国际英语新闻：Are Hezbollah, Israel headed for another war?

Back on the Israeli front, top politicians and military leaders are constantly referring to the Hezbollah threat. Yet Kam and other Israeli analysts think neither Israel nor Hezbollah currently want to enter a costly war.

The only thing that may push Israel towards a unilateral attack is that it sees that Hezbollah possesses the type of weaponry that can cancel out Israeli arms. Should Hezbollah hold anti-aircraft missiles, for example, that could push the military generals in Israel to consider a strike, said Kam.

However, outside Israel, some see war between Israel and Hezbollah as increasingly likely. Among them is Ziad Abdelnour, the founder and president of the United States Committee for a Free Lebanon.

"Without a doubt," he said simply, adding that averting war depends on "containing Iran, which is not going to happen."

Joshua Landis, leading American expert on Lebanon and Syria from the University of Oklahoma, puts forward a more complex series of factors that he maintains could be the difference between peace and war in the region.

There is a definite link between the Hezbollah-Israel struggle and the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, he suggests.

"War grows ever more likely the longer (U.S.) President (Barack) Obama fails to organize his effort at Arab-Israeli peace and put some muscle behind it," said Landis.

Israel hopes to create final borders that will encroach on the occupied territories, said Landis. Meanwhile, Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinians, all of which have lost land to Israel, have stated that they will resist this annexation, which "makes war inevitable if Obama cannot convince all sides to come to the table and make a deal they are satisfied with."

The evidence of the last decade suggests such a deal is far away. As a result, Landis said, one can expect Israel to continue with pre-emptive strikes, something which he says is a short-term fix.

"As U.S. elections loom ever larger on the horizon, the prospects that the Obama administration will want to get into the hair-pulling of serious peace process diminish, and war looks more likely," he said.