Hassan Nasrallah haunts Israel's 'strategists'...

"... Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah('s)threat to dispatch Hezbollah units into Galilee is the first public articulation of a tactic Hezbollah fighters have privately hinted at since the end of the last conflict in August 2006. It bolsters Nasrallah’s previous carefully phrased warnings of what Israel can expect from Hezbollah in the next war. They include a vow in February 2010 to rocket Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport if Israel bombs Beirut’s Rafik Hariri International airport. And a declaration by Nasrallah three months later that Hezbollah can and will attack shipping along Israel’s entire coastline if the Israeli navy shells Lebanese infrastructure.

Now, with his vow to send fighters into Galilee if Israel invades Lebanon, Nasrallah is announcing that Israel can no longer take for granted its long-established doctrine of fighting wars solely on the soil of its neighbors. This tit-for-tat approach is a cornerstone of Hezbollah’s military strategy.... Israel’s home front will become a front line for the first time since 1948.

Nasrallah’s specific goal behind threatening to invade Galilee was to increase the pressure on Israel, which is anxiously reassessing its external security environment in light of fast-moving developments in the region (specifically the collapse of the Mubarak regime in Egypt). He believes that if Israel feels vulnerable, it will refrain from attacking Lebanon. Waging aggressive psychological warfare – of which Nasrallah is a master – augments that goal.... For over a decade, Israel has been eyeing Hezbollah’s arms build-up (a process that rapidly accelerated after the 2006 war) with discomfort. The dilemma facing Israel is whether it is worth attempting to degrade Hezbollah’s military capabilities and upset what has been the quietest four-year period along its northern border since the late 1960s. Of course, the longer Israel takes to weigh the options, the stronger Hezbollah becomes....

The revolutionary change in the Arab world—and the resultant uncertainties felt in Tel Aviv and Damascus—offer a potential opening for the United States to forcefully push for renewed peace talks between Israel and Syria. The parameters of an Israeli-Syrian peace are well known and achievable. What it will require is robust and determined leadership from the White House and zero tolerance for the kind of evasiveness that thwarted the recent effort to revive Israeli-Palestinian negotiations..."