Tensions are heating up between Israel and Hezbollah after weeks of provocations by the terror group along the northern border.
Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah has issued repeated warnings to Israel not to dismantle a tent it built in an area controlled by Israel called Mount Dov and the group has encouraged activists to demonstrate along the border area.
The problems Israel faces in the north might usually constitute a political and security crisis, but they have been overshadowed by domestic issues.
It’s worth looking at how the two are entwined: Israel’s domestic crises and its security challenges.
The Hezbollah tent at the centre of the latest confrontation (Photo: Flash 90)
After a week of a heatwave, Israel appeared to cool down over the last July weekend. The heat had blanketed the country, and seemed to coincide with the momentous protests that continued into their 30th week, even after the Knesset passed a controversial judicial reform.
With so much pressure mounting before the reform, the actual vote seemed to come and go without the momentous explosion that one might have thought would take place.
There wasn’t the “civil war” that some Israelis predicted. Nevertheless, the country remains divided.
The Knesset headed into recess at the end of July, giving politicians time to step back from the brink and come up with compromises. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has shown he could stay the course to ram through the legislation.
This wasn’t clear from the start, because he had postponed the reforms earlier in the year after he briefly fired Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, and then quietly unfired him.
With the first judicial reform passed, there’s space to compromise, perhaps. Likud’s fortunes in the polls are slipping and there are murmurs that the party is not set on ploughing ahead into the icepack of more protests and reforms.
The recess in August will take Israel through to the High Holy Days and Sukkot, and by the time politicians are back in their seats, the country’s millions of children will be back in school and Netanyahu can look back at the one-year anniversary of the elections of 2022.
The Knesset building in Jerusalem (Photo: Flash 90)
What will he have accomplished? Unprecedented protests. A small judicial reform to change the “reasonableness” clause in a Basic Law that has eroded Israel’s reputation abroad, harmed ties with the US, and empowered the far-right which has had the effect of harming ties with the Abraham Accord countries.
Those are just the tip of the iceberg. Inside Israel, there has been an unprecedented wave of gun violence, primarily in Arab minority communities. In the West Bank, terrorist groups backed by Iran have taken root in Jenin.
They use smuggled weapons, primarily M-4 and M-16 style rifles, to terrorise local people and also target the Palestinian security forces and Israel. The rise in violence in Jenin forced Israel to launch a unique operation there in early July, using drones, bulldozers and other weapons systems.
This was the largest battle in Jenin since the Second Intifada. A month later, the terrorist groups in and around Jenin continue to carry out weekly attacks.
More serious than the attacks are the revelations that groups in Jenin are now also using home-made rockets.
This is propaganda for now, but their attempt to use the kinds of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) Iran once supplied to groups in Iraq and to Hezbollah, as well as Hamas-style rockets, is a major escalation.
Israeli troops in Jenin during the recent operation (Photo: Flash 90)
All of this represents a growing danger that the northern West Bank could become like Gaza: an area controlled by terror groups that increasingly stockpile weapons and expand their range and effectiveness. Israel’s main hurdle in Jenin is getting the international community and Palestinian Authority to restore order.
Jenin and the Hezbollah-inspired tensions in the north represent direct threats to Israeli communities, but the big picture is more stable. Israel’s security establishment talks in terms of “circles” of threats.
The “third circle” can mean Iran or Yemen or threats far away. To deal with various threats at a distance, Israel established a “depth corps” in 2011.
According to the IDF, on July 27 a joint drill with US forces and Israeli naval commandos, “led by the depth corps”, came to an end.
The drill was dubbed Juniper Spartan. It is part of numerous training exercises between the US and Israel and also visits by senior US officers such as the head of US Central Command (Centcom).
The head of Centcom, General Erik Kurillam, came to Israel in late July and met members of the IDF General Staff and senior officials of the Strategic Planning and Cooperation Directorate, the IDF said.
He also met officers in the IDF Intelligence Directorate. Chief of the General Staff Herzi Halevi praised the cooperation with the US: “Operational coordination is the basis for regional stability and the required readiness of the IDF.”
Days later, the Israeli Navy and US Fifth Fleet conducted another exercise, called Intrinsic Defender. The training involved two unique Israeli units, the 914th Routine Security Fleet’s Snapir naval unit, which uses 27-foot inflatable boats for maritime missions, and the Yaltam diving unit.
The IDF called the joint drill a “significant exercise which constitutes an opportunity for joint learning, strategic and operational enhancement and the strengthening of the shared dialogue between the fleets. Furthermore, it assists in promoting regional partnerships to thwart the threats that the region is facing.”
Elite: IDF troops in Jenin (Photo: Getty Images)
This type of cooperative initiative is where Israel excels and where it would like to be in the region.
Working alongside Centcom is a natural place for Israel and it plugs into the overall US posture today in the Middle East, in which the US is pushing for “regional integration”. That’s a general term for bringing US partners together, such as the Abraham Accords countries.
At the end of June, former US Ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, was asked by Washington to reinforce these efforts.
Israel-Saudi ties would be a crowning achievement of any attempts to move forward on regional issues.
Reports say that Mossad Director David Barnea was recently in Washington to meet CIA Director William Burns to discuss potential Israel-Saudi normalisation. A development on the Israel-Saudi front would be transformative, but there are hurdles.
Iran wants to sabotage any kind of progress between Israel and the region. Iran’s foreign minister met his Syrian counterpart on July 31 and together they slammed Israel for meddling in Syria. In addition, the spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry attacked Israel for its role in the Gulf.
Tehran is concerned and has done a lot of diplomatic outreach to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf in the last six months.
It would view Israel-Saudi ties as a setback.
Iran knows that by heating up tensions with Hezbollah in northern Israel, and encouraging chaos in the West Bank by using proxies such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad, it can potentially derail or slow down regional integration. This is why it promises to continue to be a long, hot summer in Israel.
But with the Knesset controversies on hold for a month through the recess, the country may have some room to collect itself before confronting the next crisis.
