Drawing new lines in the sand - Israel Hayom

In Israel, where the news cycle changes in a dizzying pace, the unnerving discovery made last year of several Hezbollah tunnels snaking under the Lebanese-Israeli border, has been sidelined by the media and all but forgotten by the public. But in professional military and intelligence circles, and in wider circles in the Middle East and worldwide, this story is very much still front-page news.

Last week, the Defense Ministry announced plans to award the 2019 Israel Defense Prize to the intelligence and engineering teams that uncovered and neutralized the tunnels, but that is just the symbolic, ceremonial aspect of it, as this project, known as Operation Northern Shield, afforded Israel a double – and very dramatic – achievement: not only did it deny Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Shiite terrorist group, significant offensive capabilities, Israel was presented with an opportunity to introduce a profound – even if only partial – change to the rules of the regional game.

A prominent example of this is the fact that the Lebanese government has agreed to allow for U.S.-mediated talks with Israel aimed at settling the dispute over the two nations’ maritime border.

Formally at war since 1948, Israel and Lebanon have long disagreed on border demarcations in the eastern Mediterranean, an issue that gained prominence in the past decade when large deposits of natural gas were found there.

Lebanon is keen to develop its offshore natural gas fields, and Prime Minister Saad Hariri, a businessman at heart, has no intention to miss the opportunity to ease the dire economic crisis plaguing his country.

So far, Hezbollah, which wields considerable political power in Lebanon, has prevented any attempt to reach a compromise on the maritime border, as it seeks to perpetuate the dispute in a bid to legitimize its war against Israel.

The exposure of Hezbollah’s grid of terror tunnel, and with it the scope of its political deception, was a source of great embarrassment to the Lebanese government, depicting it as having no control over what transpires on its soil. This forced Hezbollah to take a step back, and for the foreseeable future at least, it cannot prevent Beirut from promoting its interests.

The U.S.-mediated negotiations on the maritime borders are expected to set new precedents: For the first time, Israeli and Lebanese delegates are slated to meet directly and not in the context of routine military discussions held under the auspices of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon. The American envoy, acting Assistant Secretary of State David Satterfield, recently visited both Beirut and Jerusalem in an effort to make headway in the talks before his appointment as U.S. ambassador to Turkey takes effect.

If Satterfield’s efforts prove successful, it would effectively leave the Shebaa Farms – an 11 kilometer (6.8 mile) long stretch of land at the intersection of the Lebanese-Syrian-Israeli borders – the only issue Israel and Lebanon are disputed over.

The line between precautions and panic

Israel recognized Hezbollah’s weakness immediately and used it not only to neutralize the terror tunnels but also to speed up work on the new barrier that under construction on the Lebanese border – including in areas where there are disagreements with Lebanon over where the border actually runs. Construction, which includes walls and other barriers meant to make it harder for Hezbollah to mount future attacks against Israel, was suspended in these areas so as not to give Hezbollah a pretext for escalation, but now Israel feels confident enough to complete them without fear of retaliation from the Shiite terrorist group.

Another sign of Hezbollah’s growing distress could be seen last week, in a speech by group leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Known for his fiery rhetoric, Nasrallah appeared nervous, sweating, his threats laced with palpable anxiety. Hezbollah’s leader drew a direct line between the American pressure on his patrons in Iran and a potential conflict between the Shiite terrorist group and Israel and warned that Hezbollah’s precision missiles reach every inch of Israel.

More than anything else, Nasrallah’s panicked rhetoric reflected his political, economic, and perhaps personal distress; and while he wanted to scare Israel into persuading the United States to ease the pressure on Iran, he only managed to get into deeper trouble with Washington.

Commenting on Nasrallah’s speech, Director of Military Intelligence Maj. Gen. Tamir Heyman said that the IDF – which believes Hezbollah has an arsenal of some 150,000 missiles, threatening the length and breadth of Israel – knows about all of Hezbollah’s capabilities, “maybe even better than Nasrallah himself,” adding that some of the weapons with which Nasrallah threatened Israel are not even operational.

Heyman may have meant to say that Nasrallah is boasting capabilities his group does not have and, illustrate how vulnerable Hezbollah is intelligence-wise, but his statement came off as unnecessarily conceited.

Heyman should have chosen his words more carefully when speaking on Hezbollah, as when speaking on Russia, whose forces in Syria, he said, were “fostering friction” so as to appear as problem-solvers.

Russia, which has taken a dominant position in the Syrian civil war since 2013, has been instrumental in ensuring the survival of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime. As Moscow is also a close ally of Assad’s chief patron, Iran, it has played a key role in mediating conflicts between Jerusalem, Damascus, and Tehran.

While true, Heyman’s remarks, saying, “Russia is dominant because of friction, disruption and intervention. It partially initiates discord and then presents solutions possible because of its presence in the region,” was unnecessary. Russia is too important an ally for Israel to squabble with over nonsense.

Looking beyond Lebanon, significant developments are also expected in the Syrian sphere. The tripartite meeting set to take place later this month in Jerusalem between the national security advisers of the United States, Russia, and Israel is a precedent: 52 years after the 1967 Six-Day War, representatives of the superpowers will meet in Jerusalem to discuss a solution to the Syrian issue.

Israel, with American backing – more precisely, the U.S. with a push from Israel – will try to convince the Russians to help keep the Iranians out of Syria. This is seemingly a Russian interest as well, but Moscow is expected to present a list of demands, most prominently that the U.S. finance Syria’s rehabilitation, and Washington is highly unlikely to agree.

The importance of the American-Russian dialogue goes beyond Israeli or even regional interests. Relations between the two superpowers are faltering and the national security advisers’ meeting seeks to improve them. The fact that such a meeting is slated to take place in Jerusalem, under the auspices of Israel and with its participation, is nothing less than amazing.

Meanwhile, it’s business as usual on the ground. Earlier this week the Israeli Air Force mounted two strikes against Iranian and Hezbollah assets in Syria, the first followed a rocket attack on the Israeli Golan Heights, and the second targeted the T4 air base in the central province of Homs, which has been long used by Iranian forces in Syria.

The two strikes were independent of each other. The first was retaliatory, while the second was part of Israel’s ongoing efforts to prevent Iran’s efforts to entrench itself militarily in Syria. Military officials said that the strike destroyed a convoy transporting weapons Iran attempted to transfer to Syria and from there to Hezbollah or one of its other proxy militias.

Previous Israeli strikes on Iranian weapon convoys have forced Iran to relocate its operations in Syria from a compounded within Damascus International Airport to an airport further away from the Syrian capital. The Iranians had hoped this would make it harder for Israel to target their weapon shipments. It didn’t.

These moves preserve Israeli supremacy in the northern sector for the time being, but the rocket fire on the Golan is cause for concern. The IDF has yet to determine who fired the rockets at Israel in the middle of the night and for no apparent reason, and there is an urgent need to prevent those behind it from doing so routinely.

As the Israel-Syria border is being reshaped after an eight-year civil war, Israel must remain highly vigilant and preserve not only strong defenses but also generate substantial deterrence. Otherwise, it may find a host of regional problems on its doorstep, from Hezbollah’s troubles in Lebanon, through Iran’s regional headaches, to every bored terrorist. This could foster a rapid security escalation in the sector, making it into an active war zone between Israel and the radical axis to its north.

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