestablishment, UNIFIL II helped stabilize the...
The Middle East is being reshaped by an extended process that began over five years ago, and its end-point is currently impossible to predict. Still, it can be assumed that the parties involved with the conflicts in the region in general, and in Syria in particular, seek resolutions through an attempt to reshape the power relations between them and the state structures in the area. Against this background, Israel has a fundamental interest in ensuring that Iran and Hezbollah will not be the forces that are strengthened within the...
Exactly one hundred years ago, two diplomats, one British and one French, concluded the Sykes-Picot agreement, which divided the Middle East into two zones of influence. The agreement became one of the cornerstones of the region, and gave the core area of the Middle East the shape it has assumed since the end of World War I. However, the political order founded a century ago by what were then British and French superpowers, including the regimes created and the borders delineated, is currently under serious challenge. The article...
Hezbollah is engaged in both a battle for survival in the regional campaign and in power struggles on its home territory. Nasrallah’s threats to Israel are designed to remind the organization’s supporters and critics that the bedrock of its existence is the principle of resistance, i.e., the struggle against Israel. Flaunting the organization’s military capabilities reminds constituents of Hezbollah’s success against Israel during the Second Lebanon War, when it succeeded in disrupting daily life in northern Israel with ongoing...
The balance between the contradictory trends of moderation and radicalization currently underway in Lebanon will dictate the direction of the country for the near future. On the one hand, Lebanon has witnessed positive developments, which were made possible by a degree of apparently obligatory cooperation between the rivals from the two sides of the political map. On the other hand, it has also seen an intensification of the threat posed by the Islamic State, reflecting developments on the battlefield in Syria. The unfolding positive...
Russia’s intervention in the Syrian civil war allows – or perhaps even requires – Israel to reevaluate its objectives and rules of the game vis-à-vis other actors in the region, beginning with Iran and the Assad regime. Though faced with Tehran’s ambition for regional hegemony and an Iranian military presence on the border with Syria and Lebanon, Israel has so far avoided any move that might help topple Assad and thereby also uproot Iran’s hold over Syria and deny Hizbollah strategic depth in the country. Despite the high level of...
In the past few weeks, as Lebanon passed the one-year mark without a President, domestic tensions have yet again taken a turn for the worse. The Lebanese Army has increasingly targeted jihadist operations in the past weeks, while also declaring to be ready to confront the takfiri threat comprehensively. Hizbollah too has been preoccupied by the takfiri threat over the past year, and recent statements by the organization have sparked a heated national debate over the army’s next steps. This has further increased the tensions in the...
The unification of the rebel Sunni forces, along with the understandings reached between the supporting Sunni countries that hope to see the Assad regime overthrown, has effected a change in the balance of power in the Syrian civil war and has broken the deadlock that characterized the fighting over the past year. At the same time, it is still premature to conclude that the Assad regime is on the verge of collapse. Bitter and all-out fighting between the rebel Sunni forces and the Shiite axis forces can be expected. At the regional...
The battles underway since February 2015 in the Daraa district in southern Syria between the Syrian army, the Iranian Quds forces, and Hizbollah on the one hand, and various rebel groups and organizations on the other, are important for the actors involved, as well as for those not involved. These battles are part of a struggle for control of the Damascus-Quneitra-Daraa triangle, a crucial area for both the consolidation of the Bashar al-Assad regime and its overthrow. The opposing sides attribute great importance to the results of...
At the start of 2015, Israel’s two major fronts – home to the two hostile players with which Israel has had military encounters in recent months – were calm. The war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2014 and the mutual attacks between Israel and Hizbollah in January 2015 seem to be at a standstill and have not been renewed. Nevertheless, a clash between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and one between Israel and Hizbollah in southern Syria seem possible in the foreseeable future. Only a change in the strategic reality in Gaza...
