Intensifying regional conflict is being fueled by a raging war of words as extremist Israeli leaders relentlessly beat the drums of war against Lebanon. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant pledged to intensify operations against Hezbollah, warning that Israel could attack to a depth of 50 km toward “Beirut and anywhere else.”

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah reciprocated with a threat that Hezbollah’s “precision missiles” could target any location from Kiryat Shmona in Israel’s north to Eilat in the south. Nasrallah further asserted: “The enemy will pay the price of spilling blood with their own blood,” and pledged to “escalate resistance activity at the battlefront.”

At last week’s Munich Security Conference, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz warned that, if a diplomatic solution is not found, Israel will be forced to act to remove Hezbollah from the border in order to return 70,000 displaced Israelis to their homes. “In such a case, Lebanon will also pay a heavy price,” he said. He failed to mention that nearly 100,000 Lebanese have also been displaced by the conflict, a number that will soar in the event of a full Israeli invasion. Lebanon’s already bankrupt economy has suffered further damage estimated at $1.6 billion.

A newspaper poll suggested that 71 percent of Israelis want a major military operation against Lebanon. A politically mortally wounded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may find it difficult to resist such pressures as an illusory route to rebuilding his popularity, even though it would be massively destructive for both sides, given Hezbollah’s huge missile arsenals and Israel’s access to unlimited US weaponry.

The rapid trajectory of this escalation illustrates how such retaliatory cycles can be self-feeding: Israel in recent days struck Nabatieh and Al-Sawana, resulting in numerous civilian casualties, and Hezbollah retaliated by firing dozens of rockets into northern Israel. More than 170 Hezbollah fighters are among the 200 Lebanese deaths so far.

This trajectory is further reinforced by Israel’s remorseless airstrikes on Iran’s proxy assets in Syria, including the assassination of Republican Guard leadership figures. Hezbollah-aligned paramilitaries have been strengthening their presence in southwest Syria with the objective of ensuring that Israel would be fighting on a widened northern front in the event of conflict fully erupting.

In the view of Israeli military hawks, the encircling chain of Iranian proxies linking Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad and Sanaa makes it necessary for Israel to strike a blow against this amassed “resistance” before it becomes all prevailing. Indeed, Israel’s direct war with Tehran appears to have already begun, with a series of devastating sabotage attacks against gas infrastructure across Iran. Israel has in the past used such tactics against Iranian military and nuclear sites.

Immediately after Oct. 7, only vigorous US diplomatic intervention deterred a vengeance-thirsty Netanyahu from striking an immediate and massive blow against Hezbollah. With the recent deterioration in relations between the prime minister and US President Joe Biden, America’s ability and will to moderate Israeli military policy is diminished. Despite supposedly working to end the conflict, the US is preparing to send large volumes of additional weaponry to Israel.

French and US initiatives for defusing the crisis are premised upon the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, i.e., Hezbollah withdrawing to behind the Litani River. This is a dim prospect in the current circumstances, unless Hezbollah is offered political concessions, which would be destabilizing for Lebanon; or if Israel militarily intervened to enforce Hezbollah’s withdrawal, which would result in a bloodbath.