AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
With the killing of Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah in massive air strikes in Beirut on Friday, one of the big questions is what Israel plans next in Lebanon. Israel carried out another air strike there today. And there are reports that Israel is massing troops along its northern border. We're joined now by Nimrod Novik, an Israeli security and foreign policy expert. Welcome to the show.
NIMROD NOVIK: Thanks for having me.
RASCOE: Do all signs point to Israel sending ground troops into Lebanon? And what's the goal if it does?
NOVIK: If we do it, it more likely be at least intended limited operation, given the assumption that one cannot really distance Hezbollah lead units from the immediate vicinity of our northern border just by air operations, however successful they are. And given that the primary objective of the entire engagement with Hezbollah is to stop their firing at Israel for 11 months and allow our northern population to come back safely to their homes, it may well be that the limited ground operation clearing up an area of something like 10, 15 miles north of the border cannot be avoided.
RASCOE: You're saying a limited operation. Are you sure that that would be possible, or might Israel find itself in two protracted conflicts, one against Hamas and Gaza and the other against Hezbollah and Lebanon if they do this ground invasion?
NOVIK: No, I cannot rule it out. I'm a veteran of the second Lebanese War and the first. The first one got us stuck in Lebanon for 18 months for no apparent good reason until a courageous Prime Minister named Ehud Barak got us out after 18 years. So yeah, things may get out of control. And the real question is whether our political leadership has overcome what the military has. Our military establishment, security establishment, demonstrate daily that they have overcome their colossal failure of October 7. But it seems that our political leadership is still stuck with a decadelong wrong strategy that brought us our worst moment since independence. This is true in the immediate vicinity. We're undermining Palestinian moderates and emboldens extremists, which goes on on the West Bank as we speak. But this is also true in the broader region...
RASCOE: Well, can I ask you...
NOVIK: ...When the time has come for political initiative.
RASCOE: What do you make of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's calculus? I mean, he's going on the offense in a big way, and possibly sparking a much wider conflict, especially now. The world is going to be watching to see how Hezbollah and Iran react to the killing of Nasrallah.
NOVIK: Yeah, I mean, there's no doubt that our military establishment, our security establishment has provided him with such important achievements, changing the security equation, and with optimal setting to go for a diplomatic initiative that enshrines those successes into a turning point. Now, I'm a graduate of many failed efforts to try and figure out what drives my prime minister, whether it is just that he's beholden to the most extreme elements in his coalition, or whether he is a victim of his own world view, whereby taking the risks to change things is less attractive to him than the failed conflict management that has marked his 15-year tenure. I'm not sure what's driving him. I'm just hoping that the success of the IDF convinces him that the time for changing course both vis a vis the Palestinians and vis a vis the region has come.
RASCOE: How should the Biden administration manage all of this?
NOVIK: Well, the Biden administration has done the most important thing. It has mobilized a very powerful regional coalition that is prepared to help us exit ourselves from Gaza and take over and run the Strip and prevent Hamas from resurgence. They are willing to integrate Israel into a very powerful regional coalition to check Iran's violent meddling that they are all concerned with. But they have one prerequisite. And that is that in order for Israel to be integrated into both, Israel should agree to offer Palestinians a political horizon, and that is something that regrettably this prime minister has yet to accept.
RASCOE: That's Nimrod Novik. He is a fellow with the Israel Policy Forum. Thank you so much for speaking with us.
NOVIK: My pleasure.
RASCOE: And elsewhere in the program today, we'll have analysis on what might be next for Lebanon in the wake of the killing of the leader of Hezbollah.
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