Hezbollah's change of policy, which it implemented last Thursday by firing a missile at an Israeli drone over southern Lebanon, obligates Israel to reassess how it uses its own force in the sector.
The missile fire was a relatively late application of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's threat to protect Lebanese airspace, in a speech he delivered on August 25, a day after a drone strike in Beirut – attributed to Israel by foreign media outlets – reportedly damaged the terrorist organization's precision missile project.
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It was an old threat, which Nasrallah has made many times before, but Israeli officials took the most recent one at face value because Nasrallah wants to establish new "rules of the game" between Israel and Hezbollah. This is partly because Nasrallah feels Israel violated the unwritten rules in its alleged drone attack in Beirut.
Last Thursday, as stated, Hezbollah followed through on Nasrallah's warning, firing one missile at a small Israeli drone, which missed the target. Hezbollah didn't relay what type of missile it used, although several reports – including in Israel – identified the projectile as a light-weight, shoulder-fired, surface-to-air "Strela" missile.
It stands to reason, however, that Hezbollah employed a more advanced missile, as Nasrallah himself hinted in a speech on Saturday.
"The resistance [Hezbollah] proved to the enemy that it dared to use a weapon that [Israel] didn't think it would use," he said.
It has been reported in the past that Hezbollah has managed to smuggle into Lebanon various types of surface-to-air missile systems, among them SA-8 and SA-17 batteries. These are older Soviet-made systems, which first became operational in the 1970s and are possessed d by many countries across the globe, including Syria and Iran.
Hezbollah has never used these systems before, and the assessment in Israel is that the terrorist organization is saving them for a future war. It is possible that Hezbollah has altered this policy, in an attempt to reshape the balance of deterrence against the IDF. Such a conclusion, as stated, could be gleaned from Nasrallah's comments on Saturday, in which he reiterated his vow to act against Israeli encroachments into Lebanese airspace.
It's also reasonable to assume that the missile fire was timed to coincide with Nasrallah's speech, in the hopes it would give him a much needed public relations victory amid the backdrop of the ongoing civil strife across Lebanon, which is becoming a growing concern from Hezbollah's perspective.
Nasrallah devoted the lion's share of his speech to the mass protests taking place in Lebanon, rejecting claims that his organization is responsible for the country's economic failures and rampant government corruption.
