Dan Diker
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Jan. 8, 2024
“The Iranian regime’s proxy strategy, utilizing Hizbullah, Hamas, and the Houthis, intends to put Israel in a no-win position of all-out multi-front war while benefitting from the West’s mistaken conviction that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict drives the Middle East’s regional instability.”
The Iran-backed Hamas war with Israel in Gaza, now in its third month, continues to dominate international attention. However, there has been a simultaneous lack of strategic understanding that Hamas’ strategy of invasion, massacre, kidnapping, and deception under cover of massive rocket attacks mirrors the Iranian regime’s Hizbullah strategy toward Israel’s north. The only difference is timing and execution. Israeli military planners assess that Hizbullah would have undertaken the same pattern of invasion, mass murder, kidnapping, and rocket attacks that Hamas carried out alone, under Iranian supervision. Hizbullah’s major invasion plan through its hundreds-of-kilometers-long tunnel system near northern Israel – similar to Hamas’ underground terror “Metro” – could have resulted in thousands killed and kidnapped from Israel’s northern communities. Hizbullah’s Radwan forces prepared a similar ground invasion plan to capture Israel’s northern towns and cities, including Kiryat Shmona, Metula, and Nahariya.
Hamas and Hizbullah’s twin plans are no coincidence. Since the 2006 Hizbullah war in against Israel, the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has been preparing for a far larger, strategic, coordinated invasion that today is far more evident.
A massive Hizbullah build-up along Israel’s northern border violated United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which required a Hizbullah pullback 20 kilometers north of Israel’s border beyond the Litani River. The resolution intended to create a buffer zone that would have prevented the current stark reality of more than 100,000 Israelis evacuated from their homes in northern Israel. Unfortunately, UNIFIL (United Nations International Forces in Lebanon) failed to enforce the UN’s internationally guaranteed resolution.
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