Is it a trap?
That is the question the Zionists should ask themselves. To me the answer seems to be 'Yes!'
The Zionist entity is invading Lebanon – again. All earlier such invasions have ended in failure. Zionist troops had to retreat under fire. The current invasion is unlikely to see a better fate.
The Izzies, and their U.S. sponsors, are delirious over their perceived success in killing a number of Hizbullah officials including its leader, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah.
Don't they understand that Hizbullah has explicitly been built in ways that allow it to sustain such losses? All the murdered officials have already been replaced. If these new ones get killed their replacements are ready.
Before last week the war between the resistance was restricted to an (unequal) exchange of missiles. Israel fired many more than the resistance but not to more effect. The nature of that slow walking war of attrition will now change.
An Israeli ground invasion is exactly what Hizbullah has prepared for. It has readied its ambush sites. Its weapons and the people need to launch them are down in their well prepared bunkers.
The invading forces will be subjected to all kind of surprises. The ground troops are expected to proceed only after heavy preparatory bombing. But the mountainous grounds will allow the defenders to survive the bombing and to attack when and where they are least suspected. I do expect heavy military casualties but mostly on the attacker's side.
This war will likely go on for several months. It could easily extend into a years long and much larger conflict.
The Biden administrations is in full support of the invasion. It may even have urged Netanyahoo to proceed with it:
Senior White House figures privately told Israel that the U.S. would support its decision to ramp up military pressure against Hezbollah — even as the Biden administration publicly urged the Israeli government in recent weeks to curtail its strikes, according to American and Israeli officials.
Presidential adviser Amos Hochstein and Brett McGurk, the White House coordinator for the Middle East, told top Israeli officials in recent weeks that the U.S. agreed with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s broad strategy to shift Israel’s military focus to the north against Hezbollah in order to convince the group to engage in diplomatic talks to end the conflict, the officials told POLITICO.
The Pentagon though is not convinced that this operation will be a success. It fears that, at some point, the U.S. forces will be sent in to rescue the Izzies from a severe defeat.
The Netanyahoo government will try its best to expand the war into Syria or, even further, into an all out war on Iran. It will need the full military support from the U.S. to do so. Its political maneuvering towards the U.S. will thus be done with the intent to further drag it into the war.
Without the full support of the U.S. Israel will fail to become the regional superpower it is striving to be.
With full U.S. support their might be a chance, a small one though, for Israel to win this round.
When the European crusaders tried to colonialize the Levant they built some 37 large castles to hold to their gains. Some 150 years later the crusaders had left. The castles though still exist. They are a reminder that those lands are not easy to take and – moreover – to keep.