Middle East | Israel may try to provoke Hezbollah into an open war, says researcher Timo Stewart

Suspiciously Israel’s extraordinary explosion with thousands of pagers in Lebanon on Tuesday may be Israel’s attempt to provoke the Hezbollah organization into open war, says a senior researcher at the Foreign Policy Institute Timo Stewart.

The explosions of thousands of paging devices killed at least ten people, in addition to which about 2,800 people were injured.

According to Stewart, other issues also point to the fact that Israel may be preparing to expand “a low-intensity war with Hezbollah into a high-intensity war.”

According to Stewart, the Israeli government made a potentially significant decision on Tuesday when it defined the war as the goal of returning the approximately 60,000 Israelis who had fled the border with Lebanon to their homes.

Hezbollah began firing rockets at Israel last year after the terrorist organization Hamas launched its major attack on Israel on October 7 and Israel responded by bombing targets in Gaza.

There have also been rumors in Israel that the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu would be changing the defense minister by Yoav Gallant to his political opponent Gideon Sa’arinwhich at least The Jerusalem Post magazine take as a sign Netanyahu’s desire to increase support for the war against Hezbollah.

“A full-scale war against Hezbollah is now closer than ever”, the paper titled its analysis published on Monday, i.e. a day before the pager attacks.

However, Stewart points out that Gallant has been a “hawk” in promoting anti-Hezbollah efforts. According to him, it is still unclear whether the defense minister is really changing.

Stewart’s there are really only two options on the table. The first is a cease-fire with Hamas, which would make Hezbollah pay for its words by to stop attacks on Israel. The latter option is to expand the war.

“The whole world has been demanding a ceasefire for almost a year, but Netanyahu has not wanted to agree to it. His government would fall in that case because these far-right parties would leave it. It really just leaves this war escalating,” says Stewart.

According to Stewart, it would be more profitable for Israel if it could be provoked into a large-scale attack by Hezbollah, to which Israel could then respond with a full-scale war.

The search engine attack may have contributed to such a goal. Hezbollah has promised to avenge the attacks, The Times of Israel magazine tells. Israel has not said whether it is behind the attacks.

Hezbollah-supporting Iran has warned Israel from expanding the war with Hezbollah. Iran’s UN embassy stated in June that Hezbollah is capable of defending itself and that war would lead to the “self-destruction of the illegitimate regime” in Israel.

Stewart’s according to which it is worth considering how to respond to pager explosions internationally.

“This is an extraordinary way for a state to wage war. So this sounds like a terrorist method. This is an interesting discussion to follow, to see where we settle here. Can this be done in the future? Is this okay?”

According to Stewart, there is quite a lot of support in Israel for expanding the war against Hezbollah. In one of the surveys he quoted on the X message service majority Israeli residents said they were in favor of a wider war than the other in the survey it was supported by 45 percent of the people.

of Israel and Hamas, the progress of the ceasefire negotiations is unclear, according to Stewart. Netanyahu has brought additional conditions to the negotiations, such as the deployment of Israeli soldiers in the so-called Philadelphia Corridor in the Gaza-Egypt border area. The corridor is about one hundred meters wide and fourteen kilometers long.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant got into the teeth of his ministerial colleagues in early September when he said that the demand for the establishment of the corridor should be withdrawn, The Times of Israel told.

Gallant justified abandoning the idea by saying that it would free the hostages held by Hamas.

Hamas kidnapped around 250 people last year in connection with its October 7 attack. Of them, 97 are still missing and 35 have been reported dead, Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights told in the press release published on Tuesday.

Netanyahu has also demanded that Israeli forces be kept in the so-called Netzarim Corridor, with which Israel has cut Gaza in two. Institute for the Study of War think tank by the originally two kilometer wide zone has been expanded to four kilometers wide.

“Netanyahu has said that he is only adding details to the already approved agreement. Hamas’s interpretation is that this is a completely new thing. They have not agreed to the Israeli forces staying inside Gaza,” says Stewart.

A military-controlled zone opposite the Egyptian border would mean that Israel would have control over all of Gaza’s borders.

in Lebanon also with Hezbollah, which functions as a political party is estimated to have about 30,000 active fighters and about 20,000 fighters in reserve.

For example, the United States considers Hezbollah a terrorist organization. The European Union, on the other hand, has placed the organization’s armed wing on its terrorist list, but not Hezbollah’s political wing.