www.military.ie THE DEFENCE FORCES MAGAZINE
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The recent death of Iranian General Qas-
sem Suleimani in a US missile strike has
once again heightened tensions across the
Middle East. Recently, we interviewed Mr
Amos Harel, leading Military & Defence
correspondent for the Israeli daily news-
paper Haaretz, where we discussed the
security situation along the Israel - Lebanon
border and the UNIFIL Area of Operations.
WHAT IS YOUR ASSESSMENT OF THE SECURITY SITUATION
ALONG ISRAEL'S NORTHERN BORDER WITH LEBANON?
"If there is a defining moment in the relations between Israel
and Hezbollah, it was 2006, what is now called the Second
Lebanon War. In my view, in retrospect, this more or less ended
in a miserable draw: Neither side won but both managed to
inflict quite a lot of damage on the other.
What we have had since then, the strategic balance be-
tween Israel and Hezbollah, in essence, is a type of mutually
assured deterrence. Both sides are aware of what the other side
can do and therefore are deterred from going too far ahead of
themselves.
I'm not talking directly about the State of Lebanon, because
as strange as it may seem, it is a relatively minor actor in the
military balance here.
So what we have now, time after time, are incidents where
we see a dangerous escalation, with lots of talking from both
sides, but when it comes to the actual shooting we see both
sides stepping on the brakes at the last moment.
The best example I can think of was in 2015 when Jihad
Mughniyeh (Hezbollah Military Commander) was assassinated
alongside an Iranian General, which was widely attributed to
Israel. Hezbollah responded 10 days later with an ambush on
an Israeli army convoy in the Shebaa Farms area, where two
Israeli soldiers were killed by anti-tank rocket attack.
Immediately after this attack, public expectation was
that Israel would react because our soldiers had been killed. I
BY COMDT JAMES O'HARA, DEFENCE FORCES PRESS OFFICER
