The waiting
A week later, it’s still not clear how Iran and Hezbollah intend to respond to the humiliation of having terror chiefs killed under their noses — possibly because they haven’t decided * Willful blindness on Hamas
David Horovitz is the founding editor of The Times of Israel. He is the author of "Still Life with Bombers" (2004) and "A Little Too Close to God" (2000), and co-author of "Shalom Friend: The Life and Legacy of Yitzhak Rabin" (1996). He previously edited The Jerusalem Post (2004-2011) and The Jerusalem Report (1998-2004).
This Editor’s Note was sent out earlier Wednesday in ToI’s weekly update email to members of the Times of Israel Community. To receive these Editor’s Notes as they’re released, join the ToI Community here.
A full week after Israel killed Hezbollah’s military commander Fuad Shukr in a pinpoint strike in Beirut, and allegedly killed Hamas’s leader Ismail Haniyeh in a pinpoint attack in Tehran, all of Israel remains braced for a repeatedly threatened major response by the Iranian regime and its proxies.
Well, actually most of Israel. Tens of thousands of Israelis are stranded overseas after innumerable foreign airlines stopped flying here. Not because of directives from the Israeli aviation authorities, the US Federal Aviation Authority or others, it should be noted; Israel is quite responsible enough to close its airspace when necessary, as it did in April when Iran first directly targeted Israel with what is now known to be some 500 drones, missiles and rockets.
While Lebanese with the option to do so are fleeing a feared escalation into all-out war, it’s also worth highlighting, Israelis are desperately trying to get back home.
Amid all the vicious rhetoric emerging from Tehran and Beirut, the current “pre-response” situation is anything but peaceful. Hezbollah continues to launch dozens upon dozens of projectiles at Israel — at military and civilian targets — to devastating effect. As things stand, “the air is being sucked out of our lungs,” Moshe Davidovich, the head of the Asher Regional Council and chair of the so-called Confrontation Line Forum of Northern Regional Councils, observed in an Army Radio interview on Wednesday morning, a day after a Hezbollah attack drone strike critically wounded one Israeli and left some 18 others lightly-to-moderately wounded. Davidovich also revealed that the minister of welfare, Yaakov Margi, just canceled a much-needed visit to his region “because it was too dangerous.”
And Hamas is doing its much-reduced utmost to fire into Israel from Gaza, again targeting communities close to the Strip.
As the malevolent Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah observed in his latest address on Tuesday evening, the uncertainty about what our enemies intend to unleash is itself part of what he called “the punishment” — the punishment, he did not say, for Israel’s temerity in striking down key figures dedicated to our elimination.
That uncertainty would be reduced somewhat were Israel’s government to provide the public with any degree of empathy and reassurance. But as with the absent public diplomacy — the lack of any coherent mechanism explaining what Israel is up against to the world outside — simple human communication with the citizenry is also conspicuous by its absence. IDF Spokesman Daniel Hagari continues to make regular public appearances, and has been promising that Israelis will be updated in time if a potent attack is seen to be imminent. But of basic human outreach by the political leadership — as opposed to grandiose proclamations of unity and promises of imminent victory — there is none.
As far as can be discerned at this time of writing, Israel’s security establishment does not actually know how Iran and Hezbollah are intending to respond to the humiliation of having terror chiefs blown up under their noses — possibly, though not definitely, because Iran and Hezbollah have not decided.
There is certainly no shortage of targets — and one fervently hopes that Israel is taking even ostensibly improbable scenarios into account — and highly potent capacities. But what of the consequences?
After April’s largely unsuccessful assault, Iran would not wish to be further humiliated, especially as it has been vowing that the attack this time will be more far-reaching. The US is trying to bolster deterrence against significant attacks. And Iran’s leader Ali Khamenei and Nasrallah recognize that Israel will hit back at them — not merely in some kind of proportion to the actual result of any attacks they carry out, but in proportion to the intended result.
There has also been much talk of potential Israeli preemption, especially as regards Hezbollah. But Israel recognizes that it lacks international support for a major preemptive assault — the whole world, certainly including the US, is pleading for de-escalation — and also that Hezbollah has spent the past 10 months preparing for deeper war with Israel.
Pinpoint preemptive strikes to thwart specific attacks, by contrast, are certainly not out of the question.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, for what it’s worth, remains adamant that Israel should have tackled Hezbollah immediately after Hamas’s October 7 invasion and slaughter, as he recommended at the time, when international support would have been at its height and Hezbollah was unready. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu overruled him.
Their relationship remains dismal. Nonetheless, it ought to be unthinkable that Netanyahu would again fire Gallant, as he briefly did in March 2023 and as he is widely rumored to again be contemplating, depriving himself of the last experienced general in his top political leadership following June’s departure from the emergency coalition of National Unity’s two former IDF chiefs of staff Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot. Ought to be.
While the United States was reportedly not told in advance about the elimination of Haniyeh, and reportedly fumed when it was informed immediately after the event, Israel has made no secret of its determination to eliminate Hamas’s leaders, wherever they may be, and Netanyahu has repeatedly asserted his conviction that the weaker Hamas becomes, the better the prospects of a hostage deal.
A CNN report this week purporting to have established the current state of Hamas’s military capabilities was accurate in concluding that the IDF is holding back on concerted efforts against Hamas battalions in central Gaza, out of concern for hostages who it is believed may be held in that area, but less so in asserting that Sinwar’s war machine elsewhere in Gaza is in far better shape than Israel would have the world believe. The first byline on the CNN report would hardly appear to bolster its credibility.
Meanwhile, for those deluded enough to believe that there was some kind of difference between the Hamas of Haniyeh, who was risibly described in some reports as a moderate and pragmatist, and that of Sinwar, the direct architect of October 7, the genocidal terrorist group has now helpfully removed any potential confusion. Having succeeded Haniyeh as Hamas’s Gaza chief in 2017, Sinwar has now been appointed to succeed him as the head of its absurdly titled “political bureau” — as in, its overall leader.
But then only the willfully blind can doubt Hamas’s goals. It is avowedly committed to the destruction of Israel. And it made plain 10 months ago that it fully means what it says. Our abiding tragedy is that Israel prior to October 7 was among the willfully blind.
