It was the colonel in the airport with the phone bomb

A top Hezbollah commander was killed and for once it doesn’t look like Israel did it. But that doesn’t stop Israeli papers from playing up the death of Mustafa Badreddine and analyzing who he was, what his killing means for the Lebanese Shiite terror group he helped lead, and the wider ramifications in the rough-and-tumble Middle East.

But more than all that, the mystery of who killed Badreddine and the volley of accusations from every corner seems to anchor the story in the Israeli press.

Israel Hayom devotes its first seven pages to the death of Badreddine, replete with postage stamp-sized logos of his head in crosshairs, doing little to conceal its joy that he was taken out, even if not by Israel.

The tabloid reports that shouts of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” accompanied Badreddine on his final journey to a resting place alongside Imad Mughniyeh, whose position he filled as operational chief for the group after Mughniyeh was taken out (likely by Israel) in 2008.

Despite that, the group itself blamed Sunni rebels, while the rebels blamed an internal Hezbollah dispute. Meanwhile, Israel Hayom reports, some Lebanese journalists identified with Hezbollah did indirectly blame Israel. “They reported that Badreddine was killed by a missile possessed only by advanced countries. On top of that, Lebanese papers quoted Hezbollah parliamentarians accusing Israel of providing information and technology to allow for the assassination of Badreddine,” the paper reports.

In Haaretz, Zvi Bar’el gives the back story to the claims that Badreddine was killed in an internal power struggle, writing that he had a lot of enemies within the terror group.

“Badreddine was clashing with Hezbollah leaders about tactics against Israel as well as the fielding of Hezbollah forces in Syria. Two years ago, a Kuwaiti newspaper reported that Badreddine had been taken to task over his management of operations of units outside Lebanon. He was accused of being distracted by women, which, it was said, led to the failure of operations including an attempted terror attack in Thailand,” he writes. “Mohammed Ataya, the head of Hezbollah’s Unit 113, which is responsible for operations in the West Bank, has been clashing with Badreddine. According to the Kuwaiti paper, Badreddine would go over Ataya’s head to Beirut.”

The idea that Badreddine was a hopeless romantic in camo jumps from rumor to fact in Yedioth Ahronoth, which tops its report with the headline “Terrorist by day, playboy by night.”

The paper’s Ronen Bergman reports a number of juicy details about the famously secretive Hezbollah commander, working off information he previously uncovered as part of an investigation together with The New York Times.

“He has 13 different phones, some for operational purposes and some for his love life. Even the fateful night when [Lebanese prime minister Rafik] Hariri was assassinated [in 2005] he didn’t forget his loves. At around 2 a.m. he sent a text message to one of them after she complained that he doesn’t give her enough of his time and wondering if he is spending it with someone,” the well-sourced Bergman reports.

It wasn’t just the ladies who were weary of Badreddine, but the Hezbollah baddie had a whole host of enemies, according to Yedioth’s Alex Fishman, who ticks them off: the Syrian rebels, the Saudis, the Americans, the Israelis. Whoever did it, though, they were professionals, he writes.

“He wasn’t killed by chance by rebel fire in Syria, as a Hezbollah inquiry found. Sources in Beirut reported that when he was killed he was alone in a secret Hezbollah facility near the Damascus airport, and in the room there was a blast that killed him. Nobody else was hurt. The conclusion: somebody followed him and knew exactly when he would arrive and when he would be in the room.”

Papers across the board call the assassination a painful blow to Hezbollah, and also seem to sync up in analyzing what Hezbollah’s response, or lack thereof, will be.

Fishman in Yedioth says the killing is a strike at the heart of the Syrian-Iran-Hezbollah alliance.

In Haaretz, Amos Harel agrees, calling the incident the “biggest yet blow to Hezbollah in the Syrian war.”

“Badreddine’s assassination extends a bad stretch in Syria for Iran and Hezbollah. Although the Russian military presence, along with a loose cease-fire, served Assad well, stopping the loss of ground to rebels that peaked last summer, the war is taking a heavy toll on Iran and Hezbollah,” he writes.

Harel notes that Hezbollah likely won’t seek to go after Israel as a way of scoring “revenge points” after the death, and in Israel Hayom Yoav Limor says essentially the same thing (in fact some parts of the two analyses are so similar to raise uncomfortable questions about how much the country’s military analysts are just regurgitation machines for the Israeli defense establishment), though he adds a pro-forma “only time will tell” warning.

“The death of Badreddine is another phase of the Syrian war, which is far from over. Given this, Hezbollah will continue to invest manpower and weapons at the command of its patron Iran and partner Syria, but at the same time will keep an eye on the ‘big target’ – Israel,” he writes. “The fact that Israel is not directly responsible for this assassination is acute and momentary only. The intensification of violence is maybe pushed off, but both sides will continue to prepare with haste. Knowing that sooner or later it will come.”

As if the rumors flying about Badreddine’s death were not enough, papers are also filled a healthy dose of scuttlebutt over coalition negotiations taking place between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Labor chief Isaac Herzog, to the latter’s party’s very loud dismay.

Haaretz’s top story quotes a source “close to Herzog” saying that Labor entering the government is still possible (which is pretty much what Herzog himself said publicly Saturday night.)

The lefty paper, whose readers certainly skew more toward Labor than right-wing Likud, also features a column by editor in chief Aluf Benn, in which he tries to get into Netanyahu’s head and figure out why he so badly wants to bring Herzog into his government.

“It’s clear that he has not suddenly fallen in love with the Labor Party’s platform or been won over by the Zionist Union’s campaign messages (‘a third faction or him,’) which Netanyahu presented as a demon. Netanyahu’s worldview has not changed – he opposes withdrawal from the West Bank and thinks the Palestinians and their supporters in the West are anti-Semites. Why should he bring in a party that even if only for appearance’s sake will have to make noises about ‘support for a renewal of the diplomatic process,’?” he writes before offering four possible explanations, none of which make Herzog look particularly clever: using Labor as a fig leaf to the outside world, using it as a scapegoat for security failures, putting a muzzle on the far-right flank of his coalition and throwing lefty IDF generals a bone.

Meanwhile, Israel Hayom reports that while Labor is quibbling over what to do, Netanyahu plans to set his sights on the Yisrael Beytenu party instead.

“The assessment is that the prime minister will make a public call this week for them to enter the government and leave the opposition led by the left, and instead to choose the nationalist camp,” the paper reports.