AFP — Looking down on Lebanon from the Israeli Golan Heights, soldiers wonder whether the political turmoil in the neighboring country will weaken arch-enemy Hezbollah or make it more dangerous.
“There, Hezbollah is very, very strong,” said Samuel Boujenah of the Israeli military, gazing at a valley where calm had recently been shattered by clashes with the Iran-backed Shiite terror group.
He was standing on Mount Hermon, a strategic and fortified outpost at the crossroads between Israel, Lebanon, and Syria where Israeli military vehicles patrol and drones buzz in the sky.
It was in this region where, on September 1, three Hezbollah anti-tank missiles hit near the Israeli township of Avivim, the first attack near a civilian area since the 2006 war between the armed Lebanese movement and Israel.
Motorists travelling along the winding mountain road still feel the bumps in the bitumen left by the strikes.
The front-lines have been unchanged for years, but it is the events of recent weeks in Lebanon that, Israel hopes, may weaken its foe, Hezbollah.
Lebanon has been rocked by unprecedented, cross-faith civic protests that have bridged sectarian divides to demand the removal of the entire political class, whom the demonstrators accuse of systematic corruption.
‘Opportunity for change’
Hassan Nasrallah, the chief of Hezbollah — a major political player — has warned that the unrest could lead to “chaos and collapse” of the economy.
Now Israel wonders whether Lebanon’s troubles — and the rising street pressure that is also being felt by Nasrallah — could spell a threat or an opportunity for the Jewish state.
“We are monitoring what is happening in Lebanon, of course, we have an interest,” Israeli army spokesman Jonathan Conricus told reporters, during a recent Mount Hermon visit.
“We don’t have any involvement in what is going on,” he stressed. READ MORE
