Analysis: Israel wants to change the balance of power in the Middle East. History has a warning

 Killing Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was a step toward changing “the balance of power in the region for years to come,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared Saturday.

Israel’s leader sees an opportunity opening up for a fundamental reconfiguration of power in Middle East and he may assume that Hezbollah are mortally wounded. Total victory, however, is elusive, and those who get what they wish for often live to regret it.

Since September 17, Israel has dealt the Iran-backed militant group one body blow after another in Lebanon. By Friday evening – when Nasrallah was killed in a bombing that flattened multiple buildings – Hezballah’s senior leadership had been almost totally eliminated.

Yet recent history offers only bitter lessons for Israeli leaders — and others — who entertain grand ambitions for tectonic changes in Lebanon, and in the Middle East in general.

In June 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon with the goal of crushing the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. Beyond that, it hoped to establish a malleable Christian-dominated government in Beirut and to drive Syrian forces out of the country.

It failed at all three. Perhaps the most significant outcome of the 1982 Israeli invasion was the birth of Hezbollah, which went on to wage a relentless guerrilla war that compelled Israel to unilaterally withdraw from southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah went on to fight Israel to a standstill in the 2006 war, and in the following years grew only stronger, with significant Iranian help.

Today Hezbollah is crippled and in disarray, and clearly infiltrated by Israeli intelligence – but still, it would be premature to write its epitaph.