No respite for Hezbollah as Israel keeps up military pressure

Aim is to force militia to withdraw its troops from the border and cease its missile attacks

- Jonathan Eyal

Israel is giving no respite to the Hezbollah militia organisation based in Lebanon, now viewed by Israeli leaders as the Jewish state's most immediate threat.

After apparently engineering a set of coordinated explosions of Hezbollah's communication devices - an operation which killed dozens and wounded over 3,000 mostly Hezbollah fighters - a strike by Israeli military jets on Sept 20 added further pressure on the organisation by killing two of its top commanders.

Contrary to official Israeli claims that its bombing of an apartment block in a residential area of the Lebanese capital of Beirut was a "well-defined, precision operation", the authorities in Lebanon claim that at least half of the 31 people who died in the attack - including seven women and three children - had no connection to the militant organisation.

Still, the killing of the two key commanders confirms the prediction of security specialists that Israel's current tactic is to keep up the military pressure on Hezbollah with the aim of either forcing the organisation to withdraw its troops from the border with Israel or face a full-scale war with Israel that may be just as bloody as the current Gaza fighting, and carry even graver dangers of a broader regional conflagration.

The sabotage of Hezbollah's pagers, walkie-talkies and other mobile devices earlier in the week, believed to have been carried out by Israel, was designed not only to kill and maim but also to deprive Hezbollah's top leadership of its ability to communicate and force Hezbollah's commanders to attend face-to-face meetings, where they are most vulnerable to attacks by Israel's military.

That's precisely what has happened: Despite all the known dangers, Hezbollah's commanders did decide to meet on Sept 20, and Israel's intelligence was fully aware of the location of their gathering.