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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones this is 7am.

It was the biggest escalation between Hezbollah and Israel since October 7.

On Sunday, Hezbollah launched hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel, and Israel said it hit more than 40 targets in Lebanon and isn’t done yet.

The attacks come as talks of a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel continue with no sign of an outcome.

Today, world editor of The Saturday Paper Jonathan Pearlman on whether the Middle East is headed for all-out war.

It’s Tuesday, August 27.

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RUBY:

Jonathan, since the outbreak of war in October last year we've seen the Israeli army and Hezbollah in Lebanon attacking each other. There's this pattern of attack, stand down, stand off, repeat. But the last few days seem to have been different. We’ve seen the biggest escalation in this dispute so far. Tell me what happened?

JONATHAN:

Yes, that's right Ruby. We've just seen really the biggest exchange in what has been a year of, sort of, an almost war between Israel and Hezbollah. That's on Israel's northern border in the south of Lebanon.

And bearing in mind that the accounts on both sides differ, but what we understand to have happened is that Israel launched a pre-emptive strike against an attack from Hezbollah.

Audio Excerpt - Attack on Lebanon:

[Sounds of explosions]

JONATHAN:

And the pre-emptive strike was massive. It involved 100 Israeli Air Force jets hitting targets across southern Lebanon, about 40 targets.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah launched some 300, or a little bit more than 300, rockets and drones.

Audio Excerpt - Hezbollah attack:

[Sounds of rockets firing]

JONATHAN:

It looks like many of them were intercepted, but it's not clear exactly what managed to get through. But Hezbollah claims some success.

Audio Excerpt - Hassan Nasrallah:

[Speaking Arabic]

JONATHAN:

Its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, gave a speech refuting Israel's claims to have thwarted this attack.

What they were aiming at was a compound outside Tel Aviv, which is the headquarters of Mossad and Israeli intelligence.

So Hezbollah that it's attack was a retaliation against an assassination in Beirut several weeks ago by Israel against a senior Hezbollah commander.

But, even despite the massive scale of this, it still seems to have been a contained escalation. So, you know, once again seeing some of the biggest escalation in this almost year long war, but it still looks like neither side wants an all-out war.

RUBY:

Can you just unpick that tension for me? This idea that neither Hezbollah or the Israeli military want to go to war, yet they continue to attack each other which puts them on a potential path to that very outcome. So if they don't want war, why are they doing what they're doing?

JONATHAN:

For Israel, its strategic doctrine in the Middle East is all about deterrence. It believes it's surrounded by enemies and threats and that its greatest form of defence effectively is to deter those threats, and to make anyone that attacks it think that they'll either be destroyed or face much stronger response and more damage than anything they can inflict. And really that deterrence effect collapsed on October 7th when Hamas, which was considered the weakest in some ways of those threats, was able to, you know, launch this surprise attack.

It took Israel by complete surprise and, you know, Hamas effectively occupied parts of southern Israel for several days. I mean, this is something unprecedented in Israeli history and was really devastating to Israel's sense of its own security and to its own basic strategic approach to the region which is this deterrence effect.

And so Israel is now trying to rebuild that, and particularly against Hezbollah, it's trying to show that it can preemptively strike against Hezbollah. That it can attack and assassinate senior commanders, as we saw it do recently in Beirut.

Now, if we look at Hezbollah, what it wants to do is show that it can strike Israel, hurt Israel. Hezbollah also says that it is acting in solidarity with Hamas and with the Palestinians in Gaza, and that's why it started to launch attacks after October 7th.

RUBY:

And as these attacks happen, life becomes more and more dangerous for those people who live in Lebanon and those who are near the border in northern Israel. These are the people who stand to lose their homes and their lives if things escalate. So, how are they responding to this and what are their lives like at the moment?

JONATHAN:

Yeah, that's right. This war has been going on for almost a year and it's taken a huge toll. So, about 120,000 Lebanese people have been evacuated from southern Lebanon since October 7th, and about 60,000 people have been evacuated from northern Israel.

There's been huge damage on both sides, just basic damage from all the bombing. And then there's been a huge death toll. On the Lebanese side, about 400 Hezbollah fighters and 126 civilians are believed to have been killed. On the Israeli side, about 24 civilians and 19 soldiers.

And there is growing frustration in Israel's north with the response of the government, and so you have people there, you know, some council heads recently announced that they're cutting ties with the government. Some of them want Israel to take on Hezbollah the way that it has against Hamas in the South and they feel neglected by the government.

You know, for people inside Lebanon, they've either had to evacuate or face huge risks. Lebanon doesn't have the same sort of infrastructure that Israel has, it’s got bomb shelters, and Iron Dome and missile shields.

So you have tens of thousands of people living this precarious existence in southern Lebanon. Now they're facing this situation where their fate now is in the hands of Hezbollah and what moves Hezbollah decides to take next.

RUBY:

Coming up after the break, just how powerful is Hezbollah?

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RUBY:

So Jonathan, let's talk about Hezbollah a bit more. It's been described as a state within a state. It's Lebanon's strongest military and political force, even if it's not the official force of Lebanon. At this moment in time, how powerful is the group?

