Israel 'in full swing' after Nasrallah murder as sentiment for invasion grows | Attacks between Israel and Lebanon News

Israel has been largely divided over the past year, divided over what went wrong in the Hamas-led attack on October 7, what the priorities should be in its war on Gaza and whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the right man to lead the country .

But the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut last Friday gave Netanyahu a major victory, analysts say, and united many of Israel's politicians – and its public. This ballast for Netanyahu is likely to encourage Israel to pursue a ground war against Hezbollah and Lebanon, according to some experts.

Opposition leaders lined up to mark Nasrallah's killing, which was caused by a barrage of bunker bombs that leveled several large residential buildings.

Yair Lapid, a former prime minister and current opposition leader, congratulated the Israeli military and said Israel's enemies “should know that anyone who attacks Israel is a son of death.” And Benny Gantz, a Netanyahu rival who resigned as war minister in June, called the killing “a question of justice” that was an opportunity to “advance the goals of the war.”

Israel has defined the goals for the war as the release of prisoners held in Gaza, the defeat of Hamas and the return of Israelis to their homes in the north of the country – from where around 60,000 Israelis have been displaced since the beginning of the war and the beginning of the crossfire between Israel and Hezbollah.

Nasrallah's killing has reinforced the view in Israel that it is time to further target Hezbollah and seek a decisive victory against the armed group. This is despite Israel's increasing international isolation due to the deaths of more than 41,500 civilians in Gaza and the rising death toll in Lebanon, where more than 700 people have been killed in recent days.

“On Friday we killed an archenemy, one who killed many Israelis, Americans and others,” Israeli pollster and former adviser to a number of senior politicians, Mitchell Barak, said of Nasrallah’s death. “We have been saying this for years: We will punish and kill anyone who tries to harm us.”

Barak said a new confidence was emerging in many parts of Israeli society as enthusiasm for a land invasion grew – along with a desire for the ultimate destruction of what many in Israel saw as a permanent enemy.

“We know that it is time to push further into Lebanon and not allow this to happen [Hezbollah] to regroup,” Barak said. “The killing of Nasrallah and the attacks on their beepers and walkie-talkies last week… have weakened them, but they are still armed and still dangerous. We must push them back, at least to the Litani River [in southern Lebanon]maybe further.”

Is there a threat of invasion?

In 2000, Israel ended its 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon, although it has since carried out numerous attacks on its northern neighbor – and in turn been exposed to Hezbollah rockets. In 2006, Israel and Hezbollah fought a war.

Now some in Israel argue that an Israeli presence on the Lebanese side of the border is necessary to allow the return of civilians who were forced to leave northern Israel due to rocket fire from Lebanon.

“They want to see a buffer zone where they know Hezbollah cannot enter,” said Mairav ​​Zonszein, senior analyst at Crisis Group in Israel. “That could be where it’s headed right now.”

In recent weeks, Israel's Northern Command, which sits on the border with Lebanon, has been reinforced. On September 18, the 98th Paratrooper Division was deployed to the border and two reserve divisions were subsequently mobilized to reinforce the forces there.

Any decision on a ground invasion of Lebanon will likely depend on the extent to which Israel believes Hezbollah's capabilities have been compromised by the killing of much of the movement's senior leadership, airstrikes on its positions and weapons depots, and the undermining of its mobile communications systems, analysts say .

Within Israel, some warned against assuming that a large-scale land invasion was already a given. Political scientist Ori Goldberg pointed out the dichotomy that continues to determine Israel's actions in Gaza and Lebanon. “We behave like a bull in a china shop, then we pride ourselves on our precision,” he said from Tel Aviv.

“The same goes for a land invasion. At the moment we are in full swing and want to advance into Lebanon. At the same time, we are afraid of being stuck and fighting on a second front.

“We are basically Schrödinger's Israel,” he said, referring to the philosophical dilemma of determining whether a cat locked in a soundproof box is alive or dead, first proposed by physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935.

“We're preparing to invade, but we're not doing that either,” Goldberg said. “There is no vision, no strategy, no end game.”

Increased self-confidence

After a series of successes against Hezbollah, including the explosion of thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies largely used by the Lebanese movement, there is currently great confidence in many parts of Israeli society.

The explosions in mid-September killed dozens and injured thousands of Lebanese, both Hezbollah members and civilians, and underscored the extent of Israeli infiltration into Hezbollah's communications network.

But Zonszein warned that while there is a general feeling of satisfaction among the Israeli public following the attacks on Hezbollah, there are still concerns about possible reprisals – particularly from Hezbollah's main backer, Iran.

“It remains to be seen for a while how Iran will react or whether Hezbollah still has the necessary capacity [to respond] and will use it,” said Zonszein.

In anticipation of possible retaliation following Nasrallah's killing, public gatherings were limited to 1,000 people across much of Israel, with that number restricted even further in the north.

Many Israelis appear willing to accept further restrictions on war in return for a further military push against Hezbollah, especially since the feared rocket fire deep inside Israel has not yet materialized, experts say.

For proponents of the war, it is about ending the threat from Hezbollah once and for all and seizing the opportunity to crush a weakened enemy.

“Nobody called for a ceasefire from October 8th [Hezbollah] began firing the first of their 8,000 rockets into the north,” Barak said. “It was only when Israel began to eradicate the missile threat in recent weeks that the international community woke up and stopped us from defending ourselves.”

Return of the prisoners

Still, the expansion of the war into Lebanon – and the recent string of what many in Israel see as unadulterated successes against Hezbollah – do not mean that Israel has forgotten the prisoners in Gaza brought there by Hamas and other Palestinian fighters Oct. 7, Goldberg said.

“They haven’t disappeared from the radar,” Goldberg said of the prisoners and their families, who regularly protested during the war on Gaza. “Right now, Israel sees itself as powerful and powerful.”

“There is an unspoken consensus throughout Israel that the war in Gaza is almost over,” he said. “We just don’t want to say we’re done. There's nothing else you can achieve. Many think now is the right time for a deal.”