Two weeks ago, on a TV program, the host posed a hazardous question: could the Israel-Hamas war widen, becoming a big regional conflict?
It’s risky for journalists ever to report on the future. We have no reliable sources there. So “without really forecasting,” I tried to frame a question that we could assess: Is it in anyone’s interest to widen the war?
The United States doesn’t want this. Israel already has plenty to do.
A big player on the other side, Iran, may have the capacity to widen the conflict. It sponsors armed groups throughout the region, including both Hamas and Hezbollah, just across Israel’s northern border in Lebanon. But at that moment, October 20, it was hard to see Iran’s interest in a bigger war. Iran supports Hamas and Hezbollah because they help to advance Iran’s ideology and interests without involving Iran in all the downsides of a full-blown war.
Days later I had a chance to follow up on this. On October 26, in New York City, I interviewed the visiting foreign minister of Iran. Hossein Amir-Abdollahian warned that groups such as Hezbollah had “their finger on the trigger” and were ready to widen the conflict if Israelis did not back down.
But he also said, “We don’t really want this conflict to spread.”
We can never take any one person’s word for this sort of thing. But such is the nature of my job that I didn’t have to. I left the interview, took off my suit so that a colleague could ship it home for me, and caught a flight directly to Israel to cover the conflict. Soon our team was on Israel’s border with Lebanon.
We arrived in a mountain village just at sunset, and for the next hour or more heard a steady progression of booms in the dark. An Israeli officer later confirmed what residents believed: we were hearing Israel firing into Lebanon, responding to Hezbollah’s fire into Israel.
Hezbollah soldiers have repurposed anti-tank rockets. They’re designed to be fired directly at an armored vehicle at short range and high velocity. But if the crew angles the weapon into the sky, the rocket can fly for miles across the border into Israel. “Their anti-tank weapons have become their air force,” an Israeli officer told me. Israel answers with artillery, rockets and drones. It’s a “slow motion war.”
This is real combat that has killed people. On the afternoon that we visited Fassouta, the village in Israel, Hezbollah rocket fire caused damage in a different border village. Later that day, when we arrived in an Israeli city along the coast, sirens briefly sounded, signaling incoming rocket fire.
But it’s also not a full-scale battle that would change the nature of the war. Israeli officials reportedly discussed a pre-emptive strike against Hezbollah but have yet to order one. Hezbollah has deployed only a tiny fraction of the firepower believed to be at its command.
On Friday, November 3, the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nassrullah delivered a much-anticipated speech. Rather than threaten a big move against Israel, he said he was already making his move against Israel: “Some claim Hezbollah is about to join the fray. I tell you: We have been engaged in this battle since October 8.”
As of November 4, the parties to this conflict have yet to see an interest in widening the war. Iran’s assorted allies and proxies have an interest in showing support for Hamas; it might discredit them to do nothing. Their attacks have had some effects, worrying Israeli strategists and tying down some Israeli troops. They have imposed a human cost, too: I am writing you from a Tel Aviv hotel that is mostly filled with people evacuated from villages in the north.
But neither Iran, nor Hezbollah, nor other groups seem willing as of November 4 to put everything on the line for Hamas. Nations generally do not conduct foreign policy out of loyalty or friendship. They act on interests.
So the war’s focus remains on Gaza, from which Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, killing some 1,400 people. Since then Israeli airstrikes have killed thousands of Palestinians (the Hamas-led authorities have a tally that is nearing 10,000 as I write) and Israeli troops are believed to have surrounded Gaza City.
The Israelis’ stated goal is to depose Hamas, which was ruled Gaza for more than a decade. In conversation with me, a senior Israeli military officer told me that Israel’s security interests demand that Hamas be destroyed—if not down to the last fighter, then at least to the point where it could no longer govern anything. This raises all sorts of questions—not least who else would govern Gaza—but Israel frames its goal as imperative.
Israeli strategists aim to do what is necessary to continue the fight against Hamas, shaping their actions in a way that allows them to weather global criticism of their campaign’s cost in civilian casualties, and also allows them to avoid triggering a wider war. Though it remains hard to report on the future. Events in wartime can spin out of anyone’s control.
Thanks for reading Differ We Must, my exploration of our modern-day divisions. Its name comes from my book Differ We Must, on how Lincoln managed his divided time. The book has now been reviewed in the Washington Post, and the reviewer picked up on a big theme: Lincoln believed that human beings, like nations, generally act on their interests.
“Oh how fond they are of the book of Esther, which is so beautifully attuned to their bloodthirsty, vengeful, murderous yearning and hope.” — Martin Luther
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/oh-how-fond-they-are-of-the-book
Excellent perspective from a journalist on the ground. Stay safe, Steve.