All Policy Analysis by Dennis Ross

In 1993 and 1996 I helped broker understandings that brought conflicts between Hezbollah and Israel to an end. Both times Hezbollah instigated warfare with Katyusha rocket fire into Israel and Israel retaliated, determined to damage Hezbollah’s capacity for making war and to demonstrate to the Lebanese the cost of Hezbollah’s

Conspiracy is like oxygen in the Middle East. Everyone breathes it. And it’s a mode of thought suited to understanding Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel. The attacks, after all, represented a sudden shift in the group’s thinking. In the six years following Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon, the Shia militants didn’t cross