By definition, Military Deterrence is the practice of discouraging potential adversaries from taking unwanted actions, such as an attack, by creating a credible threat of unacceptable consequences if those actions are taken. It relies on convincing an opponent that the potential costs of aggression, from a military or political standpoint, far outweigh any perceived benefits. Key elements include a visible and credible capacity for retaliation, a clear demonstration of the will to retaliate, and effective communication of these factors to the potential aggressor.
If we apply this definition on the military confrontation between Hezbollah and the Israeli Occupation Army, the long clash can be classified in the two categories of deterrence and escalation. Thus, the encounter has been always governed by certain rules of engagement that either maintain the deterrence between the two sides or draw the aspects of escalation.
Hezbollah emerged in 1982 when the Israeli enemy invaded Lebanon and its tanks reached Beirut. The situation was extremely dark. However, the rise of the resistance, with its various factions, expelled the Israeli enemy to South Lebanon to the occupation zone.
18 years of the resistance attacks on the occupation sites in South Lebanon led to the liberation in the year 2000. Nevertheless, there were, during that period, certain featured events which contributed to establishing the so-called rules of engagement between the resistance and the Israeli enemy.
In 1993, the Israeli enemy launched a large-scale aggression on Lebanon with the aim of disarming Hezbollah and protecting the northern settlements from its missile fire. The seven-day war failed to achieve any of its targets, except for committing the massacres.
The preliminary image of the deterrence formulas imposed by the resistance on the enemy started to appear with clear dimensions. Any Israeli attack on the civilians in Lebanon would be faced by firing missiles at the settlements in the north of occupied Palestine.
The deterrence formula was officially approved with April Understanding that concluded a 16-day Zionist war on Lebanon in 1996. The military confrontation between the resistance and the Israeli enemy was separated from targeting the civilians. The 1996 April Understanding was a milestone because it codified Hezbollah’s deterrence into a semi-official agreement.
However, the Israeli enemy did not surrender to Hezbollah deterrence formula. In 1999, the Zionist occupation army launched a large scale aggression on the infrastructure in Lebanon, targeting power plants, bridges, and buildings. However, the Islamic Resistance insisted bravely on responding by firing missiles at northern ‘Israel’.
After its withdrawal from South Lebanon in the year 2000 due to its failure to confront the resistance attacks, the Israeli enemy started planning to deal a revenge strike on Hezbollah whose forces moved forward to the border outposts in the South Litani area.
The Israeli security violations did not stop in that period. Many of the resistance commanders and cadres were assassinated, including Martyr Ghaleb Awale who was killed by the Zionist enemy in Beirut’s Dahieh.
Capturing two Zionist soldiers in a deadly operation carried out by Hezbollah in 2006 was merely the pretext for the enemy to start its revenge war. The target was again crushing Hezbollah. After a 33-day war, the Zionist enemy failed to eradicate the Lebanese Resistance Group whose missiles kept showering the Zionist settlements till the last moment of the war.
In 2008, the US-Israeli intelligence coordination led to the assassination of Top Hezbollah Military Commander Martyr Hajj Imam Mughniyeh who contributed to the major development of Hezbollah military establishment with the founding of the elite unit “Al-Rudwan” in addition to the reinforcement of the missile and unmanned air force units.
Between 2006 and 2023, the Israeli enemy tried repeatedly to break the deterrence formula imposed by the Lebanese resistance, which was always keen on responding proportionally. Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah announced several formulas, including targeting Ben Gurion Airport in response to any Zionist strike on Beirut’s Airport.
Even Hezbollah threatened to target the Israeli enemy if the latter strikes the Group’s fighters operating in Syria. In one of the incidents, the Zionist army moved its forces 7 kilometers away from Lebanon border for fear of Hezbollah response to the Israeli killing of one of the resistance fighters in Syria. This has consecrated the deterrence formula between the Lebanese Resistance and the Israeli enemy.
It is worth to note that the US administration has always been behind the major Israeli decisions of hostility against Lebanon. For example, 1993 aggression followed a Congress decision (numbered 28) to disarm Hezbollah. In 2006, the US administration prevented the Zionist enemy from stopping the war in its second week after Hezbollah proved power, bravery and steadfastness.
After Hamas and several Palestinian factions of resistance carried out October 7 attack in 2023, Hezbollah took a strategic decision to start Gaza support battle, launching its first attack on the Zionist occupation sites on October 8.
Hezbollah military operations in support of Gaza remained one year with more than 3000 attacks that inflicting heavy human and materialistic losses on the Israeli army and forced hundreds of thousands of settlers to evacuate north of occupied Palestine.
It was not a mere support battle, yet it was a full partnership in the war. Hezbollah succeeded in dragging huge numbers of Israeli brigades to the Lebanese border and preventing the enemy from singling out Gaza facing the genocide.
The US-planned decision to eradicate, or at least disarm, Hezbollah, was implemented in the ninth month of 2024. The start was with the Pager attack, which carries clear CIA fingerprints, and the assassination of the resistance commanders.
The US-Israeli assassination of Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah was the announcement of the historic war on Hezbollah. Hundreds of air raids that may never be carried out by the Israeli air force alone destroyed residential areas, infrastructure and Hezbollah military facilities. The confrontation even became harder with the assassination of Martyr Sayyed Nasrallah’s heir, Secretary General Sayyed Hashem Safieddine.
Hezbollah missiles and drones continued to strike the Israeli occupation entity, targeting even the house of the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Caesarea and Golani Brigade training base near Binyamina. When Hezbollah escalated its missile fire on the Zionist enemy few days before the end of the war, the US administration interfered to conclude a ceasefire.
However, the Israeli enemy benefited from several regional developments, including the fall of the former Syrian regime, orchestrated by the US administration in addition to the anti-resistance stances in Lebanon in order to impose new formulas on the resistance.
The Israeli command, pushed by the US administration, decided to break all Hezbollah formulas based on inflicting losses upon the enemy. Tolerating losses and employing the high tech in the war comprise the two main features of the new Israeli military creed.
The strategic expert, Dr. Mohammad Sweidan, told Al-Manar English Website that 2024 war ended the epoch of the former balances of deterrence and paved way to new formulas and rules of engagement, noting that this concept undergoes ongoing changes in accordance with the circumstances.
Dr. Sweidan added that the Resistance proved strengths, especially frustrating the ground invasion despite all the weaknesses centered on the security side and the Zionist barbarism.
Hezbollah managed also to prevent the enemy from utilizing the tactical achievement for long-term political purposes, Dr. Swedian underlined.
Meanwhile, the 12-day war on Iran has taught the Americans and the Israelis that losses cannot be openly tolerated, air defenses cannot limitlessly intercept missile and drone attacks, and technology may be well employed by the enemy too.
Thus, it is a hard period whose features, rules, and formulas are being reconstructed in accordance with new balances of power. Hezbollah is steadfastly recovering, assessing the situation, and drawing the plans to re-establish the deterrence which protects Lebanon and the entire Arab region from the Israeli expansion and greed.
Source: Al-Manar English Website
