A spark is enough
It is said that if you have ten terrorists and kill two, you are left with... twenty, and that explains what is happening, since Israel is murdering its enemies without managing to stop the leading movements.
First, because ideas are not killed with bombs. Secondly, because the leaders of groups like Hamas or Hezbollah know that death goes with the job and they have ready substitutes. Third, because martyrs always have followers; and fourth, because such targeted assassinations raise tensions that are already sky high. This is what has happened since July 27 when one of the many missiles that Hizbullah launches daily over Israel (usually with little success) hit a Druze village in the Golan Heights (Israeli-occupied Syrian land) killing twelve children, although Hizbullah denies this with little credibility. Be that as it may, three days later an Israeli missile killed in Beirut Hezbollah's number two, Fuad Al-Sukr, and a day later a mysterious explosion killed Hamas leader Ismail Haniye in Tehran. These cases are different from the previous death in a military operation in Gaza of Mohamed Deif, Hamas's second military chief and another hard blow for the organization.
They are different because while highlighting Israel's extraordinary ability to carry out very complicated intelligence operations many miles away, the death of Al-Sukr and Haniye far from the theater of war is considered by many as a provocation. Hezbollah does not want open war with Israel because the cost to it would be too high because the cost would be too high for it and for Lebanon, but it has no choice but to respond to the death of its leader and the way to do it that worries most in Jerusalem is not that it continues firing rockets (it has many but Israel is very good at intercepting them), what the Israelis fear most is an armed incursion by land like the one Hamas made on October 7 because the north is also riddled with tunnels. That is why Washington is trying to mediate by asking Hizbullah to move 10 km away from the border to create a security zone that would allow 60,000 Israelis living south of the border to return to their homes. They have been sheltered in shelters and hotels for a year and the approaching start of the school year means that they can wait no longer. The same thing is happening on the Lebanese side. The area is a powder keg, a spark or a mistake is enough to make it explode.
The assassination of Haniye, leader of Hamas, which Israel has not assumed responsibility for, although few doubt it, seems more complicated. Haniye died in Tehran while attending the inauguration of the new president of the Islamic Republic and that puts Iran in a very awkward situation because he was an official guest; because it reveals serious security failures; because he died in a residence owned and guarded by the Revolutionary Guards who have been unable to protect their guest and who have made a fool of themselves before the whole world; and because it hinders the task of the new president Pezeshkian, reputed as a "moderate" to resume indirect contacts with the US on the nuclear issue. On the Gaza front, Haniye's death removes the chief negotiator for the release of the Israeli hostages still held by Hamas. His replacement is Yahia Sinwar, architect of the October 7 terrorist attack, clandestine leader of the armed struggle in Gaza, much more radical than Haniye and a close ally of Iran. Here the Spanish proverb "Si no quieres caldo, ¡taza y media!" seems to apply.
Sometimes it seems that Israel wants to provoke a war with Iran (dragging the United States along) and make peace in Gaza impossible even at the cost of torpedoing the negotiations for the release of the hostages, because it is already known that Netanyahu puts the destruction of Hamas and total victory in Gaza before his return home. I never tire of repeating, there will be no security for Israel without justice for the Palestinians.
As I said, a spark is enough.
Jorge Dezcallar. Ambassador of Spain