Yaakov Lappin
JNS, Aug. 2, 2023
“It is important to view the actions of Hezbollah in a wider, regional context, according to Shay. “Iran is at the core of [Hezbollah’s] regional activities, and these activities also involve Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza. Israel is not interested in a clash that turns regional. This is the heavier threat hovering over us,” he said.”
Hezbollah’s provocations on the Lebanese–Israeli border continue, while deeper within Lebanon, the Iranian-backed terror army continues to amass a monstrous arsenal of some 200,000 rockets, mortar shells, missiles and drones. Hundreds of these threats are capable of targeting strategic sites within Israel.
This situation raises the question of whether Israel needs to consider a preventive strike, as well as the dilemma that such a strike would pose to military and political decision makers.
With Hezbollah continuously adding matches to the figurative matchbox and chances of a conflict increasing with time, should Israel wait—or seize the initiative?
“It is important to distinguish between two options—a preventive strike and a pre-emptive strike,” Lt. Col. (ret.) Orna Mizrahi, a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, told JNS.
“A pre-emptive strike occurs when you know that a threat is on the way to you, and that war is at your immediate doorstep. A preventive strike is designed to destroy enemy threats even when it is not clear that the situation prior to the strike was leading to war,” she said.
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