Why Israel Chose to Escalate

The ten-month-old war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip long ago escaped its local geography, triggering dangerous military escalations across the Middle East—deadly clashes on the Israeli-Lebanese border, Houthi assaults in the Red Sea and on Tel Aviv, attacks by Iranian-aligned militias against U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria, and even direct clashes between Israel and Iran. Then, within the space of 24 hours last week, Israel took responsibility for the assassination of Fuad Shukr, a top Hezbollah commander, in Beirut in retaliation for a Hezbollah rocket attack in the Golan Heights, and the country is assumed to be behind the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader, in Tehran. This one-two punch made many observers fear the eruption of an even more catastrophic regional war.