Israel wishes noncombatants no harm. As Hezbollah has used the same to shield weapons and war materiel, the provocation for preemptive action would have to be imminent.

Note: we may be also in a new age of warfare, one in which the tonnage of weapons owned may be modified by a host of systems, arrangements of humans and machines, in the path of their deployment. As we may no longer live in a world in which we may wait on open hostilities, we are a world constantly at war and engaged with one another in contests off the surface record.

The inspiration had to do with an IDF depiction of threat posed by Hezbollah.  The correspondent on the thread had suggested a preemptive strike, but, as noted above, not so fast: fighting on the surface may be inappropriate when many other methods, tactics, and strategies have developed — or have been invited to develop — by way of the changing character of conflicted societies as well as changes in war fighting made possible by changes brought to the character of the content of armories.

# # #