Staving off a fire in the north

This is also not the time to prod Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

By HERB KEINON
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the weekly cabinet meeting on June 28, 2020. (photo credit: OLIVIER FITOUSSI/FLASH90)
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the weekly cabinet meeting on June 28, 2020.
(photo credit: OLIVIER FITOUSSI/FLASH90)
As if the situation in the country is not difficult enough as is, now we can add something else to the summer of 2020’s coronavirus-financial crisis-political dysfunction mix: the northern border.
Tension on the northern border, born of concern that Hezbollah will retaliate for the killing of a Hezbollah fighter in Syria last Monday, during a raid attributed to Israel, has the IDF on high alert. Hezbollah has retaliated twice in the last five years to its fighters killed in attacks attributed to Israel, and the concern is that they will try to do so this time as well.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, however, would be wise in considering his move carefully. The last thing he should want for Lebanon – a country already in the depth of the deepest financial crisis since the Lebanese civil war that ended in 1989 – is to give Israel a pretense for extensive military action that would make an already dreadful situation in Lebanon even worse.
And this is a dreadful time for Lebanon. An estimated 50% of the population is living under the poverty line, driving some people to rummaging for food through garbage and a few others to suicide; the Lebanese pound lost 60% of its value in the last month, wiping out people’s savings; and basic services – such as electricity and medical care – are often simply unavailable.
Badly needed international assistance is hard to come by because of the central role that Hezbollah – recognized as a terrorist organization by the US, Germany, the UK, Japan, Argentina, the Arab League and others – plays in the government, something that has increased resentment in Lebanon toward the organization.
This is also not the time to prod Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Why not? Because with nightly protests and a general sense of dissatisfaction in the government enveloping much of Israel, Netanyahu could use a way to switch the dial.
In the social justice protests of the summer of 2011, for example, those demonstrations were eclipsed in October of that year when Netanyahu agreed to the prisoner exchange for Gilad Schalit. The Schalit deal pushed the protests off the front page, and they never managed to recapture the country’s attention or imagination.
Derech Eretz MK Zvi Hauser, who was Netanyahu’s cabinet secretary at the time, said in a television interview in 2016 that the protests were a factor in the decision to free 1,027 Palestinian prisoners for Schalit.
“There was a minority of people around the prime minister who objected to the deal,” Hauser said, adding that some of those who supported it thought it would throw a “bucket of cold water of sorts” on the protests.
Similar comments were made by David Meidan, who was the government envoy to the prisoner exchange talks. He was quoted by Haaretz as saying in a private meeting in 2012 that the social justice protests had a “certain part” in the decision to go through with the Schalit deal, though not the central one.
The same dynamic could be at play were Israel now forced into a major military campaign in the North.
If troops were called up because of border violence in the North, Netanyahu’s detractors would certainly accuse him of a cynical ploy to deflect attention from his domestic woes. Most of the nation, however, would rally around the flag, as Israelis tend to do when faced with security challenges. Allegations that Netanyahu was just trying to manufacture a crisis would evaporate were Hezbollah to be the party that actually initiated military action.
Now is not the time for Hezbollah to bait Netanyahu, for in addition to sending a strong message against Hezbollah and other enemies looking on that Israel will take strong action against any violation of its sovereignty, he would have the added incentive of changing the conversation which right now is all about coronavirus, the government’s missteps and his alleged corruption.
That’s on the one hand.
On the other hand, Israel – like Lebanon and most other countries in the world – is deep in the throes of an economic crisis; though certainly not as bad as Lebanon’s.
A full blown military confrontation with Lebanon, particularly if it involved mobilizing reserve units, would be a further drain on an economy already reeling from the coronavirus. The country needs its funds right now to deal with the pandemic and its financial fallout, to bail out the tens of thousands of businesses crippled by COVID-19,  not to fund a large-scale military campaign.
The same, however, is true – even more so – for Hezbollah. It, too, does not have the finances for a full scale conflict, nor can it count on Iran – facing its own significant financial problems – to ante up as it has in the past.
Those factors seem to indicate that despite the tensions in the North, and looking at the situation rationally, no one has an interest in the tensions spiraling out of control: Hezbollah because neither it nor Lebanon can really afford to draw Netanyahu into a fight he might be more willing to jump into than in the past because of domestic considerations, and Israel because right now it needs to find ways to alleviate its coronavirus-induced economic straits, not exacerbate them.
The problem is that with tensions high, a simple miscalculation by one side could send rational thinking by the other out the window.