Hezbollah knocked out an Israeli military vehicle in the disputed Shebaa Farms area earlier today. Lebanese media have stated that four Israeli soldiers were killed in the assault while Israeli media have reported seven wounded. The incident is the latest in a number of cross border attacks sparked by the 18 January Israeli drone strike against a Hezbollah/IRGC convoy in southern Syria which killed a number of Hezbollah operatives and a senior IRGC official. The fall out of the attack has been significant with senior members of both parties calling for retaliatory attacks.
Tensions are, without doubt, elevated; however, there are certain issues which mitigate against the likelihood of a wider confrontation at present. Hezbollah are battling Sunni rebels in Syria on the side of the Syrian regime and Israel is preparing for a national election in March. Both sides are keen to avoid a full confrontation but are aware that not responding will lead them to lose prestige and, importantly, legitimacy among their respective constituencies. At present the confrontations have occurred in disputed territories and not been sustained. Should fighting persist and casualty numbers continue to rise both sides may assess that an escalation is required. If they do, we will begin to see troop movements in southern Lebanon as Hezbollah deploy or redeploy forces and a partial or full mobilisation of reserves in Israel.
Over the longer term a conflict between Israel and Hezbollah seems almost certain given the lack of dialogue between the two and their polar opposite ideological positions. In terms of assessing when this could occur, the best guess is that it may happen after the March elections when the new prime minister would have a fresh mandate. For Hezbollah, they'd want to neutralise the Sunni Jihadist threat in the Bekaa governorate and obtain the green light from Iran and Syria to withdraw forces from Syria before it would look south towards its traditional enemy.
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