As has been the case following previous alleged Israeli airstrikes, Hezbollah and its chief Hassan Nasrallah are now faced with a thorny dilemma: to retaliate or not to retaliate, or perhaps more accurately, how to retaliate, since the response is sure to come.

The assassination of Samir Kuntar, who became a member of Hezbollah after his release from Israeli prison in 2008, is another in a series of blows to the Shiite Lebanese militia, on both an operational and a symbolic level.

On the operational level, the assassination is further evidence — after the assassination of Jihad Mughniyeh in January and the killing of Hassan al-Laqis in December 2013 — of the ease with which intelligence services can infiltrate the organization.

Symbolically, the raid was a blow to the terror organization’s morale, as it underlines its weakness and compromises its image amid its ongoing involvement in the war in Syria.

Kuntar, who was Druze, is credited with having salvaged Hezbollah’s terror network on the Syrian Golan Heights, and at one time was working separately for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

He was a marked man from the moment he was released from Israeli prison in 2008, and during the past seven years, was continually preoccupied with planning attacks against the Jewish state.

Read the article in full at Times of Israel.