Hamas' unprecedented attack throws Israel into crisis, and Hezbollah is now a central player

Hamas' unprecedented attack throws Israel into crisis, and Hezbollah is now a central player

As Israel faces its most serious crisis for decades, the immediate military battlelines have been drawn: the United States and Israel versus Iran and Hezbollah.

Hezbollah — the militant Shia Muslim group based in Lebanon — is now a central player in what happens next regarding Israel.

Despite Hamas starting this round of attacks, potentially of greater concern to Israel is Hezbollah taking advantage of the crisis.

Since Hamas' attack on southern Israel, there have been skirmishes on the northern border between Israel and Hezbollah.

Hezbollah is a proxy of Iran. It is known to have tens of thousands of missiles hidden across southern Lebanon.

Live updates: Follow our blog to get the latest news on the Israel-Palestinian conflict

In 2006, Israel and Hezbollah fought a war. The war went badly for Israel. It was fighting on mountainous terrain with which it was not familiar, and had badly underestimated the military capabilities of Hezbollah.

A subsequent formal review by Israel – the Winograd commission — found that Israel's military performance was disturbingly inadequate.

In military capability, Hezbollah dwarfs Hamas. Hezbollah fighters have been instrumental in recent years in helping to prop up the embattled regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

They are battle experienced and well trained and armed by Tehran.

Caught unprepared
While Israel's army has often discussed and trained for the contingency of having to simultaneously fight Hamas on its southern border and Hezbollah on its northern border, this is not something that it wants to do.

Particularly as it is dealing with growing unrest in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem.

Over the next few months, Israel will want to examine very closely its intelligence and military failures that allowed Hamas fighters to run rampant around southern Israel, including the massacre of 260 young people at a music festival — surely a war crime on a major scale.

A country which has one of the most powerful armed forces in the Middle East and a famously forensic intelligence apparatus has been caught unprepared for a major assault on its territory.

Missile attacks from Gaza into southern Israel are not uncommon. Israel's "Iron Dome" anti-missile system is generally able to intercept the vast majority of these missiles.

But the images of Hamas gunmen prowling the streets of southern Israel and taking hostages is unprecedented. As are pictures of Palestinian gunmen on a captured Israeli tank.

Israel's dilemma
Israel's immediate security challenge is to put an end to the live threat of gunmen in cities.

Both US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that other parties should not try to take advantage of the crisis in Israel. By this they were referring directly to Iran.

If Hezbollah were activated, Israel would almost certainly retaliate against Iran — a dramatic escalation in the Middle East.

Hamas' taking of hostages — believed to be as many as 163 Israelis — creates a dilemma for Israel.

Based on history, Hamas would be likely to be placing the hostages in different locations around the Gaza strip to try to give them some protection from Israeli airstrikes — effectively using them as human shields.

Israel will be concerned that any attacks on Gaza could kill some of these hostages.

The current situation in Israel is unpredictable and changing quickly. One of the few certainties is that Israel will respond ferociously.

This crisis is almost certain to get much worse before it gets better.