Then, well, this week happened.
As the constant barrage of Israeli bombardments continued to fall on Palestinians in Gaza, an alleged rocket attack by Lebanese Shiite organization Hezbollah killed 12 children in a town in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights over the weekend. (Hezbollah has denied involvement.) The Israeli response was a targeted strike on a suburb of Beirut on Tuesday that killed Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr and at least six others. Lebanese officials denounced the attack on their soil, and urged restraint.
The next day brought an even more stunning development: Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’s political wing, was assassinated while in Tehran for the inauguration of Iran’s new president. According to a New York Times report, an explosive device laid months in advance in the chambers where Haniyeh was staying detonated, killing him and his bodyguard. Though Israel did not claim responsibility, the assassination bore the hallmarks of a sophisticated Israeli intelligence operation, and both Iranian and Hamas officials have pinned the blame for Haniyeh’s death on Israel.
For his part, Netanyahu told reporters on Thursday that Israel had dealt “crushing blows” to both Hezbollah and Hamas, gesturing also to the recent Israeli confirmation of the death of Mohamed Deif, a shadowy Hamas military commander in Gaza.
The region is bracing for the next act. “Together, the recent operations underscored Israel’s willingness and ability to target adversaries beyond its borders, including deep in hostile territory — and suggested that Netanyahu’s government, like the leaders of Iran and its militant allies, is unlikely to heed calls from the United States and other outside powers to put the ongoing cycle of violence to rest,” my colleagues reported.
For months, analysts have said that none of the belligerents in the region are interested in a full-scale war — be it Iran or its proxies, or Israel or the United States. “I think we have to reconsider” that calculus, Firas Maksad, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, said on CNN, pointing to a “broad consensus” within Israel that wants to change the balance of power along its northern border with Lebanon.
Israel’s putative foes may be willing to oblige. After Haniyeh’s death, Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed “severe punishment” on Israel and said revenge in this instance was a “duty.” In a speech, Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah declared that he and his allies were “looking for a real response, not a formal response” — a nod to the calibrated attacks that Iran and its proxies have launched on Israel since the start of the Israeli campaign in Gaza.
“We have entered a new stage different from the one before,” Nasrallah said, adding that Israel “has to wait for the anger of the honorable people in this nation, the revenge of the honorable people in this nation, for all this blood.”
There is “no question we’ve made one step forward to a potential escalation to a full-scale war,” said Sima Shine, head of the Iran program at the Israel-based Institute for National Security Studies, at a virtual briefing held by the Israel Policy Forum. “We are in a situation where many red lines have been crossed,” she added.
What may follow could be significantly more drastic than Iran’s April barrage of rockets and drones on Israel that was batted aside by the Jewish state and its allies. While on a trip to Mongolia, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said it was “crucial that we break the cycle” of violence in the region. “And that starts with a cease-fire,” Blinken told reporters, invoking the fitful negotiations between Israel and Hamas. “To get there, it also first requires all parties to stop taking any escalatory actions. It also requires them to find reasons to come to an agreement, not to look for reasons to delay or say no to the agreement.”
The spiking tensions, even if they’re calmed, complicate hopes for a cease-fire. “Pulling back from the brink, repeatedly, is not making war any less likely. It makes it harder to construct a diplomatic pathway away from the looming threat of all-out conflict,” noted Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s international editor. “The only credible first step for lowering the deadly temperature in the Middle East is a ceasefire in Gaza.”
That may be a harder ask now than it was a few days ago. “Haniyeh — the chief negotiator for the militants in indirect Israel-Hamas talks mediated since November by the United States, Qatar and Egypt — was widely viewed as more realistic about the advantages of reaching a deal than Hamas military chief Yehiya Sinwar, according to Arab and U.S. officials closely familiar with the negotiations,” reported my colleague Karen DeYoung.
“Political assassinations & continued targeting of civilians in Gaza while talks continue leads us to ask, how can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?” Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani wrote on social media Wednesday morning. “Peace needs serious partners & a global stance against the disregard for human life.”
Palestinian observers, meanwhile, cast doubt on the significance of Haniyeh’s loss to the militant movement he represented.
“History has repeatedly demonstrated that while Israel is very effective in terms of assassinating senior Palestinian political figures, this has tended to have at best limited impact on [Hamas’s] abilities, on its development,” Mouin Rabbani, a nonresident fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies and co-editor of Jadaliyya, told my colleagues. “I would not equate killing leaders with eradicating a movement. Those are two very different things, and Israel has proven quite successful with respect to the former but not at all successful with respect to the latter.”