Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent APN's views and policy positions.

Q. On Saturday evening, a Hezbollah rocket killed 12 children and teenagers in the Golan Druze town of Majdal Shams. Is this a game changer for Israel, any more so than, say, the Houthi drone that hit Tel Aviv two weeks ago?

A. The Majdal Shams strike had unique characteristics that could conceivably render it a catalyst for major change in Israel’s ten-month long conflict with Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran’s other regional proxies. If that turns out not to be the case, it will be because Israelis are becoming accustomed to almost weekly dramatic and major developments, any one of which could be a game changer.

Q. For example...

A. We have already mentioned the Houthi attack on Tel Aviv, followed by Israel’s response against the Yemeni port of Hodeida and its energy installations. Like the Iranian drone and rocket attack in April, the Houthi clash dramatically expanded the war in terms of both geography and participants. Yet strategically, the parameters remain the same and Gaza remains the focal point.

At the international strategic level, Biden’s withdrawal from the US presidential race signaled that the next president, however friendly to Israel, will not be what PM Netanyahu calls an “Irish Catholic Zionist”. And it possibly altered the tenor of US Middle East policy for the coming ‘lame duck’ half year. Coupled with the Netanyahu speech in Congress last week--devoid of any significant political departure regarding the Palestinians--the Biden withdrawal appears to have sharpened a political divide in the United States regarding wartime, Likud-led Israel and particularly Netanyahu, the ‘Republican senator from Jerusalem’. Trump is once again arguing that Jewish Democrats “don’t love Israel”.

But note, too, that both Republican candidate Trump and presumptive Democratic candidate Harris publicly called on Israel last week to end the war and referred to Israel’s losses in the hasbara (Israeli public diplomacy) arena. Meanwhile, the People’s Republic of China registered its own ‘hasbara’ gain vis-à-vis Washington in the Palestinian domain by getting the PLO and Hamas to commit to a mediation effort by Beijing.

Last year, the PRC dramatically brought Iran and Saudi Arabia together. Do not underestimate its aspirations and capability to once again be a Middle East game changer.

Q. Back to the Golan Druze atrocity. Why is it unique?

A. The Druze are the last Levant ethnic group Hezbollah should seek to alienate.

It is almost certain the Hezbollah rocket was intended for a nearby IDF target rather than Majdal Shams. Hezbollah’s embarrassed denials of involvement are contradicted by intelligence, forensics, and the logic of the current conflict, in which an atrocity of this scope was inevitable.

The Hezbollah-Druze relationship is complicated. Hezbollah is supported verbally by Lebanese Druze leader Kamal Jumblatt. Nearly 60 years after Israel conquered the Golan Heights from Syria in the Six-Day War, roughly half the Golan Druze still refuse Israeli citizenship and maintain close family and economic ties with Druze in Syria, Hezbollah’s ally.

On the other hand, aside from half the Golan Druze, Israeli Druze citizens have served loyally and with distinction in the Israel Defense Forces in the war against Hamas and Hezbollah since October 7. This, despite a long list of Israeli Druze grievances against the Likud government regarding discrimination, from land rights to the ‘Nation State’ basic law of 2018 that defined them out of the ethnic core of the Jewish state.

Saturday’s Golan casualties, Druze youth, are the heaviest among Israeli civilians during ten months of war. Not to respond in force with a significant blow to Hezbollah is simply not an option for Israel.

Q. And the regional and international ramifications?

A. Israel is still at war in the Gaza Strip. There is a growing sense among a large portion of the Israeli security community and the public-at-large that Netanyahu is dodging a ceasefire/hostage deal with Hamas. This enables him to prolong the war, thereby placating his coalition’s messianic extremist faction, holding his government together and perpetuating his grip on power.

Accordingly, movement toward resolution of the war with Lebanon is frozen. An IDF offensive against Hezbollah requires forces that are busy in Gaza and munitions that are slow in arriving from the United States. Besides, it is likely to trigger escalation that involves Hezbollah rockets falling on central Israel and causing heavy damage and casualties that the Israeli public is poorly prepared to endure. A diplomatic resolution is considered a possibility, but Hezbollah conditions even a preliminary ceasefire on an end to the Gaza war--which is apparently not about to happen.

The IDF, then, has to find a way to respond significantly against Hezbollah in response to the Majdal Shams tragedy, yet without triggering heavy and prolonged escalation.

Q. Could escalation involve Iran? The Houthis?

A. Iran and the Houthis have already demonstrated their readiness to get directly involved in attacking Israel. Then there are the pro-Iran Shiite militias in Iraq who are volunteering to fight alongside Hezbollah.

Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah, incidentally, demonstrated its own willingness to escalate last week by sending a drone to attack Israel’s Leviathan gas-drilling platform in the Mediterranean. It was shot down by a ship-borne Iron Dome battery of the Israel Navy.

Q. Is Israel ready for an all-out two-front war? Is the Israeli civilian population ready? Will Biden again send aircraft carriers as a deterrent? Alternatively, are Netanyahu and Hamas finally ready for a hostage and ceasefire agreement that brings about quiet on the Lebanon front?

A. The answer to all these questions appears to be ‘no’.

Q. It is entirely possible that both Israel and Hezbollah will finesse the flare-up over Majdal Shams in a manner that avoids escalation and restores the status quo. That would reflect their shared interest in avoiding escalation. Where would that leave us?

A. Plus ça change...  That would leave us with more of the same, despite the extremely dynamic regional and international situation.

Israel’s Knesset is in recess until November. The US is in a six-month countdown to elections. Like the reality that led up to October 7, most of Israel’s regional and internal political activity is perceived by Iran and its Axis of Resistance as demonstrating weakness and inviting escalated aggression. Iran-sponsored escalation, when it happens, is pin-point, e.g. the Houthi drone attack on Tel Aviv, and even accidental, as on the Golan on Saturday.

Escalation is also gradual. Yet it reflects the persistent perception that Israeli deterrence is weak. Israel, bereft of responsible strategic leadership, is drifting externally while losing friends, and becoming ever more extreme domestically. Israel’s friends and enemies, both, are tracking this dynamic closely.

Q. That brings us to Netanyahu’s ‘Churchillian’ speech to Congress last week...

A. So much has been said and written about this already. I will confine my comments to a few items that particularly struck me as quintessential Netanyahu--meaning clever and populistic but divorced from strategic reality.

Already noted is the fact that nothing of substance was offered on the Palestinian issue. And on Iran? An “Abraham Alliance” with no Palestinian building blocks and no US imprimatur? The PRC, perhaps, as partner?

Oh, but Netanyahu did remember the need for America to ‘democratize’ Gaza along the lines of post-WWII Germany and Japan. Bibi, a history buff, ought to know that these 1950s models are totally inapplicable to the Arab world with its lack of democratic civil society foundations. So here he was apparently throwing raw meat to ignorant Republican lawmakers.

He was even cleverer bringing three IDF soldier heroes to sit with Sara in the congressional audience. Forgive my lack of wokeness, but did anyone notice all three were dark-skinned, making them less than representative of the majority ethnic make-up of the IDF? There is a subtle and unassailable promo here about Israel for race-conscious Americans, one that Netanyahu can only snicker up his sleeve about.

Netanyahu at his cleverest... and his worst.