Yes, between 26 and 31 civilians were killed on the Israeli side [1] (and at least 88 on the Lebanese side in Israeli counterstrikes) - during an entire year of

Yes, between 26 and 31 civilians were killed on the Israeli side [1] (and at least 88 on the Lebanese side in Israeli counterstrikes) - during an entire year of daily rocket attacks. Compare that to the death toll on October 7, or in Gaza or the West Bank or even just to a single(!) average Israeli airstrike. I'm really sorry I have to make this comparision and I really don't want to downplay those deaths. I strongly believe that you can't compare individual deaths - but I think you absolutely can compare the orders of magnitude of killing happening. My point is that those numbers are an indicator that Hezbollah (and also Israel) followed a different strategy in the north (at least they did pre Northern Arrows). Hezbollah's officially claimed goals are "area denial" - they want to prevent the inhabitants of the northern towns from returning to put pressure on the Israeli government - and preventing the IDF from using its full military force in Gaza. From what I can glean from the media, their attacks were consistent with those goals. (An additional indicator for me is that most of the rockets targeted communities that had already been evacuated shortly after the war began [2] - yet Hezbollah kept hitting them for months and months after that point [3]. If the goal is killing, this would make no sense, however it's logical if the goal is to prevent inhabitants from coming back.) This is what I meant with them behaving "rational and predictable" and what media at some point started to call "the unwritten rules of engagement". It was clearly a long-term problem for Israel, but nothing that had required some urgent "self defense" actions to avoid immediate death. (Also, a clear path to de-escalation was available the whole time: make a deal.) (They did change their targeting over time and chose targets that were increasingly southward [4], however that was a slow process over many months) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Hezbollah_conflict_(2023%E2%80%93present)#Israel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Hezbollah_confl... [2] https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-769567 https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-769567 [3] https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/security-aviation/2024-10-15/ty-article-magazine/.premium/red-alert-mapping-a-year-of-28-000-missile-and-drone-attacks-on-israel/00000192-8995-d2ea-a7be-8dd5d4240000 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/security-aviation/2024-1... [4] https://israel-alma.org/2024/09/02/the-northern-arena-and-the-shiite-axis-weekly-review-of-events-and-key-data-aug-26-sep-2/ https://israel-alma.org/2024/09/02/the-northern-arena-and-th...