Possible Israel-Hezbollah war hinges on Gaza ground offensive

The chance of Hezbollah scaling up involvement in the war against Israel could hinge on any Israeli ground invasion of Gaza after a bloody attack by Hamas on southern Israeli communities, analysts said.

Militants from the Palestinian group Hamas stormed over Gaza's border on October 7, killing more than 1,200 people in Israel mostly civilians, and taking 150 hostages, in the deadliest attack on the country since its founding 75 years ago.

Some 1,300 Palestinians have been killed in six days of Israeli retaliatory bombings of Gaza.

Israel has also traded cross-border fire with Hezbollah and allied Palestinian factions in Lebanon since Sunday, raising the temperature at the border but so far avoiding an all-out confrontation.

Hezbollah and Hamas have long been part of a "joint operations room" that includes the Quds Force -- the foreign operations arm of Iran's powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps -- a source close to the Hezbollah told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The groups are part of the so-called "axis of resistance" -- Lebanese, Palestinian, Syrian and other Iran-backed armed opposition to Israel.

"A decisive attack against one of the components of this alliance" would prompt "the intervention of other components," said Mohanad Hage Ali from the Carnegie Middle East Center.

"Hezbollah could find itself forced to participate in the war" against Israel if a ground offensive on the Gaza Strip takes off, the analyst told AFP.

The Israeli army said Thursday it was preparing for a "ground manoeuvre" in Gaza but that nothing "has yet been decided," as Hamas and Israel traded heavy fire for a sixth day.

- 'Real risk' -

Tit-for-tat attacks at the Lebanon-Israel border have so far been limited, adhering to "tacit rules of engagement" on the tense frontier, a Western diplomatic source in Beirut told AFP.

In 2006, Israel and Hezbollah fought a bloody conflict which left more than 1,200 dead in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 160 in Israel, mostly soldiers.

Since then, a delicate balancing act has allowed for a relative calm at the border, including during other conflicts between Israel and Gaza militants.

But "there is a real risk that the situation will degenerate in the event of a trigger, such as a ground offensive in Gaza or civilian deaths on either side" of the Lebanon-Israel frontier, said the diplomatic source, requesting anonymity as they were not authorised to speak to the media.

Hezbollah and Hamas, both designated as "terrorist" groups by Israel, as well as the United States, the EU and much of the West, mended fences after briefly ending up on opposing sides of the Syrian conflict.

Hezbollah, founded in the 1980s to fight Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon, has grown into Iran's main regional proxy with operatives in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

The only Lebanese faction to have kept its weapons after the 1975-1990 civil war, Hezbollah now has an arsenal more powerful than the Lebanese national army.

Israel and Hezbollah's simmering rivalry has played out mostly in war-ravaged Syria, where Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on the group and other pro-Iran fighters and assets.

On Tuesday, Israel exchanged fire with militants in Syria after the Israeli army said munitions were fired towards the occupied Golan Heights, while on Thursday, state media said Israeli strikes knocked out Syria's two main airports in Damascus and Aleppo.

- 'Back to the stone age' -

"Hezbollah's posture since 2006 has been one centred on deterring rather than confronting Israel militarily," said Aram Nerguizian, from the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

But "should Israel be threatened in ways that change the regional balance of power, Hezbollah and its allies are likely to quickly find themselves (drawn) into a far wider and far more punitive regional war."

In August, Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said it would take just "a few high-precision missiles" for his group to destroy Israel targets including "civilian and military airports, airbases, power stations" and the Dimona nuclear facility.

If a future conflict pulls in "the resistance axis... there will be no such thing called Israel anymore", Nasrallah warned.

The warning came after Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant threatened to send Lebanon "back to the stone age" should Hezbollah escalate tensions at the border.

In May, Hezbollah simulated cross-border raids into Israel in a show of its military might, using live ammunition and an attack drone and demonstrating moves that Hamas used in its weekend assault on Israel.

Analyst Nerguizian said Lebanon, mired in an unprecedented economic crisis, was ill-equipped for any spillover, especially amid "political and sectarian polarization" among its myriad sectarian communities.

"Hezbollah's Shiite constituents will not be welcomed by their Christian, Druze and other compatriots as they attempt to flee the fighting" if war breaks out, Nerguizian added.