The Biggest Questions After Israel’s Killing of Hezbollah’s Leader

With Israel’s killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, the wars in the Middle East have hit a turning point—though it’s hard to say what direction they’ll now take: toward some uneasy equilibrium or an escalation in the fighting.

Historians and strategists disagree over whether a “decapitation” attack—the assassination of a leader—has much effect on the course of a war. But Israel’s recent tactics have gone well beyond decapitation. As a prelude to the bombing of an apartment complex just south of Beirut, beneath which Hezbollah kept its secret headquarters, Israel detonated booby-trapped pagers held by thousands of Hezbollah military higher-ups, then did the same with their walkie-talkies and followed up with airstrikes on weapons caches and other infrastructure targets.

In other words, in the course of one week, through a combination of attacks, some of them planned over the past several years, Israel not only killed Hezbollah’s leader but severely injured many of its fighters and weakened Hezbollah itself as a military force—and perhaps an effective political organization.

And the operation is not over.

Israeli special operations troops have reportedly crossed into Lebanon and burrowed into Hezbollah’s network of tunnels—similar to those that Hamas has built in Gaza. This in turn may be followed by a much larger incursion by regular army troops to clear out a swath of southern Lebanon—and possibly occupy it, if necessary.

Hezbollah militants have been firing rockets into northern Israel from this area for many years—and increasingly so in recent months. Over the past year, the group has fired at least 8,000 rockets toward Israel, the country’s U.S. ambassador said this month. As a result, 65,000 Israelis have evacuated their homes near the Lebanese border. The main objective of Israel’s counterattacks has been to pacify the area so its citizens can return. One question Israeli leaders are now asking is how to keep the area safe for years to come. Do they need to wipe out Hezbollah altogether—and if so, what does that require?

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