Hezbollah has reasons for its current pugnacity beyond internal Israeli fighting

Israel is clearly alarmed by a marked change in Hezbollah’s posture along the country’s most combustible border, in the north.

Last Wednesday, IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi and President Isaac Herzog made separate trips to the Israel-Lebanon line, both seeking to convey a message of resolve in the face of the newly confident and aggressive Shiite army.

Though the photographs released by Herzog’s office — the president and first lady smiling with a relaxed group of soldiers and officers, none of them armed or wearing combat vests — won’t add much to Israel’s deterrence, his words were of a different tenor altogether. READ MORE