Israel is gambling Hezbollah will crumple but it faces a well-armed, angry enemy

Israel’s leaders are jubilant about the progress of the offensive against Hezbollah that started with the detonation of weaponised pagers and radios and moved on to intense and deadly airstrikes.

Defence Minister Yoav Gallant did not hold back his praise after Monday’s air strikes.

“Today was a masterpiece… This was the worst week Hezbollah has had since its establishment, and the results speak for themselves.”

Gallant said airstrikes destroyed thousands of rockets that could have killed Israeli citizens. In the process Lebanon says Israel killed more than 550 of its citizens, including 50 children. That is almost half Lebanon’s dead in a month of war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.

Israel believes that a ferocious offensive will coerce Hezbollah into doing what it wants, inflicting so much pain that its leader Hassan Nasrallah and his allies and backers in Iran decide that the price of resistance is too high.

Israel’s politicians and generals need a victory. After almost a year of war Gaza has become a quagmire. Hamas fighters still emerge out of tunnels and ruins to kill and wound Israeli soldiers and are still holding Israeli hostages.

Hamas caught Israel by surprise last October. The Israelis did not see Hamas as a significant threat, with devastating consequences. Lebanon is different. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and the Mossad spy agency have been planning the next war against Hezbollah since the last war ended in a stalemate in 2006.

Israel’s leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, believes the current offensive is making big progress towards his declared objective of tipping the balance of power away from Hezbollah.

He wants to stop Hezbollah firing rockets over the border into Israel. At the same time, the Israeli military says the plan is to force Hezbollah back from the border and to destroy military facilities that threaten Israel.