A glimmer of hope

As we reach the one-year mark since the war began, glimmers of hope begin to appear—there’s a crack in the armor and a light in the darkness.

In the past three weeks, Israel has shifted its focus towards Lebanon and Hezbollah.
Although Israel has yet to take responsibility for it. “Israel’s initial strike, a coordinated cyber-electronic assault, will be studied by intelligence agencies for years, involving thousands of devices strategically placed across Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq.”

Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, had ordered the full stop of using cellular phones out of fear of being traced, relying instead on low-tech pagers for communication.

High-ranking Hezbollah operatives were issued these pagers, it’s widely assumed Israeli intelligence took over the supply chain and produced the pagers themselves to include the explosives. When the pagers exploded, they injured thousands of Hezbollah operatives. In the following days, other electronic devices, like walkie-talkies, detonated as well.

The most significant shift occurred when Israel deployed 80 tons of explosives in multiple coordinated air strikes that lasted seconds, into an area the size of an apartment to target Nasrallah himself in a bunker previously thought impenetrable.
For years, Hezbollah and its vast rocket arsenal—150,000 missiles aimed at Israel—loomed like a sword of Damocles. Since October 8th, Hezbollah officially entered the war, aligning itself with Hamas and making a full-scale conflict almost inevitable. it became a question of when, not if, those rockets would launch.

However, after the pager attacks and Nasrallah’s assassination, Hezbollah has only managed to fire a few hundred rockets daily, mostly toward northern cities—far fewer than the expected thousands. Israel also assassinated Nasrallah’s successor in a similar manner, and his replacement has reportedly resigned to avoid being next in line.

Hezbollah is clearly on the back foot.

This comes as Gaza has mostly quieted, with Hamas barely functioning as an organization. A decisive victory, unseen in this region since 1973, now seems possible.

There are no illusions—the final boss is still alive and fighting hard. Iran’s mullahs are panicking, which could lead to major escalation. As I was coming out of the operation room from a back surgery, Iran launched hundreds of rockets into Israel. Less were intercepted than initially thought.

Doctors, nurses and patients were gathered in the shelter glued to the news of impacts and casualties. Luckily no one in Israel was killed by the barrage.
My surgery itself had been delayed to treat the victim of the previous rocket attacks from Hezbollah who was hit in the head by fragments. A terrible shooting attack in Yafo was launched from the West Bank, Judea, and Samaria and the ground operation in southern Lebanon claimed more casualties and is far from over.

A message sent to every cellphone in Israel before the attack by Iran

Endless debates will follow about the future of southern Lebanon and Gaza, and there’s always the risk of losing the peace after winning the war. But without jinxing anything, one can begin to see a light now flickering at the end of this long, dark tunnel—a genuine chance for lasting peace in a region that has known too little of it. Yet, given the Middle East, we must always be prepared for the possibility that it’s a train coming our way.

After surgery, waiting for the missiles to land