As Israel begins ground operations in Gaza, the potential for the conflict to expand regionally — including to Lebanon, the home of Israel’s longtime enemy Hezbollah — has heightened.
In recent days, Israel has increasingly traded fire with Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Islamist militant organization and Lebanese political party, along its northern border. Dozens have been killed, representing the most significant escalation in violence since Israel fought Hezbollah in a bloody 2006 war. Over the past few weeks, more than 19,000 people have fled southern Lebanon in anticipation of further violence.
Hezbollah counts Hamas — the Islamist militant group that controls Gaza and launched the October 7 attack on Israel — as an ally. Both groups are designated as terrorist organizations by many countries. After Israel responded with its siege and onslaught of airstrikes on Gaza, one of Hezbollah’s top officials had a message for Palestinians trapped there: “Our hearts are with you. Our minds are with you. Our souls are with you. Our history and guns and our rockets are with you.”
But it’s not clear if that means Hezbollah, with its extensive military experience and estimated arsenal of as many as 120,000 missiles, is readying to formally enter the conflict. Should Hezbollah open a front against Israel, it would be costly for both sides as well as for their international allies, and the US has stationed aircraft carriers nearby in the Mediterranean to remind the organization of that.
Hezbollah is closely watching what Israel does next in Gaza, and if a ground invasion proves as brutal as some are predicting, it may see cause to enter the fray. On Wednesday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah held talks with senior Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad leaders in which they concluded that they share a goal of seeking “a real victory for the resistance in Gaza and Palestine” and stopping Israel’s “treacherous and brutal aggression against our…
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