JONATHAN:

So militarily, Hezbollah is very powerful. It's the most powerful non-state actor in Lebanon, and probably the most powerful non-state military in the world.

It claims to have 100,000 fighters, but analysts seem to think it has closer to around 40 to 50,000 fighters, but it's believed to have about 150 to 200,000 missiles. Some of these are high precision missiles that could strike targets, you know, specific targets in Tel Aviv and across Israel. A capacity much, much greater than Hamas has in Gaza.

And then, you know, it's also a political movement. It's a Shia movement. It's strongly backed by Iran and has had strong backing from the Assad regime in Syria. It also sent about 7000 fighters over to support Assad during the civil war, which meant that it’s got battle hardened soldiers.

Audio Excerpt - News Reporter 1:

“Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah is dedicated to support the Assad regime in its violence against the Syrians.”

Audio Excerpt - News Reporter 2:

“The United States on Thursday imposed new sanctions on Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and two other figures in the armed group over their support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime.”

Audio Excerpt - News Reporter 3:

“What began as an uprising against the regime of Bashar al-Assad has become a regional proxy war, and one of the main combatants supporting Assad is Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militant group.”

JONATHAN:

It’s also, it's labelled as a terrorist organisation by many countries around the world because it's been involved in suicide bombings both in Lebanon and outside Lebanon and it has a history of that going back to the civil war inside Lebanon.

So Hezbollah is a strong force that, if an all-out war were to develop, could really bring Israel to a standstill and would also have devastating consequences across Lebanon.

RUBY:

And you said earlier, Jonathan, that Hezbollah is acting in solidarity with Hamas. So to what extent should we view the two groups as an allied force in the conflict in the Middle East right now? How close are they?

JONATHAN:

Both Hezbollah and Hamas are backed by Iran and are members of what Iran calls its axis of resistance, and that includes the Houthis in Yemen, and groups in Iraq. And these are sort of proxy militant groups across the region that Iran backs and that Iran hopes will act in its own interests.

But they also have varying levels of independence from Iran. So, for instance, Hezbollah is closer to Iran than Hamas is. You know, coordinates more closely with Iran, particularly its military wing.

Hezbollah has backed Hamas in Gaza and responded after October 7 in solidarity with Gaza. And there have been meetings between the leadership of Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran, in Beirut and also in Tehran. So they meet and coordinate on Israel.

But then they also have differences. So, for instance, Hezbollah backed Assad in Syria, whereas Hamas was opposed to Assad in Syria where Sunni rebels were fighting against Assad. So the relationship is complicated.

RUBY:

Ok understanding that, what we do know is that Israel and Hezbollah want to avoid war. So if that is the case, what would allow each side to claim a kind of victory? What would end this escalation before it became a war?

JONATHAN:

Yeah, so I think for Hezbollah, it can walk away from this contained escalation and claim victory. Because Hezbollah can present itself as a force that stood up to Israel, stood in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza and attacked Israel during a war in Gaza. And it can claim that it is acting in Lebanon's interests. And, you know, it calls itself the party of resistance, that it's resisting Israel on Lebanon's behalf.

For Israel, it's much harder, really, to claim any victory against Hezbollah, because Israel relies on this deterrence against threats such as Hezbollah and, you know, in the last year really, the north of Israel is no longer a functioning part of the country. So, it's going to be harder for Israel to send a message of victory.

On the other hand, it's actually been more successful against Hezbollah than it has against Hamas in some ways. You know, it's shown that its intelligence has been highly effective that it's been able to do these pinpointed assassinations of Hezbollah leaders in a way that, you know, it hasn't been able to do against Hamas.

And also, you know, it's launched this, you know, attack on Gaza and that's devastated much of Gaza and that also becomes part of its deterrence and a message to Hezbollah about what we might see if there's a complete war against Hezbollah. But there's also the question then about what does a victory against Hamas look like? Because the war is still going on there, you know, with an enormous death toll in Gaza.

Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed that he wants a total victory in Gaza. It's still not clear exactly what that would look like.

Ultimately, you know, Israel would need the hostages to come back. And it would probably need to kill the leader of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar. He has proven very elusive. Without being able to capture him or kill him or end his leadership of Hamas, it's hard to see how Israel can claim a total victory.

But it may have to settle for something, something short of that and certainly there are strong calls within Israel for it to do that.

RUBY:

Jonathan, thank you for your time.

JONATHAN:

Thanks, Ruby.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today,

Thousands of CFMEU members are expected to attend rallies across the country today.

The protests come after the government announced it will be placing all branches of the union under administration for a minimum of three years.

Attorney General Mark Dreyfus made the announcement on Friday morning, declaring it was “in the public interest” after revelations by the Nine newspapers of corruption and links to criminal gangs.

And, Musician and former federal arts minister Peter Garrett will lead an independent review into the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

The organisation has recently come under public scrutiny after it cancelled the upcoming performance of an acclaimed pianist who dedicated a song to journalists who’ve died while covering the war in Gaza.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am. Thanks for listening.

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