Enough of waiting for disasters, Israel should strike pre-emptively - analysis

Israelis are on edge this week, awaiting an Iranian attack in retribution for the recent killings of two senior terrorists. While the Israeli military’s Home Front Command has encouraged the public to continue with their daily lives, a sense of fear and anxiety permeates Israeli society.

Israeli defense officials assess that an Iranian counterattack will come in a matter of days.

Iran and its proxies have threatened to avenge last week’s assassinations. Israel took responsibility for the targeted killing of Fuad Shukr of the Lebanese-based Hezbollah in Beirut a week ago. It did not acknowledge playing a role in the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last Wednesday, but it is widely believed to be behind the operation.

The threats by Iran have put Israel on high alert, although Israeli officials have repeatedly said that the country is prepared for a multifront attack. An attack of that sort could lead to a wide-scale regional war, one much larger than the mostly localized Israel-Hamas conflict that has been raging for ten months.

As tensions rise, some in Israel have called for a preemptive strike on Iran and its proxies. According to Israeli media reports, the country’s leadership would consider such a strike if it had solid evidence that Iran was planning a significant attack.

A poll conducted by the 103FM radio station published Tuesday showed that half of the Israeli public favors such a strike.

Ambassador Alan Baker, who directs the Institute for Contemporary Affairs at the Jerusalem Center, told The Media Line that Israeli and American decision-makers will consider whether a preemptive Israeli strike would prevent a larger regional war.

“Israel and the US will probably have positive evidence which will then enable them to justify whatever action is proportionate to the immediacy of the threat,” he said.

An attack looms

With a major flare-up hours or days away, Israel is building an international coalition, led by the US, to help thwart an attack by Iran and its proxies. A similar alliance helped Israel last April when Iran launched over 300 missiles and drones toward Israel.

The previous Iranian onslaught was in response to Israel’s killing of several Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officers at the Iranian consulate in Damascus, an attack Tehran considered a breach of its sovereignty. Iranian press branded its counterstrike as the “largest drone attack” ever launched, but Israel’s multilayered defense systems, together with American, British, French, and Jordanian forces, intercepted nearly all incoming weapons. One child was severely injured in the attack, and there was no major damage reported.

Israel retaliated against several military sites in Iran a few days later. That strike concluded the round of violence until last week, when a direct confrontation between the two rivals grew closer than ever before.

Now the region braces for more violence, with an expectation that Iran will try to upstage its previous attack.

“Any attack that Israel will carry out larger than the previous one in April will be considered a major escalation,” Professor Danny Orbach, a military historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told The Media Line. “Because of this, it is important that such an attack be of high quality in order to justify it. This will create a further escalation and in essence, a calculated cycle of violence.”

Ambassador Baker said that international pressure led Israel to pursue a subdued attack to the April strike. “Israel could have responded in accordance with its right of self-defense, as this was a major attack against its sovereignty and territorial integrity,” he said.

Israel is now carefully considering its options as it anticipates the next strike.

“Israel is addicted to quiet and would much rather be preoccupied with its internal politics, and therefore it prefers to delay responses,” Orbach said. “This is done by waiting for disasters, when there is no other choice but to respond. Israel should strive to strike preemptively either right before an attack or at the very least at the exact same time.”

An efficient Israeli attack on Iran would target its oil refineries, economic infrastructure, and ports, Orbach said.

So far, war in Israel has been centralized in the Gaza Strip, with occasional flare-ups from other Iranian proxies. Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets, missiles, and drones toward northern Israel, prompting calculated responses from Israel intended to avoid escalation. To a lesser extent, the Yemen-based Houthi rebels and Shiite militia organizations based in Iraq and Syria have also participated in the fight against Israel. These groups are expected to take a more significant role if Iran decides to attack Israel.

Last month, Israel struck Yemen’s western port city of Al Hudaydah in response to a Houthi drone attack on Tel Aviv that killed a civilian. That was the first time Israel directly hit Yemen. After Israel’s counterstrike, some Israelis said that the Israeli military should have carried out a similarly forceful response against Hezbollah at the beginning of the conflict.

Hezbollah drones crossed into Israeli territory on Tuesday, critically wounding a man and injuring several others. Israeli media reported that the attack’s success was the result of a new Hezbollah drone. Most of Hezbollah’s drones are designed, manufactured, and funded by Iran.

The tit for tat between Israel and Hezbollah has been costly for both sides, but neither military has fully revealed the scope or lethality of its capabilities. This leaves Israel with the additional dilemma of how to address the Lebanese front.

The catalyst for the latest round of escalation was a Hezbollah attack that killed 12 youngsters in a Golan Heights village over a week ago. Israel responded to that attack by assassinating Shukr.

“Israel needs to escalate substantially in order for it to be considered doing something new,” Orbach said. “A full-blown war would include striking at many targets simultaneously, including Hezbollah’s precision-guided rockets, and trying to assassinate Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah.”

Moshe Davidovitch, head of the Mateh Asher Regional Council and chair of the Confrontation Line Forum, said that Israel’s military strategy has not adequately taken civilian needs into account.

“We need a clear strategy of how to defend our citizens, and if we don’t know how to do it with a hermetic defense, then Israel needs to initiate moves that will cause the enemy to hide and worry, and not us,” Davidovitch told The Media Line.

The Israeli government evacuated tens of thousands of residents living on the border with Lebanon at the beginning of the war. With the new school year just weeks away and the security situation deteriorating, hopes of residents returning to their homes have dwindled.

Several countries are trying to de-escalate the conflict between Iran and Israel, urging both countries to limit their responses. Israeli public broadcaster Kan reported on Tuesday that American officials warned Jerusalem not to “push it” when responding to Iran. It is unlikely Israel would undertake a preemptive strike against the Islamic Republic without American approval.

“The US is very concerned about a regional escalation that could turn into a world war, which will turn into a nuclear war,” Orbach said. “And this is a justified concern. The problem is that he who is scared of an escalation and refuses to escalate, encourages the other side to do so.”

Orbach said that Israel’s current military culture involves retaliating to each attack according to the resulting death toll. He called on Israel to start attacking its enemies based on their intentions and not the results of their attacks.

Israel’s sophisticated and multilayered air defense systems have dramatically decreased the death toll caused by the incessant Iranian proxy attacks.

“For a decade, Israel was living in an illusion, thinking it was Switzerland,” Davidovitch said. “But reality blew up in our face and made it clear that we live in the Middle East and that those who dare are the ones who win.”

As the international community rallies to prevent escalation, some Israelis fear that such attempts are merely delaying the inevitable.

“Our defensive policy has made our reality unbelievable,” Davidovitch said. “The equation must change. If we are under attack and our children live in fear—the fear needs to be elsewhere. The government has been in a coma for too long.”