There are many questions about the future of the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah as fears of an escalation of hostilities intensify after the events of the past two days.

A day after grenades used by Hezbollah injured thousands across Lebanon, a new incident of simultaneous explosions of communications devices has been added to the long list of hostilities between the militant group and Israel.

Hezbollah blamed Israel, which for its part has remained silent on the attacks.

The explosions came shortly after Israel’s security cabinet approved an expansion of the war’s goals, which include the return of tens of thousands of Israelis to the north who have fled the region due to Hezbollah strikes.

The decision, analysts say, potentially gives Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a casus belli if he decides to launch a ground invasion of Lebanon.

At the same time, and while fears of retaliation by Hezbollah and the escalation of the conflict are raised without being able to assess the involvement of Iran, Israeli and Western analysts remain divided on the purpose of the Israeli attack and whether its motivation lies in a short-term opportunism or a long-term strategy.

Even the Israeli media addressed the same questions to their readership: What is the purpose of such a war against Hezbollah? What are the achievable goals? Will it be possible to restore peace on the northern border and drive the group’s fighters away from the border?’

These are questions the government “will have to ask itself soon,” wrote a columnist for the Israeli website Ynet. “This action attributed to Israel will not lead Hezbollah to stop its aggressive activity against the northern settlements, but to escalate it,” he added.

Israel has a long history of conducting remote operations in countries it considers hostile and rarely comments on or accepts responsibility for such actions. The explosions on Tuesday and Wednesday, however, caught most political observers by surprise.

Professor Eyal Zisser, the vice-chancellor of Tel Aviv University and an expert on Lebanon and Arab-Israeli relations, said he could not see how these attacks could help the goal of returning northerners to their homes.

And the Jerusalem Post wonders in an article how Israelis will return to their homes after Hezbollah retaliates and the north suffers the consequences. “To whomever came up with yesterday’s attack, well done – but always keep in mind that the wider implications are inevitable,” he writes.

In the same mood and the New York Times who write that while the attack hit Hezbollah’s prestige, but also many of its members, it is unlikely to change the military balance along the Israeli-Lebanese border. He notes, in fact, that a day after the first attack, Hezbollah and the Israeli army remained locked in the same pattern, exchanging fire on Wednesday at the same rate since the beginning of the conflict in October.

Analysts say that while the attacks have stunned many Israelis, some of whom have criticized their government for failing to stop Hezbollah strikes, the core of their criticism remains: Hezbollah is still entrenched on Israel’s northern border, preventing tens of thousands of residents of northern Israel to return to their homes.

This is an amazing tactical event,” said Miri Eisin, a fellow at the International Institute on Counterterrorism, an Israel-based research organization.

“But not a single Hezbollah fighter is going to move because of this,” he added. “Having amazing abilities is not a strategy.”

Why now?

It was unclear why Israel chose to launch the strike at this time and whether it was an opportunistic operation or a strategic objective before other actions on the ground followed, two US officials and one Western official said.

Some of the reports attributed the timing of the attack to the fact that Israeli commanders feared that Hezbollah leaders had discovered Israel’s ability to sabotage the bombers, and decided to blow them up in order not to lose that capability.

Israel announced a new war objective late Monday – the safe return of residents displaced from their homes after months of clashes with Hezbollah on its northern border with Lebanon. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallad also warned the US that the only way to achieve this goal was “through military action”.

The growing fear and expectation was that some form of escalation was possibly imminent. Then the buzzers exploded.

“Either some members of Hezbollah suspected that the devices were jammed, forcing Israel to move forward with its plan now or lose this advantage, or this is the prelude to an attack to come,” said Michael Horowitz, chief of intelligence at the Le Beck.

Communications via the buzzers would be an advantage for Hezbollah in a wider war, according to Horowitz.

“That I believe was the intended nature of the attack when it was originally designed, although it may not have been used as such,” he said.

What does Israel gain from such an attack?

However, the opposite view argues for the strategic importance of the attacks. Israel may hope that the complexity of the attack would eventually make Hezbollah more amenable to a ceasefire in the coming weeks, if not immediately.

Given the link, officials on both sides of the border had hoped for months that a truce in Gaza would lead to a parallel deal in Lebanon. American and French mediators, led by Amos Hochstein, the US envoy, shuttled between Beirut and Jerusalem, paving the way for a truce between Israel and Hezbollah in the event of a deal in Gaza.

With negotiations over Gaza now deadlocked, the Israeli leadership may feel it needs to take tougher action against Hezbollah to persuade the group to end the fighting.

In recent days, the Israeli leadership has stepped up its tough rhetoric against Hezbollah, with the country’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallad warning this week that “military action” was “the only way” to end the conflict.

Israel could benefit on many different levels from such a massive and shocking operation, Michael Horowitz said.

The first is the injury inflicted on Hezbollah fighters — Lebanon’s health minister said most patients brought to hospitals across the country, including civilians, had injuries largely to their hands and faces. At the same time, disabling so many communications devices is likely to significantly disrupt the group’s ability to communicate and put Hezbollah commanders out of action.

“These devices, which might have been used for emergency communication, particularly in the event of a full-scale war with Israel, would also have been distributed among key commanders, from the low-ranking field officer to the senior echelon of the team,” Horowitz said. . “We can expect that many of them will no longer be able to perform their military duties.”

The attacks are a “huge blow” to Hezbollah, said Mohdad Hage Ali, associate director of research at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. A security breach of this scale could seriously damage team morale, he noted.

Hezbollah will now have to review its internal security, hunt down potential collaborators and investigate how its supply chains were breached, Horowitz said. And “that takes a lot of time,” he added.