From the perspective of Hamas, it seems Friday’s speech by Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah promised more than it delivered. After building tension and anticipation for more than a week, Nasrallah sounded pressured and apologetic and looked unwell.

The October 7 Hamas attack, he said, was 100-percent Palestinian. Hezbollah did not know about it in advance and was surprised by it. Along with praise for the achievement of Hamas (which slaughtered innocent civilians), Nasrallah claimed that Hezbollah has been engaged in warfare with Israel since October 8.

The Shi’ite organization has fired rockets and anti-tank missiles into Israel from Lebanon, killing six soldiers and one civilian. It has lost dozens of fighters in battles with the Israel Defense Forces, pinned down Israeli reserve forces along the border to protect the north and causing the evacuation of large numbers of civilians from border communities. Nasrallah implied that Hezbollah may intensify its attacks (there were several incidents along the border Saturday).

While he drew some red lines – Hezbollah will not allow the collapse of Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip and will respond to the killing of Lebanese civilians by killing Israeli civilians – he did not state exactly what he intends to do. It all suggests that like his Iranian patrons, Nasrallah is willing to fight Israel to the last drop of Palestinian blood.

Israeli and U.S. intelligence believe that policy on this matter is decided jointly by Tehran and Beirut, and that since the U.S. assassination in 2020 of Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, Nasrallah has been very influential in setting policy for the radical anti-Israel axis.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, last week.Credit: Hadas Parush
Regarding moderating factors, Beirut and Tehran may be taking into consideration the U.S. military presence in the area, the high state of alert of IDF forces in the north and the risk that a regional war would lead to the destruction of civilian infrastructure in Lebanon and much of Hezbollah’s military capabilities.

In this regard it is worth noting IDF Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi’s statement, in a remark referring to the northern front, that the Israel Air Force has not yet deployed most of its capabilities in this war.

Three vital warnings are needed here: One, a scenario of miscalculation cannot be ruled out. Hezbollah could intensify its attacks further into Galilee, causing the IDF to respond in kind in Lebanon, at which point things could get out of control. Prof. Shimon Shapira, an expert on Hezbollah, told Haaretz that Nasrallah said that the possibility of the Lebanon front sliding into full-fledged war was real. The main headline in Iran’s most important newspaper, Kayhan, declared that Hezbollah considered all options to be open.

Two, Nasrallah’s remarks could be designed to conceal a surprise attack (although the IDF is better prepared for such an eventuality). Three, after October 7 one should be cautious in reading the enemy’s intentions. Intelligence agencies, to their credit, are more modest in their assessments than they were before the war.

Fierce fighting
In the Gaza Strip, fierce battles between the IDF and Hamas continue after Gaza City was in effect surrounded. The IDF is using a “shredding” tactic, progressing slowly and systematically, accompanied by immense amounts of firepower, including from the air. The airstrikes often last just minutes, in accordance with the demands of the ground forces and with little margin for error.

The IDF is employing, for the first time on such a large scale, an ability to rapidly integrate intelligence, technology and firepower. One of the vulnerable aspects still concerns the ability to kill many Hamas fighters in ground battles. Some officers believe that reports of hundreds of dead terrorists are not sufficiently confirmed. This is a well-known trap when fighting in built-up areas, and Israel should be wary of focusing on exaggerated body counts, such as happened to the Americans during the Vietnam War.

The difficulty lies, among other factors, in the definition of the mission. The government and IDF described it as the destruction of Hamas rule, denying it its military capabilities. This is a goal with a path that is not entirely clear, which almost invites the counting of enemy bodies. Commanders and reservists who participated in previous operations in the Gaza Strip say there is no comparison between the intensity and destruction this time and that of previous rounds of fighting. In Beit Hanoun, where reserve forces are operating, there are entire neighborhoods that have been completely flattened during the battles there.

Haaretz military correspondent Yaniv Kubovich joined the forces operating in the southern part of Gaza City for a few hours on Friday and was impressed by the intensity of the firepower being used, by the resolve of the combatants and by the high professional standards of commanders on the ground. The IDF is in real war mode, and is not conducting only a limited operation.

