<div><span style="font-size: 1rem;">Deadly exchanges between the Israeli military and members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia have been occurring with alarming frequency for the past several weeks, leaving not just the people of the two countries tense and jittery but those in the wider Middle East region too.</span><br></div><div><br></div><div>Areas along the border between the two countries have borne the brunt of the hostilities, triggered by the ongoing Israeli bombardment of the densely populated Gaza Strip, which came in the wake of the Palestinian militant group Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attacks in southern Israel.</div><div><br></div><div>Just how far Hezbollah is willing to get embroiled in a separate conflict with Israel is a matter of intense speculation. Pressure is mounting on Hezbollah and its Palestinian allies to open a new front against Israel in southern Lebanon, but so is the fear of depleting their valuable war arsenal and inviting a massive US military retaliation.</div><div><br></div><div>“Watching the horror of the Israeli attack on Gaza, many Lebanese are reliving the nightmare of the destruction of their own country in the Israel-Hezbollah war of July-August 2006,” Lebanese economist Nadim Shehadi wrote in a recent opinion piece in Arab News.</div><div><br></div><div>Having already deployed two aircraft-carrier strike groups to the Eastern Mediterranean early in the siege of Gaza, led by the USS Gerald R. Ford and USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, the US has now sent an Ohio-class guided missile submarine to help deter a regional war.</div><div><br></div><div>“They (Hezbollah) are facing pressure from the ‘axis of resistance,’ like Hamas and other Palestinians, who believe that Hezbollah should play a leading role in the next phase,” Mohanad Hage Ali, a senior fellow at Carnegie Middle East Center, told Arab News.</div><div><br></div><div>Regardless of Hezbollah’s strategic calculations, the cost of the near-daily exchanges between its fighters and the IDF keeps rising steadily in both human and material terms.</div><div><br></div><div>On Sunday, a woman and three children were killed in an Israeli drone strike in southern Lebanon. Lebanon’s National News Agency said the four victims were the sister of a local radio correspondent and her three grandchildren, aged 10, 12 and 14.</div><div><br></div><div>Najib Mikati, Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, condemned the Israeli attack as a “heinous crime” and said the government would file a complaint at the UN Security Council.</div><div><br></div><div>Shortly after the attack, Hezbollah said it fired Katyusha rockets at the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona. In a statement, the group said it would not tolerate attacks on civilians and that its response would be “firm and strong.”</div><div><br></div><div>Earlier on Sunday, four rescue workers were injured in an Israeli bombing in southern Lebanon that hit two ambulances, according to state media.</div><div><br></div><div>“What is happening is ungodly, it’s evil, both in Gaza and the civilians who are dying here in Lebanon,” Ali, 43, a businessman from Dahieh, a predominantly Shiite suburb south of Beirut, told Arab News.</div><div><br></div><div>Since Oct. 7, at least 81 people have been killed on the Lebanese side in cross-border skirmishes, according to the AFP news agency. That figure includes 59 Hezbollah fighters.</div><div><br></div><div>Three of those deaths occurred on Sunday, according to Hezbollah sources.</div><div><br></div><div>Meanwhile, six soldiers and two civilians have been killed on the Israeli side, according to IDF statements.</div><div><br></div><div>The tit-for-tat attacks across the Lebanon-Israel border, in spite of the presence of a UN peacekeeping force (UNIFIL) in the area, have raised concerns that Israel’s use of overwhelming force to destroy Hamas in Gaza could touch off a wider conflagration, drawing in not only Lebanon but also Syria, Iraq, Yemen and even Iran.</div><div><br></div><div>In his first speech since Israel’s siege of Gaza, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah on Friday warned Israel against the “folly” of an attack on Lebanon, with the rider that halting its “aggression against Gaza” would prevent a regional conflict.</div><div><br></div><div>He said Israel would be committing “the biggest foolishness in its history” if it launched an attack against his fighters. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, fired back with his own hyperbole: “Don’t test us. A mistake will exact a price you can’t even imagine.”</div><div><br></div><div>Many of Nasrallah’s followers had expected him to announce during his speech that Hezbollah was going to become directly involved in the conflict instead of restricting its role to launching sporadic attacks.</div><div><br></div><div>However, the general consensus in Lebanon, based purely on Nasrallah’s words, is that Hezbollah will not sacrifice blood and treasure in a war not directly related to the interests of the group or the Iranian regime.</div><div><br></div><div>“Those who oppose Hezbollah now will say: ‘See they didn’t defend the cause they claim,’” said Ali, the businessman. “And if he does join the war, they’ll say: ‘See, he dragged Lebanon into war.’”</div><div><br></div><div>Referring to a 2022 US-brokered deal between Lebanon and Israel, he said: “It is unfortunate because we were just starting to make some advancements with Washington, especially after the maritime border disputes they were brokering. According to Arab News reports</div><div><br></div><div>bnbd24/fas</div>