Majdal Shams massacre shows Israel's failure in managing Hezbollah conflict - analysis

The massacre of children at a soccer field in Majdal Shams on July 27 is the latest tragic evidence that the policy of trying to manage Israel’s conflicts on every front is bound to result in unintended consequences. This is a kind of “road to hell is paved with good intentions” moment. Managing Israel’s various conflicts, in the West Bank, Gaza, and now in the north, was supposed to mean that most of Israel’s public could live in peace, while Israel’s enemies were constantly kept on edge by low-level precision operations. 

In essence, managing the conflict was supposed to either postpone various wars, or make them less likely because the enemy would be constantly kept weakened. In the West Bank the “management” has turned into increasingly large raids and more use of drones and airstrikes in the northern West Bank. This management hasn’t reduced the conflict. In fact the enemy is changing and growing stronger. The management concept doesn’t take into account how the enemy may change. It posits that the enemy basically stays the same.

On the Gaza front the decision to postpone the conflict enabled Hamas to become exponentially stronger after Hamas took over Gaza in 2007. The decision to have multiple “rounds” of conflict with Hamas in which both Hamas and Israel would declare victory, but Hamas emerged stronger each time, eventually led to October 7. Management of the conflict led to the hi-tech border fence as a kind of Israeli Maginot Line, which inevitably failed.

Similarly in northern Israel, Hezbollah was allowed to become exponentially stronger after the 2006 war. Today the talk is always about not wanting to plunge into a war with Hezbollah. Hezbollah knows Israel doesn’t want a war. Therefore Hezbollah now feels it can attack Israel up to a certain point and that it won’t pay much of a price. The whole concept of managing the conflict has led to Israel being deterred from wars, rather than Israel’s enemies.

This was not Israel’s historic security policy. In the 1950s and 1960s Israel’s defense doctrine was based on the concept that Israel’s enemies must never be allowed to become too strong. Israel always preferred short wars in which its enemies were decisively defeated, rather than allowing the enemy to bring its larger population to the front and slowly wear Israel down through attrition. Israel understood at the time that to thrive in this region, Israel had more to lose than its enemies by long wars. While adversaries could absorb blows, Israel didn’t want to absorb long blows, but to keep its enemies deterred and off balance.

Over the last 20 years, since the Second Intifada and the Second Lebanon War and since Hamas took over Gaza, the preference has been to manage the conflicts on Israel’s borders, and focus more on “third circle” threats, meaning Iran. Iran understood that and chose to empower its proxies and encircle Israel.

It sought to “unify” various fronts against Israel. Iran basically has used Israel’s policies against Israel. It can read Israel’s media and know that the media talks incessantly about avoiding a major war, such as a war against Hezbollah. Therefore it has decided to push the war into northern Israel. Iran knows that Israel waged what was called a “campaign between the wars” in Syria to prevent Iranian entrenchment.

However, Iran is now waging a war between the wars inside Israel. It has forced Israel to evacuate the north. This is unprecedented. Never in Israel’s history did Israel withdraw communities from the north and south for such a long time. Iran now believes its own propaganda about Israel being a temporary state. Pro-Iran media such as Al-Mayadeen, for instance, talks about all Israelis as “settlers.” Now Iran and its proxies such as Hezbollah believe that all their propaganda-like talk of this has come true. Israelis are leaving their homes in the north. Hezbollah calls this war against Israel since October 8, when it chose to back the Hamas attack which had occurred the day before, a “road to Jerusalem” war. It believes it is on the way to Jerusalem.

Letting Hezbollah attack

The massacre in Majdal Shams was a result of this policy of letting Hezbollah attack Israel’s north because it was bound to happen after 6,000 drones, rockets, and missiles were fired, that eventually one of them would hit a large number of civilians. When one allows an enemy to launch 6,000 rockets, it is bound to happen that one will eventually kill a large number of civilians. Air defenses are never one hundred percent effective. The problem in Israel is that air defenses and managing the conflict, led to a situation where these two short-term solutions to a variety of challenges became a strategy. This was not a good long-term strategy.

The challenge for Israel now is how to extricate itself from the tar pit of policies that is dragging it down and holding it back. Managing conflicts on numerous borders, and choosing not to respond strongly, has led enemies such as the Houthis and Hezbollah to expand their attacks.

The Houthis felt empowered by Israel’s lack of response, and targeted Tel Aviv with a long-range drone on July 19. Hezbollah became arrogant and fired an Iranian Falaq-1 rocket with a 50kg warhead toward the Golan. Hezbollah has denied it carried out the attack and will now hope that the US and European countries and others try to prevent Israel from responding.

This is because Hezbollah knows that it can rely on this argument against “escalation,” which it has done in the past. It created a new “equation” where it can fire 6,000 rockets and drones and not receive a major response. This was the same tactic Hamas used. It openly prepared for October 7 and because everyone had become used to Hamas antics, it got away with its training in the open. Israel will need to consider how the management of the conflict on various fronts has led to tragedies such as Majdal Shams and whether it is time to change the concept.