This involves casualties on our side, given the intensity of the fighting. Hamas, as was assessed in advance, is almost not attempting to block the movement of IDF forces. The organization is relying on its defensive tunnel network, sending its fighters up through shafts to launch anti-tank missiles and to deploy explosive charges close to IDF armored vehicles. Hamas is also employing attack drones.

This may lead to several problems. The IDF has introduced large forces into the northern Strip, moving in large numbers of armored vehicles. This, in a war against guerilla forces hiding underground, provides the enemy many targets. Many of the confrontations are at the initiative of Hamas forces. When a ground force identifies an enemy nearby, it usually quickly calls in the air force to neutralize it, but there are costs to our side as well.

For now, despite pressure exerted by the IDF, there is no apparent significant effect on Hamas command and control, which continues to function. At the same time, the focus must be the demolition of defensive tunnels. Some of these were dug not very deeply and can be destroyed from the air with no great difficulty. This depends mainly on the quality of intelligence provided by Military Intelligence and the Shin Bet security service.

U.S. calls for a pause
While Nasrallah was speaking in Beirut, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was holding a news conference in Tel Aviv. On his third visit here since the war began, and on his way to a summit meeting with Arab foreign ministers in Amman, Blinken seemed more sensitive to the suffering of Israelis living near the Gaza border than do some of Israel’s official spokesmen.

However, between the lines, one can sense that U.S. patience with IDF operations in the Gaza Strip is waning, given the prolongation of the fighting. Blinken called on Israel to allow increased aid to reach Gaza, warning of a humanitarian disaster there. He noted that pauses in the fighting would help the efforts to release Israeli hostages.

His Israeli interlocutors opposed any cease-fire that excluded the release of all hostages, clarifying that the military operation continues in full strength and that no fuel would be allowed into Gaza. The Washington Post reported, based on diplomatic sources who sound suspiciously like Blinken himself, that there is a Hamas proposal to release all civilian hostages (but not soldiers) in exchange for a five-day ceasefire. Israeli officials are not relating to this proposal publicly.

Given the growing public protest around the hostage issue (with families announcing Saturday they were setting up camp outside the Kirya, defense headquarters in Tel Aviv), an open Hamas proposal such as this could cause sharp internal controversy in Israel, especially if adopted by the international community.

However, even if Israel agreed to such a deal, with hostages released in exchange for a temporary cease-fire, the more the IDF penetrates urban areas, the harder it will be to halt fire since the army will be in close proximity to Hamas fighters, causing it to avoid risks that would endanger IDF forces. A further issue is that Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and senior IDF commanders expect to have a period of months in order to defeat Hamas as they promised to do. But a deal may put pressure on Israel to not resume fire after the deal is completed.

Several other issues came up during Blinken’s visit and in talks between the Pentagon and the IDF. First, the U.S. is asking Israel to leave dealing with the regional arena to the U.S. The Americans are involved in intercepting launches from Yemen and if needed, may take care of the Houthi rebels there. This apparently applies also to the Shi’ite militias in Iraq, which so far are focused on harassing U.S. bases in that area. Second, the Biden administration is trying to arrange a visit to Israel by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy next week.

This will be an important U.S. message to the world regarding the formation of a three-way alliance, an anti-Russian and anti-Iranian one. Israel has evaded this for years, but now there is no choice (and is also the ethical thing to do).

Benjamin Netanyahu also gave a speech Friday. The prime minister usually doesn’t allow questions, and his speech was devoid of real empathy for what Israeli citizens are experiencing. When mentioning fallen soldiers, he again focused on members of a specific group within Israeli society. He never talks about the massacre in the border kibbutzim, or the courage of the emergency response teams there, just as he never bothered to visit communities along the Gaza border over the years.

In general, Netanyahu believes for some reason that he is totally exempt from conducting condolence calls during the war. But somehow he has plenty of time for visits to army units, from which the Prime Minister’s Office shares photos of him surrounded by soldiers. This is a total waste of his time and that of IDF officers, as are the pointless discussions of the security cabinet, as opposed to the war cabinet. There is no escaping the conclusion that even in the midst of the country’s most important war in 50 years, the prime minister is occupied first and foremost, above all else, with himself and with rescuing his shaky political future