Every conflict that generates public attention triggers speculation about what might happen next. Some offer doom scenarios; others use scaremongering as a diplomatic tactic in the hope that presenting policymakers in the international community with worst-case scenarios will spur those leaders into action.
After the latest escalation between Hezbollah and Israel, there is a tendency to assume that such a war is imminent. Resist that argument: escalation does not automatically mean all-out war is inevitable.
One of the tragedies in the will-they-won’t-they game playing out between Israel and Hezbollah is that it diverts attention from Palestine. Hezbollah’s fight with Israel is not about helping Palestinians, or even Hamas, but about pursuing self-preservation for Hezbollah. The group could have intervened on a large scale in October before Israel significantly weakened Hamas’s military capability, but it did not. Hezbollah would only engage in all-out war with Israel if the group felt it was facing an existential threat of its own (which, currently, it does not). It will not sacrifice itself for Palestine.
There is an urgent need to engage with the Israel-Palestine conflict in a clear-headed and nuanced way. Fixating on the question of whether escalation will lead to all-out war masks the realities on the ground. As with many conflict-riven regions, the Middle East is often unpredictable. International media tend to lean towards maximalist scenarios – such as a descent into a regional war – as a way of pre-empting this unpredictability. But this can also lead us to miss the kindling that lights the fire of other big stories, such as the uprisings that culminated in the Arab spring. Rather than attending to the nuances of conflicts and discord, people end up inadvertently warmongering.
This is not helped by Israel and Hezbollah engaging in propaganda that exaggerates their actions and intentions. Statements from both sides frequently convey escalated threats that hint that large-scale war is on the table. Many people also remember the 2006 Lebanon war between Hezbollah and the Israel Defense Forces, and some outsiders seem to have based their understanding of the current escalation on this previous scenario, which started with a Hezbollah military operation and escalated into full-scale conflict.
Israel and Hezbollah have been redefining the rules of engagement that they had implicitly put in place after 2006. Both are striking deeper into the other’s territory. But this still does not mean that they are heading towards regional conflagration. The perception that all-out war in the Middle East can break out at any time reflects a deeper, underlying anxiety about the region’s associations with conflicts that drag in the rest of the world (think, for instance, of the rise of al-Qaida or Islamic State). In the west in particular, anxiety about the Middle East can be an articulation of anxiety about the west having to get involved.
While mistakes can happen even in highly choreographed military activities, the circumstances on the ground point to the likelihood of a full-scale conflict between Hezbollah and Israel – particularly one that would drag in other parties – as being quite low. In 2006, Hezbollah was betting that a war with Israel would benefit its political standing in Lebanon, after its political opponents accused the group of being behind the 2005 assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. At the time, Lebanon also enjoyed economic support from myriad Arab countries in the Gulf, which helped finance reconstruction after the 2006 war.
Hezbollah is today Lebanon’s most powerful political party. It does not need a war to bolster its status. And Lebanon is reeling from a severe financial crisis, while its Gulf neighbours no longer offer unconditional aid. All-out war with Israel would therefore be deeply damaging for Hezbollah. The group is trying to avoid heading in this direction, but at the same time, it feels pressured to retain its credibility as an anti-Israel actor.
Its solution to this dilemma has been to engage in psychological warfare. Before the age of social media, this took the form of installing billboards displaying threatening messages written in Hebrew on the Lebanon border, for example. Today, psychological warfare plays out on a global stage that is wider than ever. Both Hezbollah and Israel have traded threats through videos and statements that have circulated online around the world.
But in the current context, psychological warfare for Hezbollah is a preferable alternative to military action. For Israel, too, all-out war would be severely damaging and cause large-scale destruction inside Israel. This is why Israel is refraining from instigating this scenario. Instead, it is conducting attacks on Hezbollah targets to showcase its superior intelligence and military capabilities. This is in turn acting as a deterrent for Hezbollah, which knows that being so exposed would not bode well if there was a war.
The low likelihood of all-out war does not mean that we should dismiss or belittle what is happening in the Middle East. That we remain focused on the prospect of a larger war underlines that all is not well. The Middle East is unpredictable because it continues to suffer from serious problems, and Palestine is at the heart of this. There simply cannot be stability in the region until this conflict is resolved.
Lina Khatib is director of the Soas Middle East Institute and associate fellow at the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House
