Druze ‘caught between Hezbollah and Israeli occupiers’, specialist says
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00:00I can bring in Scott Lucas, a professor of U.S. and international politics at the University College of Dublin's Clinton Institute.
00:06Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today.
00:09First, just what's your overall read on the situation and the probability of it spiraling into a wider war?
00:17First of all, the immediate situation to set out what we know, and that is, is that a rocket striking that soccer football field in
00:27Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights in Masjid al-Sham, 12 people between 10 and 20 years old, killed.
00:35Funerals have just been held.
00:37Israeli ministers who attended the funerals were booed for not providing security for the area, for the Syrian Jews population.
00:45And that included the far-right minister, Mr. Smatric, who has been one who has argued for expanding the war, including against Lebanon.
00:55So where are we now?
00:56Hezbollah has denied the attack, but in fact, it is quite likely that this was Hezbollah.
01:02Just before we heard about the children being killed, Hezbollah had been boasting that it had fired rockets on Israeli military positions in the north of Israel, in the Galilee.
01:14So a rocket that went astray is more likely than what Hezbollah is now saying, which is that there was an Israeli interceptor rocket that caused all of this.
01:22Will this mean a wider war?
01:24That's the huge question right now.
01:25From Hezbollah's point of view, I don't think so.
01:28I don't think Hezbollah wants to make this a direct war with the Israelis.
01:32It's already lost more than 350 personnel in the skirmishes that have taken place since October.
01:37It knows that it is probably outgunned, as it were, by Israel, if Israel is to unleash all of its firepower up there.
01:45From the Israeli perspective, I've said up to now that the Israelis don't want a two-point war.
01:49They're tied down in Gaza.
01:51There's international pressure on them to limit their military operations in Gaza, let alone open up a wider war with Hezbollah.
01:59But there may be a lot of pressure now on Israeli ministers from part of Israeli society to do something much more aggressive beyond simply, as the Israelis have done this morning, hitting Weapons Depot and other Hezbollah positions in the east and south of Lebanon.
02:15As you said, the Druze community was booing Israeli ministers who were at that funeral.
02:20That clearly puts pressure on them to maybe give more of a response.
02:23Do we have a sense of of who people are blaming for this?
02:27Would the Druze community blame Hezbollah as well?
02:30And could that kind of shift popular opinion at all?
02:34I mean, the Druze community is caught between Hezbollah and the Israeli occupiers.
02:41They're in a no-win situation where they could get hit by either side.
02:45But the fact of the matter is, since 1967, it's Israel that has claimed to provide security for the territory that it occupies in the Golan Heights.
02:54Israel clearly hasn't provided that security against this Hezbollah rocket, if indeed it was a Hezbollah rocket that failed to hit a military target.
03:03So I think the Druze community is immediately pointing its anger at the Israelis and saying, look, how do you protect us?
03:10The question is, though, how do you protect us?
03:11Do you protect the Druze by simply ensuring that Israeli air defenses work much more effectively against Hezbollah rockets?
03:19Or do you say that you're protecting the Druze by actually going out to, quote, destroy Hezbollah?
03:24And what might an Israeli retaliation look like?
03:27How could they escalate this further?
03:30As I said, we've already got the Israeli retaliation to this point in which you go after Hezbollah's weapons depots, you go after other logistical and supply
03:38positions, and you might cause some casualties amongst Hezbollah fighters.
03:43But the Israelis have been doing that since October.
03:45We also know the Israelis have been carrying out targeted assassinations effectively with airstrikes going after Hezbollah senior commanders, and they've killed several of them.
03:54So, you know, they have tried to, as it were, decapitate the Hezbollah military leadership.
03:59Point is, is that the Israelis have not been able to, quote, eliminate Hezbollah and are unlikely to do so, short of what would be a catastrophic war.
04:07So I think we're caught just simply in this ongoing cycle of violence in which civilians will be caught in the crossfire in this case, as opposed to the more than 100 Lebanese civilians who have been killed.
04:18So far, these happen to be the largest toll of civilians, albeit Syrian Druze civilians, killed by Hezbollah since October the 7th.
04:28How does the escalating conflict at the Lebanese border impact the dynamic in the war in Gaza?
04:36Well, I think let's take this on three levels.
04:39I mean, I think the first is for Israel, it raises the question of, look, you know, you've been fighting this war for 10 months in Gaza.
04:48You've been expending a lot of military resources there.
04:51If you're on the point of a wider war with Hezbollah, do you really want to keep rejecting or at least stepping away from the possibility of a ceasefire?
05:00And we know that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been pushing back against others in the Israeli military.
05:07And the Israeli community wants that ceasefire.
05:10From Hezbollah's perspective, and its backer Iran, how do you maintain a lid on this situation?
05:15Because the Iranians also don't want Israel to renew attacks, for example, on Iranian commanders in Syria, where several have been killed, or especially attacks on Iran itself.
05:25And for the international community, I mean, this is a nightmare scenario.
05:28The international community has been almost powerless for 10 months to hold back the Israeli mass killings, follow Hamas's mass killings last October.
05:37And now they face the prospect of trying to hold back the Israelis if the Israeli leadership is intent on widening this confrontation with Hezbollah.
05:46As you say, already a nightmare scenario that hopefully will not escalate even further.
05:50Scott Lucas, thank you so much for your analysis.
05:52Again, that's Scott Lucas, a professor of U.S. and international politics at the University College of Dublin's Clinton Institute.