Israel’s recent brilliant campaign of targeted assassinations is so extensive that—outside of the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran—the individual strikes tend to run together in one’s mind. But today’s announcement that the IDF has eliminated Ibrahim Aqil is a significant one, and it stands out from the others in a crucial way.

“Aqil and the commanders who were eliminated were among the architects of the ‘plan for the occupation of the Galilee,’ in which Hezbollah planned to raid Israeli territory, occupy the communities of the Galilee, murder and kill innocents, similar to what the Hamas terror organization carried out in the murderous massacre on October 7,” the IDF said in a statement.

Before Hamas’s October 7 murder spree in Israel, how many reactions to this statement—from Israelis, let alone from around the world—would have been something along the lines of: Oh come on, like anybody believes Hezbollah was going to invade and occupy Israeli territory. After October 7, such dismissiveness is foolish—not because Hezbollah’s grand plans are automatically realistic, but because Israel must respond to the possible, not merely the likely.

Even after it succeeded, Hamas’s plan for attack seemed insane. And those Palestinians who were told about it rolled their eyes just as much as anyone in the Israeli security establishment. But terrorist entities aren’t states, and national self-interest isn’t at or near the top of their list of guiding principles.

Early in the war, Israeli TV personality Shlomi Eldar visited in Cairo with his friend and former senior Palestinian Authority official Sufyan Abu Zaydeh, who had lived in the Gaza Strip from 2019 until this year. If you had told him before October 7 what Hamas was hoping to accomplish, he told Eldar, “I would have answered like any Israeli intelligence officer: It’s inconceivable that this is what they’re planning.”

But it’s something that another Palestinian told Eldar that brings the full Hamas zealotry into sharp relief.

“Iyad” (an assumed name) and Eldar talk about the “last promise,” a kind of end-times prophecy that Hamas believed it was on the verge of bringing to fruition. Iyad tells Eldar a story: “One day, a well-known Hamas figure calls and tells me with pride and joy that they are preparing a full list of committee heads for the cantons that will be created in Palestine. He offers me the chairmanship of the Zarnuqa committee, where my family lived before 1948.”

That is Rehovot, in Israel. And Iyad was being offered the role, essentially, of military governor of the entire area for after Hamas defeated Israel and divided the entire country into such districts.

Sounds crazy, right? Iyad says he told them “You’re out of your minds” and asked the person not to call him again.

Hamas was serious, though. In 2021, the group held a gathering called “The Promise of the Hereafter Conference.” Three guesses what it was about.

That is the background of today’s strikes in Lebanon. There is no more talk of how crazy these guys are, as if their apocalyptic visions are mere punchlines. Of course Hezbollah has plans for similarly ambitious invasions of Israel. That doesn’t mean such an invasion is imminent, but neither can it be assumed as not imminent. October 7 changed the stakes. It was a humbling experience for the Israeli national-security agencies, but a learning one, too.

Of course, Ibrahim Aqil wasn’t targeted only for what he might do. Forty years ago he helped plan attacks on U.S. diplomatic compounds in Beirut. Since then, he has been a key player in the planning of Hezbollah attacks both inside and outside Lebanon. At the time of his death, he was also leading the group’s elite Radwan Force.

But the bigger-picture lesson here is that Israel will assume its enemies mean what they say. After October 7, it can’t afford not to.

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