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Comment and Opinion

Washington Institute: Hezbollah’s Message for Israel, by Matthew Levitt

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On October 7, for the first time since the July 2006 war, Hezbollah publicly claimed responsibility for an attack against Israel after two soldiers were wounded by a bomb planted along the Lebanese border. In a statement to the media, Deputy Secretary-General Naim Qassem called the incident a message, noting, “Even though we are busy in Syria [defending the Assad regime] and on the eastern front in Lebanon [battling Sunni militants], our eyes remain open and our resistance is ready to confront the Israeli enemy.” Indeed, the timing was no coincidence: the attack occurred on the fourteenth anniversary of Hezbollah’s abduction of three Israeli soldiers from the same area in 2000.

Yet the bombing is only the latest “message” Hezbollah has sent in recent years, as seen in numerous unclaimed plots targeting Israelis at home and abroad. To be sure, the group is keen on communicating its displeasure with recent actions it blames on Israel, including the September 5 killing of a Hezbollah operative attempting to dismantle an Israeli listening device in Lebanon, the blocking of arms transfers from Syria to Lebanon, and the seemingly free movement of Sunni jihadists through areas adjacent to the Israeli border. Yet taking public responsibility for the attack likely has even more to do with burnishing Hezbollah’s “resistance” credentials among its domestic Shiite constituency.

International Plots

Hezbollah operatives have targeted Israelis around the world over the past few years, sometimes in order to avenge the death of terrorist mastermind Imad Mughniyah, and in other cases as agents of Tehran’s shadow war with the West over Iran’s nuclear program. Thankfully, the only successful Hezbollah attack abroad was the July 2012 bombing of a tour bus in Burgas, Bulgaria, which killed five Israelis and a local bus driver. Around the same time, a Swedish Hezbollah operative named Hossam Yaacoub was arrested in Cyprus for surveilling Jewish targets on the island; he later told local police that “this is what my organization is doing everywhere in the world.”

Other Hezbollah plots either failed or were foiled as far afield as South Africa, Azerbaijan, India, and Turkey. The latest occurred in Thailand this April, when authorities arrested two Hezbollah operatives — one a dual Lebanese-French citizen, the other a dual Lebanese-Filipino citizen — who were planning to attack Israeli tourists in Bangkok.

Middle East Operations

Hezbollah has also been targeting Israeli interests closer to home. In August, military prosecutors in Amman charged seven Jordanians and one Syrian with plotting to attack the Israeli embassy and U.S. soldiers. The charges include belonging “to an unlawful society [Hezbollah] with the intention of committing terrorist acts in the Kingdom of Jordan and against Jordanian interests abroad, in addition to the possession of automatic weapons with the intention of using them illegally to carry out terrorist acts.”

Read the article in full at the Washington Institute.