Israel’s military is primed for all-out war with Hezbollah after unleashing its heaviest attack on Lebanon in a generation. It follows weeks of threats to do so by Israel’s leadership and “necessary war” rhetoric from hawkish commentators.

Israel’s declared war aims now include creating a buffer zone in Lebanon and ensuring the safe return to their homes of 60,000 Israelis displaced from the north of the country.

A man stands in what remains of an apartment building in Beirut’s southern suburbs following Friday’s Israeli strike on the area.Credit: AP

And it is not just Israel that’s upped the rhetoric. Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, said that in last week’s exploding pager surprise (for which someone in the Israeli military will get promoted) Israel had crossed a red line. In that view, the Israel Defense Forces’ wholesale bombing of the south of Lebanon and the death of hundreds of Lebanese crossed another.

Unfortunately, a rematch of their bloody clash in 2006 seems assured.

But Nasrallah is wrong. For Israel, any sense of red lines was obliterated on October 7, 2023 when Hamas led an armed incursion into southern Israel, killing about 1200 people. That day of murder and terror burnt the rule book. Much of Gaza now resembles Carthage after the third Punic War. And the region is on the brink of........

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