Despite all the obstacles along the length of the Israel-Lebanon border, it is not hermetically sealed. A breach of the border fence and its security systems is something that can happen – as it did last week – but it is a failure nevertheless. Hezbollah – or Hamas, which is now part of the terrorist deployment on the northern border – is signaling that it is ready for war and that in the event of a flare-up, there will be raids into the heart of the country or ground operations in the north. The question of how exactly the terrorist who was located following the explosion at Megiddo Junction penetrated the border and whether it was from above ground or below is the least important question right now.
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The incident, involving a terrorist who may have coordinated with Hezbollah, lifts the veil off the initial failure that was the natural gas agreement between the United States and Hezbollah, which was signed at Israel's expense. Security analysts were quick to connect the incident and signs of internal Israel weakness caused by the societal split. It could be that this also played a role in encouraging whoever sent the terrorist, but while these things can happen, there was an entire political campaign claiming that the Hochstein agreements – as the Lebanese call them – would lessen security tensions and ensure calm on the Lebanese front.
This security breach is reminiscent of the peace and calm that were supposed to ensue after Israel's unilateral withdrawal from the security zone in the year 2000 which was followed just a few months later by a series of attacks in the Har Dov area; in one of those attacks two soldiers were kidnapped and it later transpired they had been killed. What we are seeing now in the current border breach is how the terrorist organizations are taking advantage of the appeasement policy instituted by Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz. The leadership of the latter is dependent on the Americans. It was Gantz who initiated a rapprochement with Mahmoud Abbas, and immediately afterward northern Samaria became a hotbed of terrorist activity. On the eve of the signature of the gas agreement with Lebanon, Gantz, and Lapid, together with the senior echelons of the security establishment, spoke of the security flare-up that the agreement would prevent. The process that led to the agreement was accompanied by Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara. Her intervention in security matters prevented a public and parliamentary debate. The bottom line: the security establishment endorsed a scandalous agreement based on the claim that it would lead to quiet and stability.
The result of Hezbollah's provocation is the collapse of American policy in the Middle East. Hezbollah sees how the Americans leaned in Iran's favor with the gas deal, and now, with the Saudi-Iranian restoration of ties, they see how America has betrayed Israel and how this is reflected in its alienation toward the Israeli government. Some American analysts see the Biden administration as being willing to contain a nuclear threshold Iran and to give it an equal nuclear status to that attributed to Israel.
The senior Israeli security echelons suffer from voluntary blindness when it comes to seeing how America has turned its back; there is a simple reason for this: the dominance of figures such as Lapid, Gantz, and senior Israel Air Force officers depends on their ties to the American defense establishment. If those ties are severed, they have nothing to offer.
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