Another war involving Israel 'becoming increasingly likely'
There are increasing signs that another war involving Israel is likely soon. Danger signals include regular rocket exchanges between Israel and Hamas and Salafist hardliners in the Gaza Strip and attacks by Israeli forces on Syrian weaponry being transported to south Lebanon and intended for Hezbollah's use. Local Israeli papers such as Yediot Ahronot and Haaretz have been stating that war is now inevitable, with one Israeli minister stating that “with Lebanon no longer hiding Hezbollah’s role, next war must hit civilians where it hurts". Despite Israel's military might, regional opponents may feel they have no option but to attack if sufficiently provoked.

MODIIN, Israel — In this country, people have learned to accept that one war follows another, every two or three years. “An Inevitable Conflict in Gaza,” ran a headline in the daily newspaper Yediot Ahronot earlier this month. “With Lebanon no longer hiding Hezbollah’s role, next war must hit civilians where it hurts, Israeli minister says,” Haaretz reported a few days later.

What hardly any Israelis will consider, though, and virtually no influential voices in the West will publicly suggest, is that Israel — not Hezbollah in Lebanon, nor Hamas in Gaza, nor the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria — is provoking the next war. Counterintuitive though it may be to Israeli and most Western minds, Israel, not its militant Islamist or brutal Syrian enemies, is the aggressor in these border wars.

On March 17, Israeli military jets did what they’ve been doing every few months since the Syrian civil war started in 2011 — they bombed Syrian weaponry believed destined for Hezbollah, Syria’s ally and Israel’s enemy in southern Lebanon. But this time, instead of letting the attack pass without a response as it usually does, the Syrian Army fired antiaircraft missiles at the Israeli jets.

By the time the exchange was over, air raid sirens had woken people in Israel. Afterward, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted publicly what Israel was doing. “Our policy is very consistent,” he said. “When we identify attempts to transfer advanced weapons to Hezbollah, and we have the intelligence and the operational capability, we act to prevent that. That is what was and that is what will be.”