Israel and Hezbollah fought brief wars in 1996 and 2006. Both times, Israel
thought it would teach Hezbollah a quick and painful lesson. Yet that didn’t
happen. Now there’s the possibility of a third round, and Hezbollah has more firepower than ever.
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
The United States is urging its citizens in Lebanon to leave the country immediately, amid growing concerns of a regional conflict in the Middle East. This follows two attacks blamed on Israel this week, which killed leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas and prompted threats of retaliation. Israel and the Lebanese group Hezbollah have fought two previous wars, one in 1996, the other in 2006. NPR’s Greg Myre covered both of those conflicts. He was recently reporting from Israel and joins me now. Hey, Greg.
DETROW: Hi, Scott.
DETROW: Can you describe how those two earlier wars started and then played out?
GREG MYRE, BYLINE: Yeah. There were a number of similarities that still hold true today. In both conflicts, Israel and Hezbollah were exchanging regular but lower-level fire just like now, before it escalated into a full-scale war. Both times, Israel thought it would teach Hezbollah a quick and painful lesson.
And that fighting in 1996 was quite intense, but Hezbollah held its ground and proved a much tougher opponent than Israel anticipated. I covered that first war from the Lebanese side. The fighting lasted more than two weeks, and then it ended shortly after Israel fired on a Hezbollah position but missed the mark and hit Lebanese civilians taking shelter at a U.N. compound. More than a hundred civilians were killed. This caused international outrage. The fighting stopped. Nothing was resolved.
DETROW: Nothing was resolved. And then another war a decade later in 2006.
MYRE: Yeah, Scott. The dynamics were very similar, though this time, the fighting was on a much larger scale. Both sides fired rockets nonstop, around the clock. Imagine this rainbow of rockets flying in both directions across the border. And bizarrely, one relatively safe place to be was right on the border beneath this rainbow of rockets flying overhead. So this time, I was on the Israeli side in the border town of Metula for much of the five-week war. Both sides suffered heavy casualties. Neither side made any tangible gains. And this war also ended in a draw.
DETROW: So we have that context. We have this increased amount of tension and concern right now in 2024. What do you think these two previous wars suggest about what a third war might look like?
MYRE: Well, a third one could be even more destructive. Hezbollah’s arsenal of rockets, supplied by Iran, is exponentially larger than before. Back in 2006, it was estimated to be around 15,000. Now the estimate is 150,000. These are larger, more precise weapons that can reach far deeper into Israel, including Tel Aviv. I spoke about this with Paul Salem of the Middle East Institute, who’s based in Beirut.
PAUL SALEM: Hezbollah is very accomplished, very tough, very well equipped, very well trained and learns very quickly from war to war. And the 2006 war was proof of what they’d learned from 1996. And one must imagine that in 2024, you know, they will even be much more capable and more advanced.
DETROW: Could the prospect of a clearly very damaging war keep both sides from escalating beyond what we’ve seen?
MYRE: Well, that’s been the thinking since they started exchanging fire 10 months ago, just after Hamas invaded southern Israel. However, Israel killed this top Hezbollah leader with an airstrike in Beirut on Tuesday. That’s raised the prospect that the fighting could escalate. Now, Paul Salem says Hezbollah and its patron, Iran, have made clear they don’t want a major war. But they now say that if Israel wants a full-scale fight, they’re ready for it.
We should note Lebanon faces chronic political and economic problems, and a war would be devastating. And Israel is already stretched thin by the war in Gaza. A second front would be a tremendous burden on that country. Salem and other analysts say if Israel can work out a cease-fire with Hamas in Gaza, that would almost certainly result in a cease-fire with Hezbollah in the north.
DETROW: That’s NPR’s Greg Myre. Greg, thanks so much.
MYRE: Sure thing, Scott.
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