On September 17th, Israel began an unprecedented escalation in Lebanon. First, it carried out a remote pager attack that blew up vast numbers of communications devices, killing and maiming thousands; then, it launched airstrikes that killed 558 people on September 23rd alone in what became the deadliest single day for Lebanon since the end of the country’s civil war in 1990. And four days later, Israeli warplanes dropped over 80 US-made, 2,000-pound bombs on six high-rise apartment buildings in Beirut, leveling the residences; killing at least 300; and assassinating Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

These events have commenced the deadliest period since Israel started its nearly year-long bombardment of Lebanon on October 8th, 2023, after Hezbollah began launching rockets at Israeli military positions in the occupied Shebaa Farms in a bid to open up a new war front with Israel in order to reduce pressure on its ally in Gaza. Even after its assassination of Nasrallah, Israel has continued crossing new thresholds: Israeli bombings have struck everywhere from the center of Beirut to the northern city of Tripoli, and on October 1st, thousands of Israeli soldiers began a ground invasion of Lebanon. The Israeli military has instructed residents of over 100 villages and city neighborhoods to flee their homes, placing 25% of Lebanese territory under displacement orders and uprooting at least one-quarter of the country’s population.

The United States has done little to deter Israel from escalating further; in fact, ahead of the escalations, certain US officials privately conveyed support for the moves to Israel. After Israel’s killing of Nasrallah, both President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris said the assassination was a “measure of justice” for Hezbollah’s killings of Israelis and Americans, making no mention of the civilian deaths that accompanied the strikes. The leaders did call for diplomacy and de-escalation—yet, they have dropped their previous calls for a ceasefire in Lebanon, and are instead saying they support Israel’s “degrad[ing]” of Hezbollah.

As the US continues sending weapons to Israel while also deploying American troops and warplanes to the region and extending the stay of warships already there, an even-bloodier confrontation looms, between the US and Israel on the one hand, and the “Axis of Resistance”—the Iran-led formation that includes Hamas, Hezbollah, Yemen’s Ansar Allah, and Iraqi militias—on the other. On October 1st, Iran fired around 180 ballistic missiles at Israel. Israel has now pledged to retaliate by bombing sites in Iran, and Biden has said Israel has a “right to respond.” To unpack these developments, Jewish Currents interviewed Daniel Levy, president of the US/Middle East Project, the former director for the Middle East and North Africa at the European Council on Foreign Relations, and a former member of Israel’s negotiations team under Ehud Barak and Yitzhak Rabin. Levy discussed Israel’s political calculus, why the US won’t exert more leverage, the response from the Axis of Resistance, and potential future scenarios. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

ALEX KANE: What events in the past year led up to Israel’s recent escalation in Lebanon?

DANIEL LEVY: In the months following October 7th, 2023, Israel and Hezbollah settled into a pattern of exchanges of fire which largely remained within the parameters of what might be termed managed or calibrated conflict. Israel’s decision to preemptively evacuate approximately 60,000 residents from the north had the side-effect of turning that area into a fire zone, making it even harder for them to create the conditions for those evacuees to go back to their homes.

There were several occasions when the parties seemed on the precipice of a more dramatic escalation. But it was only this summer—after Israel assassinated Hezbollah deputy commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut, immediately followed by the extrajudicial killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and, seven weeks later, by the pager and walkie-talkie mass maiming attack in Lebanon—that it became clear Israel had chosen to enter a different phase of war against Hezbollah, and indeed against Lebanon and its civilians.

Why was that the case? For years, Israel’s leaders have warned that eventually Hezbollah “would have to be dealt with.” The specific timing probably speaks to a number of factors. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saw the prospect of reviving his fortunes by presenting himself as an indispensable wartime leader. Expanding the conflict across additional fronts could serve that goal, but it also required battlefield success. Israel had failed in almost a year of fighting in Gaza to restore deterrence or its mythological sense of power projection, and needed to shift that equation back in its favor. Israel will have known that going deeper into its piecemeal attempts to degrade Hezbollah would ultimately generate a counter-response. There are some reports that Israel’s infiltration of Hezbollah’s communication systems, which enabled the pager and walkie-talkie attacks, was about to be detected, and that this moved Israel to act precipitously. Whether that is accurate or not, once that attack had occurred, Israel decided to drive home the immediate advantage by targeting Hezbollah leadership, weapons stocks, and underground networks in the south—all before command structures and fighting ranks could be replenished. Hence, the subsequent relentless mass bombings and the start of a ground incursion.

AK: How is Israel able to flatten high-rises in Beirut, conduct attacks across Lebanon, and begin a ground invasion without incurring international fallout?