Israel's deadly attack on Lebanon shows it wasn't deterred by ...
Hezbollah thought it could contain its conflict with Israel.
Israel thought it could stop Hezbollah's attacks by military means.
Both have been wrong.
When the Lebanese militant group started firing rockets into Israel on October 8, the day after the Hamas attacks in southern Israel, it had very clear goals.
Divert Israeli military and intelligence resources, show solidarity with the Palestinian cause and make the conflict in Gaza a regional war, in keeping with the "Unity of Arenas" strategy to coordinate attacks on Israeli and United States interests by Iran-backed groups around the Middle East.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said in November, in his first speech outlining the group's strategy after October 7, that the group's attacks had generated panic, as well as fear of a broader war, for Israel and America.
"Our efforts have successfully deterred the enemy," he claimed.
Nasrallah was right that Israel, and more so the United States, did fear the outbreak of a regional war that could bring Iran into the fighting.
But time has proven him badly wrong about deterrence.
People are fleeing north from Israeli bombardment in Lebanon's southern coastal city Sidon. (Reuters: Amr Abdallah Dalsh)
After months of the situation on the border being dangerous but relatively static, Israel has raised the stakes significantly.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made it an official goal to return more than 60,000 evacuated northern Israel residents to their homes.
Last week, Israel is presumed to have blown up Hezbollah's personal communications devices, then killed its key military leaders in the heart of Dahiyeh, the Shia Muslim district that is Hezbollah's Beirut stronghold.
Now, Israel's massive strikes in the southern and central Lebanese villages where it accuses Hezbollah of storing medium and long-range missiles, and again in Beirut, show it is willing to go even further.
"Of course, Hezbollah miscalculated," Mohanad Hage Ali, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Centre told the ABC.
"I don't think they had in mind that they would reach the stage in which much of their strategic weapons and the trust in their leadership and their ability to conduct a war, is being redefined by the Israeli attack."
People carry belongings at a beach as they flee Tyre in southern Lebanon. (Reuters: Aziz Taher)
The scale of destruction from Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon was already far greater than anything caused by Hezbollah's rockets, forcing 100,000 Lebanese to flee and flattening parts of the south, but the group continued firing.
It showed Israel's continued failure to force the separation of the Lebanon and Gaza conflicts.
Israel has been unwilling to accept Hezbollah's stance — and American advice — that the only way to stop the group's attacks was to reach a ceasefire with Hamas in Gaza.
"[Hezbollah] abandoning [that] stance now would amount to a historic defeat, dealing the group's credibility an even more devastating blow than its security lapses have," the International Crisis Group wrote.
A Gaza ceasefire remains unlikely, partly due to Israel's political situation, while intense domestic pressure is leading Israel to pursue an increasingly aggressive strategy in Lebanon.
"Israel has pressed all the red buttons, now has bombed civilian areas, caused the mass displacement that Hezbollah was trying to avoid," Mr Hage Ali said.
Hezbollah has been unwilling to accept diplomatic approaches by the United States that would see it comply with a United Nations Security Council resolution and withdraw from the border region.
To date, Hezbollah has lost hundreds of fighters and is now losing an untold amount of munitions.
The extent to which its capabilities have been degraded will only become clear when the group responds to these latest attacks.
Iran, which regards Hezbollah as part of its "forward defence" strategy, an insurance policy against Israeli or US attack, will be considering its response too, although to date it has been unwilling to enter the conflict more directly to support Hezbollah.
The group now needs to both save face and attempt to regain a degree of deterrence against future Israeli attacks.
It has already started launching long-range strikes into Israel, for the first time since it entered the war.
Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system operates for interceptions as rockets are launched from Lebanon towards Israel, as seen from Haifa. (Reuters: Ronen Zvulun)
The escalation highlights another US failure, this time of diplomatic efforts to prevent the conflict spreading.
The US has continued to provide weapons and diplomatic protection for Israel while trying to convince Israel's enemies to show restraint, even as global outrage grew about Israel's conduct in Gaza.
The latest Israeli attacks have killed hundreds of people, including civilians, and caused another mass displacement of Lebanese, battering a country that was already critically weakened by economic collapse and political dysfunction.
One hopeful possibility may be that Israel has opted for these strikes in preference to a ground invasion, which could have an even worse impact and longer-term consequences.
However, unless Hezbollah has been critically weakened, the attacks may not achieve what Israel wants.
"Israel will fail, I think, in achieving its goal for one simple reason — If Hezbollah agrees to Israel's conditions it will have to face the wrath of its own base because the question will be, if you were willing to do this, why didn't you do it earlier on rather than inflicting all the pain?" Mohanad Hage Ali said.
