Hezbollah Commander Killed as Israel Strikes Militants in Lebanon
Iran-backed group blames Israel for senior member’s death, as fighting edges closer to triggering a second war front
The Wall Street Journal, January 8, 2024
A senior Hezbollah commander was killed in Lebanon in what the group said was the second recent assassination by Israel of a militant leader there, as Israel showed it is willing to target Iran-backed forces across the border while avoiding an all-out war.
Hezbollah said the commander, Wissam Hassan Al-Tawil, was killed on Monday in an Israeli attack in a village in southern Lebanon. The Israeli military said jet fighters struck Hezbollah targets in Lebanon after a missile was launched toward northern Israel, but Israel didn’t say if Tawil’s death was related to the airstrikes or if the commander had been targeted.
Tawil was a member of Hezbollah’s governing Shura Council and was related by marriage to the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah. But his killing falls short of triggering a second front for Israel during its war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, analysts said.
The killing of someone as senior as Tawil sends a message to Hezbollah’s leadership that it is vulnerable, and serves as a warning against escalated provocation, said Lina Khatib, director of the SOAS Middle East Institute at SOAS University of London.
“Hezbollah remains able to absorb Israeli strikes of this kind without heading to escalation,” said Khatib. “Israel knows this and is pushing Hezbollah as far as it can, with both remaining within their implicitly agreed rules of engagement.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, visiting soldiers just over the border from Lebanon on Monday, said the military would “do everything to restore security” in the area. “We prefer that this be done without a wide-ranging campaign, but that will not stop us,” he said.
Tawil’s death follows the killing last week of Saleh al-Arouri, a senior Hamas official and a linchpin of the group’s relations with Iran, in a suspected Israeli airstrike on a Hezbollah stronghold of Beirut.
The death of Arouri last week prompted militants in Lebanon to launch about 40 rockets into Israel over the weekend—one of the largest such barrages in recent months.
Both sides have traded fire across the winding Israel-Lebanon border almost daily since the beginning of the war in Gaza three months ago.
After the Hamas attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, Israel placed around 100,000 Israeli forces along the northern border, according to estimates by local security officials, and moved tens of thousands of residents away from the area.
A significant escalation is unlikely, analysts said Monday.
“It would be a huge roll of the dice for Hezbollah, and it could badly distract Israel from what Israelis agree is a large set of unfinished tasks in Gaza,” said Jon Alterman, Middle East program director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Nasrallah, in a speech on Friday, vowed to respond to Israeli aggression, and warned that any broader war with Israel would affect residents of northern Israel first.
“They are calling on their government to go to war on Lebanon or to have a military solution for Lebanon. I tell them: this choice is a mistake, for you and your government, and the first one who will pay for this mistaken choice is you,” he said.
Israeli military leaders have repeatedly warned Hezbollah that if it fails to halt its attacks and move its forces away from the border it risks provoking a full-scale Israeli assault.
Cross-border attacks by Hezbollah fighters and Palestinian militants, and retaliations by Israeli forces, have remained contained.
While the U.S. has designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, the Biden administration has been focused on preventing an escalation along Israel’s border with Lebanon. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is now in the Middle East on a trip aimed in part at preventing Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip from expanding into a regional war.
“It’s clearly not in the interest of anyone—Israel, Lebanon, Hezbollah, for that matter—to see this escalate and to see an actual conflict,” Blinken told reporters on Monday in Saudi Arabia. “And the Israelis have been very clear with us that they want to find a diplomatic way forward that creates the kind of security that allows Israelis to return home.”
A full-scale conflict between Israel and Hezbollah could be devastating for both sides. Hezbollah’s arsenal of missiles and other weapons provided by Iran would stretch Israel’s army and strain the country’s air defenses. During Israel’s last war with Hezbollah, in 2006, Israeli warplanes bombed the Beirut airport and other infrastructure, and 263 Hezbollah fighters were killed.
Since the start of the war in Gaza in October, around 154 Hezbollah fighters have been killed, mostly in Lebanon.
Tawil joined Hezbollah in 1989 and participated in several operations against Israeli forces during the occupation of southern Lebanon before 2000, according to Hezbollah. He was seriously wounded during an attack in 1999, the group said.
He was involved in the group’s weapons manufacturing and was involved in the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers that sparked a war in Lebanon in 2006, according to Hezbollah officials.
He played an important role in Hezbollah’s operations in support of the Syrian regime against rebel groups over the past decade before being transferred to southern Lebanon a month ago, they said.
The officials said Tawil previously had close ties to Iranian Maj. Gen Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2020.
Adam Chamseddine and William Mauldin contributed to this article.
Write to Stephen Kalin at stephen.kalin@wsj.com and Summer Said at summer.said@wsj.com