The Gaza conflict enters ‘Uncharted Territory’

“I don’t think war is inevitable,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Wednesday, after senior leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas were killed in pinpoint attacks in a suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, and Tehran. He was right; war is never inevitable until it breaks out. But suddenly the possibility of an all-in conflict of unpredictable breadth between Israel and its Iran-backed enemies, into which the United States would most likely be drawn, had become a dangerous possibility.

Israel acknowledged the first strike, which killed Fuad Shukr, a senior military commander of Hezbollah, on Tuesday, but said nothing about the second, the assassination of a top Hamas political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in the capital of Iran. He was killed by an explosive device planted in an Iranian guesthouse weeks earlier, and both Iran and Hamas accused Israel of doing it.

The war whoops sounded instantly and loudly. Even in the confusing and shifting enmities of the Middle East there are unspoken red lines, and two assassinations inside capital cities was a provocation that demands retaliation. For Iran, the killing of a senior Hamas leader while he was attending the inauguration of the new Iranian president was a humiliation that the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, declared it was “our duty” to avenge. Haniyeh, moreover, was a top Hamas negotiator in cease-fire talks, raising questions about whether those negotiations would be put on a long hold.

Nonetheless, Austin, who was on a visit to the Philippines, went on to suggest that there was still room for diplomacy. He and the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, who was also traveling in Asia, both acknowledged that they had no advance warning of the attack on Haniyeh — a sobering testimony to the limits of American leverage over a conflict on which the United States has expended vast treasure and diplomatic capital over many decades.

Even as the administration counseled restraint, Austin acknowledged that in the event of war, the United States would do what it has always done: “We certainly will help defend Israel.” This is “uncharted territory,” as David Horovitz, the founding editor of The Times of Israel, wrote. The war that began 10 months ago with Hamas’s attack on Israel seems likely to continue, but its path is far from clear.

In the optimistic telling, none of the actors wants an all-out war. Not Israel, which is already fighting in Gaza; not Hezbollah, whose Lebanese homeland is in wretched economic straits; not Iran, which just inaugurated a new president and prefers to let its “axis of resistance” — its proxy forces, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen — do the real fighting; not Hamas, which needs a cease-fire to stop the relentless Israeli pummeling and certainly not the United States, which is deeply divided over the Gaza war and in the heat of a fateful presidential race.

In the past, tit-for-tat duels between Israel and its enemies have often ended after an exchange of strikes was deemed to have achieved the necessary level of retaliation. In April, after Israel bombed the Iranian embassy compound in Damascus, Syria, and killed senior Iranian military commanders, Iran launched a fusillade of drones and missiles at Israel, almost all of which were stopped by Israel with the help of the United States, France and Jordan. Iran then declared that the retaliatory attack “can be deemed concluded,” signaling a readiness not to escalate.

In this hopeful scenario, the assassination of Haniyeh could actually improve chances of a cease-fire. It means that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has insisted that Israel will continue to fight in Gaza until it has fully defeated Hamas, could claim victory and bask in an impressive feat of Israeli intelligence and arms, and move on to a cease-fire and the release of the remaining 111 hostages seized by Hamas on Oct. 7, 39 of them presumed dead, according to Israeli officials.

But an equally compelling case can be made for an imminent war. Many Israeli generals have long wanted to launch a definitive strike against Hezbollah, which has accumulated a vast arsenal of missiles, rockets and drones, including precision-guided missiles far more sophisticated than anything Hamas has ever had. These could reach deep into Israel, threatening densely populated areas and critical infrastructure.

Immediately after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas in the south of Israel, Hezbollah began a campaign of sporadic shelling in the north, compelling Israel to constantly fire back and to relocate roughly 60,000 residents from homes near the northern border. According to Horovitz, Hezbollah has fired more than 6,500 rockets, hundreds of drones and hundreds of missiles, killing 25 civilians and 18 soldiers. The assassination of Shukr in retaliation for the death of 12 youths in a rocket attack on the Golan Heights was a sign that Israel is prepared to get far tougher on the northern front.

On a visit to that area last month, the Israeli Army chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, warned that “we are approaching the point where a decision will have to be made, and the I.D.F. is prepared and very ready for this decision.” And on Wednesday, Netanyahu declared in a televised statement that “challenging days lie ahead.”

If the cease-fire talks on Gaza are at a dead end — and both Israel and Hamas have been regularly putting new obstacles in its way — Netanyahu has a choice between continued instability and threat in the north or a decisive clash with Hezbollah and, if need be, with Iran and its proxies.

Israel, in that case, would pay a heavy price, but Lebanon and Iran a far heavier one. On his recent visit to Washington, Netanyahu repeatedly referred to the war in Gaza as really a war against Iran and its proxies, and spoke of continuing until full victory.

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Schmemann is a member of the editorial board and a former Jerusalem bureau chief for The Times.