On deadly mistakes – Ben Hubbard and Aaron Boxerman in NYT:

‘The sounds of battle echo on both sides of Israel’s northern border with Lebanon. Sirens blare in Israeli towns, warning of incoming rockets fired by Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group. Lebanese civilians have fled their villages, fearing Israeli shelling and the possibility of a new war.
Since Hamas launched its deadly attack in southern Israel, tensions have surged along Israel’s northern border, increasing fears of a new conflagration between Israel and Hamas’s Iranian-backed ally Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon.
Such a war poses great risks to everyone involved, experts say. Israel, which appears poised to launch a ground invasion in Gaza, could struggle to fight on two fronts and defend itself against Hezbollah’s skilled guerrillas. Lebanon, already reeling from a deep economic crisis, could face intense Israeli airstrikes that destroy infrastructure and could kill large numbers of people.’

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‘“The calculations in great wars are not calculations about states,” Gen. Abbas Ibrahim, Lebanon’s former security chief, said in an interview on Monday. “This is a war of existence: Either Israel remains or this axis remains.”’

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‘One motivation for the Biden administration’s bringing the aircraft carriers closer to Israel is to try to convince Hezbollah to stay out of the fighting to avoid any possible intervention by the United States.
Changes in the Middle East in recent years have made it more likely that violence in one place could ignite violence elsewhere. That’s because Iran has worked to knit anti-Israel forces in different countries into an increasingly tight web.
Armed groups in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen that once largely fought separately now see themselves as being on the same team. Many of their commanders have received similar training from Iran or Hezbollah and their members share knowledge on how to increase the firepower of rockets and to surveil their enemies with drones.’

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‘Israel has viewed Hezbollah as its most formidable foe since they fought to a standstill in a monthlong war in 2006 that killed more than 1,000 Lebanese and 165 Israelis. Hezbollah’s members are highly trained, have an arsenal of tens of thousands of rockets and possess precision-guided missiles that can pummel targets deep in Israeli territory.’

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‘Despite the high tensions in the region, both Israel and Hezbollah want to avoid an all-out war at this point because each has a lot to lose, according to analysts and former Israeli and Lebanese officials.
Israel, suffering deep trauma from the Hamas attack on Oct. 7 that killed more than 1,400 and saw nearly 200 abducted to Gaza, wants to focus on what Mr. Netanyahu has called Israel’s effort to destroy Hamas.
Hezbollah’s leaders frequently call for the destruction of Israel, but the group has avoided war with the Israelis for more than a decade, suggesting that it prefers to invest its efforts elsewhere.
“I see Hezbollah as more interested in showing layers of power and deterrence against Israel and having a seat at the table at the regional level than in engaging in an all-out conflict,” said Mohanad Hage Ali, the deputy director for research at the Carnegie Middle East Center. “They are more interested in a long-term strategy that brings them more power and influence.”’

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‘For now, Hezbollah is probably seeking to distract the Israeli military from its planned invasion of Gaza by drawing its attention northward, while still avoiding full-blown war, Ms. Mizrahi said.
But the greater the tension, the greater the chances that one side will make a deadly miscalculation, Mr. Maksad said, for example, by striking an unintended target or killing a larger number of enemy forces than planned, putting pressure on the other side to respond.’

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‘“The key issue will be the scale of the violence that the Israel occupation army will impose on Gaza and particularly on the structures of Hamas,” said Joseph Daher, the author of a book about Hezbollah.’

Read the article here.

The longer the skirmishes will last the bigger the chance of a deadly war.

And then it becomes what Anshel Pfeffer claimed it was not, a war of existence.