Every player in the Israel-Hamas conflict has their own interests and agendas. Nothing can happen without everything happening.
Hezbollah, with 150,000 rockets pointed at Israel from its redoubts in Lebanon, did not attack Israel. Iran, the puppet-master of the anti-Israeli militant groups, did not seek to ratchet up the tension. The US, with its own history of impulsive misadventures in the Middle East, counselled caution.
The question is: how is the shattered Humpty Dumpty of the Middle East to be put back together again, and by whom? Nothing can happen without everything happening: Israel, the US, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the Palestinians themselves – all have their prejudices and predispositions, their enmities and zero-sum aspirations, and their role to play.
For Israel, making that calculation is complicated by the fact that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, may have an ulterior motive: political survival. If Netanyahu shares that assessment of his likely fate, it becomes harder to predict his decision-making, and that of the politicians who fancy succeeding him.
“Hezbollah now is working against the occupation,” senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad told the Associated Press on Friday . “We appreciate this. But … we need more in order to stop the aggression on Gaza … We expect more.” “Funding Hezbollah and Shia military proxies is not about inciting conflict but about extended deterrence: moving the frontline away from its borders,” according to a recent“Iran would only ‘do something’ in response to Israel’s attacks on Gaza if they threatened Hamas’ complete destruction. And beyond a handful of proxies in Syria and Yemen, it would most likely only act through Hezbollah, which it can influence but does not control.
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