Following the assassination of Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah, Israel is now facing unprecedented threats and challenges that it has to face.
In a report published this Monday, Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies noted that the killing of Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah can bring to Israel new challenges and threats.
In the report, the Israeli think tank stated that “threats facing Israel have not disappeared, but have changed, and it is imperative for Israel to understand these evolving threats in order to effectively prepare and identify opportunities that provide strategic advantage.”
“The war with Hezbollah is not over yet. This organization is still a powerful enemy that threatens Israel from the north. Even with the removal of Nasrallah, many Hezbollah leaders, commanders and tens of thousands of militias are still active. Hezbollah still has enough weapons to continue the war, and the recent events have only intensified the determination of the members of this group to intensify the conflict and inflict more serious damage on Israel,” the report noted.
INSS also referred to the chaos that can dominate Hezbollah in the absence of Nasrallah’s strategic guidance. “Without Nasrallah, the disruption in Hezbollah’s command structure can lead to autonomous and reckless actions by different factions and create new challenges for the Israeli army,” the report said. In addition, the report warned of the risk of retaliatory measures by Iran and other members of this axis of resistance in the coming days.
The Strategic Dilemma in Israel
Israel’s Jerusalem Post also wrote in a report that after the death of Nasrallah, the new mission of the Israeli army should be to destroy his group altogether to prevent potential retaliatory attacks against Israel.
Referring to Nasrallah’s successful efforts to create a network of Hezbollah forces in Lebanon and the unprecedented strengthening of this group, the report stated that the Israeli army “must take some basic steps to eradicate this network.”
These steps, as the report noted, include the following:
First, increasing unity: “The unity between us is necessary. Most people in Israel currently support the fight against Hezbollah and its destruction. This unity must be strengthened to prevent internal divisions and factions.”
Second, continuation of attacks: “Keeping national unity, Israel must stop serious attacks against Hezbollah until the complete surrender of the group and manage the pressure of public opinion and some aligned countries as it did with the Gaza war.”
And third, instilling zero tolerance to Hezbollah: “Israel must respond to any Hezbollah attack inside its territory with the strongest attacks and thus make the enemy understand that the current policy of the leaders in Tel Aviv is not to tolerate even a Molotov cocktail being thrown from Lebanon to inside Israel”.
