Israel Confronts A Resilient Foe In Hezbollah |
Israel is currently embroiled in a two-front war. As Israeli jets pound Iran, Israel hammers Hezbollah in Lebanon. The war north of Israel’s border has been overshadowed by the joint US-Israeli military campaign in Iran, but Israel’s operations in Lebanon are equally vital for its long-term peace and security.
Hezbollah, Iran’s chief regional proxy, launched hostilities on March 2 in reaction to Israel’s assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran. Since then, Israel has called up roughly 100,000 reservists and dispatched three divisions to the Lebanese front, while Hezbollah has mobilized anywhere from 25,000 to 50,000 fighters.
This new round of fighting, the third Israel-Hezbollah war since 2006, broke out nearly one-and-a-half years after Israel and Hezbollah signed a US and French-brokered ceasefire that ended the 2024 war.
It erupted after Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Hezbollah, in solidarity with Hamas, initiated a months-long war of attrition with Israel on October 8. At the end of September in the following year, Israel upped the ante by targeting Hezbollah’s leadership and by invading southern Lebanon.
During the next two months, Israel so degraded Hezbollah’s military capabilities that Hezbollah agreed to a truce in November. Under its terms, Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon, but established five hilltop outposts there in a reflection of its assumption that Hezbollah remained an implacable enemy and had no intention of coming to terms with Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.
Battered but undefeated, Hezbollah regrouped and rearmed. A Reuters report dated March 21 says that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards rebuilt Hezbollah after its mauling by Israel.
With Hezbollah constantly breaking the truce, Israel struck Hezbollah’s bases throughout Lebanon on almost a daily basis, killing some 400 Hezbollah commanders and foot soldiers. Exercising unusual restraint, Hezbollah refrained from responding to Israel’s attacks.
In the meantime, the Lebanese government, under pressure from the United States and France, announced a plan to disarm Hezbollah. Israel concluded that the disarmament process was too slow and incomplete.
With the outbreak of the Iran war on February 28, Hezbollah threw caution to the wind and reignited the war in Lebanon.
This time, Israel is determined to finish off Hezbollah, but it should be noted that Israel has been trying to achieve this objective since Hezbollah’s formation in 1982 as an Iranian regional surrogate. Mindful of Hezbollah’s resiliency, Israeli government officials have told the media that this war could be a lengthy one.
Hezbollah’s leader, Naim Qassem, concurs with this assessment. “We have prepared ourselves for a long confrontation, and God willing, they (Israelis) will be surprised on the battlefield,” he said in a televised speech. “This is an existential battle … we will not allow the enemy to achieve its goal of eliminating our existence.”
He also said that hostilities can cease now if Israel halts its offensive, withdraws from Lebanon, releases Lebanese prisoners, and allows reconstruction.
Lebanon is also keen to end the war. Shortly after its eruption, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun offered to hold direct talks with Israel under international supervision. He said he was willing to discuss deescalation and the disarmament of Hezbollah. This was a highly unusual offer, since Lebanon and Israel have been locked in a state of war since Israel’s birth in 1948.
In another remarkable development, Aoun issued a scathing critique of Hezbollah. Blaming it for having dragged Lebanon into yet another war with Israel, he accused it of disregarding “the interests of Lebanon or the lives of its people.”
Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Saar, has rejected Aoun’s overture. He said that Israel would not engage Lebanon in face- to-face negotiations until the Lebanese army embarks on a verifiable process of disarming Hezbollah, a major political power in Lebanon. In an unmistakable sign that the United States endorses talks, the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon, Michel Issa, called for this course of action yesterday.
Israel is likely to continue with its offensive, since the Lebanese army is loath to disarm Hezbollah on a systematic basic. Its commanders fear that a serious showdown with Hezbollah could trigger another civil war, the last one of which lasted from 1975 to 1990.
According to the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, the Lebanese army “acted sluggishly, preferred to avoid confrontations with Hezbollah, and, in some cases, even operated in coordination with the organization. Lebanese army personnel refrained from entering private property, claiming that they were not legally authorized to do so. Over the past year, Israel also complained that intelligence information it had provided to the five-party enforcement committee had been passed on to Hezbollah, apparently through the Lebanese army.”
As Israel pushes deeper into Lebanon, its overlapping objectives are transparent. Israel intends to clear the area south of the Litani River of its inhabitants so that it can proceed with its goal of destroying Hezbollah’s military infrastructure. Since then, Israel has told residents to move north of the Zahrani River, which is 18 kilometers north of the Litani, a distance of some 30 kilometers from the Israeli border.
“We are going to do what we did in Gaza,” an Israeli official told the Axios news site in an ominous warning.
According to Axios, the United States supports Israel’s strategy, but has asked Israel to spare Lebanon’s national infrastructure and international airport.
It remains to be seen whether Israel will occupy southern Lebanon yet again. Israel occupied this region after its 1982 invasion and did not withdraw until May 2000. During its 18-year occupation, Israel fought a gruelling guerrilla war with Hezbollah.
It is too early to tell whether Israel is ready to impose another occupation on Lebanon, but in the meantime, Israel has described its operation as “limited and targeted.”
Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, has justified it on the grounds that the Lebanese government has failed to fulfill its commitment to disarm Hezbollah. Until that objective is met, and as long as Hezbollah poses an immediate threat to Israel, he said, Lebanon will pay a price in “damage to infrastructure and the loss of territory.”
Israeli operations have targeted much of Lebanon, but have focused on Hezbollah’s strongholds in Beirut and the areas south of the Litani and the Bekaa Valley.
More than 1,000 Lebanese nationals have been killed in the crossfire since March 2.
Israeli targeted air strikes have struck Beirut’s southern suburbs and its downtown core, stirring anxiety that the capital is no longer safe.
Israel has bombed command centers and killed a succession of high-ranking Hezbollah commanders and Iranians from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Quds Force. They include Murtada Hussein Srour, a Lebanese who was in charge of developing, producing, and launching Hezbollah attack drones, and Hisham Abdul Karim Yassin, an Iranian who was responsible for rebuilding Hezbollah’s capabilities and deepening Iran’s presence in Lebanon. Yassin was the fifth Quds Force commander to be killed since the start of the war.
In addition, Israeli aircraft have hit Hezbollah organizations that have played a role in financing its military operations.
And on the ground, south the Litani, Israeli troops have conducted raids in towns and villages to kill Hezbollah operatives, root out arms caches and find attack tunnels. The details of these operations have yet to be disclosed, but the media in Israel says that Hezbollah fighters are not engaging Israeli soldiers in close combat, but are rather dispersed among 200 Lebanese villages and launching attacks from there.
And in an indication that the army is widening its offensive, Israel has struck two bridges over the Litani that were used by Hezbollah to transfer fighters from northern to southern Lebanon and launch missiles at Israel.
As of last week, Israel had conducted over 1,100 strikes in Lebanon, bombing Hezbollah headquarters, weapons depots, missile launchers, command centers, and sites of the Radwan Force, which is dedicated to infiltrating Israeli territory.
During these attacks, Israel has killed 580 Hezbollah fighters. Two Israeli soldiers have fallen.
The majority of Hezbollah’s attacks have targeted Israeli towns like Kiryat Shmona. According to the Institute for the Study of War, a U.S. think tank, Hezbollah’s tactic is to displace residents from their homes in northern Israel to increase political pressure on the Israeli government to halt its offensive.
Among Hezbollah’s military targets have been the Palmachim air base in central Israel, approximately 140 kilometers from the Israel-Lebanon border, and the Rafael Advanced Defence Systems complex in northern Israel, a state-owned company that develops weapons and military technology for the Israel Defense Force.
In recent days, Hezbollah has fired about 150 rockets per day.
Israel believes that Hezbollah still possesses thousands of short-range rockets with ranges of up to 40 kilometers and hundreds of longer-range rockets. Hezbollah also relies on drones. Israel believes that Hezbollah has produced thousands of Ayoub and Mersad drones. As well, Hezbollah has launched Fateh-110 precision missiles.
The battles that have occurred in southern Lebanon in the past three weeks indicate that Hezbollah may be stronger than Israel assumed.
“It became clear that Hezbollah’s capabilities south of the Litani had not, in fact, been dismantled, despite the impression that Hezbollah had sought to create,” says the Institute for National Security Studies.
According to the Israeli daily Haaretz, the Israeli chief of staff, General Eyal Zamir, warned Israel on the eve of the Iran war that Hezbollah was rearming at a faster pace than expected. Haaretz also reported that senior Israeli government officials were surprised by Hezbollah’s capabilities during the current war.
Israel is fighting hard to achieve its objectives, but its campaign could well backfire, warns Israeli scholar Shira Efron. In a piece in The New York Times on March 18, she wrote, “It’s widely agreed that action against Hezbollah — an internationally recognized terrorist group and a Shiite Muslim political party in Lebanon’s multisectarian society — is necessary. However, a prolonged Israeli military operation, the destruction of state infrastructure and a wider presence in southern Lebanon, as Israeli officials now propose, could further undermine weak Lebanese institutions, turn its people against Israel and further entrench Hezbollah’s resistance narrative. That’s precisely the opposite of what Israel and the region need.
“Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah is understandable. After October 7, the country cannot ignore an armed adversary willing to strike its towns. But relying only on brute force and an expanded buffer in southern Lebanon is at best a short-term answer. A prolonged Israeli presence in Lebanon will generate friction, cost lives and feed the very narrative of resistance that Hezbollah exploits.”
Efron’s analysis is plausible.
Israel has been striking Palestinian and Lebanese enemies in Lebanon since 1968, all with negligible effects. And Israel has been invading and reinvading Lebanon since Operation Litani in 1978 without durable results.
Yet, at the end of the day, Israel cannot afford to sit on its hands when it faces an aggressive and vicious enemy like Hezbollah. At this opportune moment, Israel should try to demolish Hezbollah as a military force when its chief ally, Iran, is under unprecedented duress. Israel should not agree to a hasty ceasefire. But Israel cannot afford to get bogged down in a quagmire in Lebanon. Nor should Israel commit itself to another occupation of southern Lebanon.
These are the principles that Israel should keep top of mind as it attempts to deliver a crushing and lasting blow to Hezbollah.