Ever since October 8, the day after the heinous Hamas surprise attack on southern Israel, Hezbollah has been conducting a low-level war of its own against Israel. The Hezbollah attacks have been carefully calibrated to be intense enough to force Israel to evacuate its civilian population along the northern border with Lebanon. But at the same time, they were not threatening enough to force Israel to divert enough of its military strength from the war in Gaza to launch an operation powerful enough to neutralize Hezbollah’s huge inventory of missiles before it could overwhelm Israel’s Iron Dome defense system.
But that strategic calculation has now changed. After 11 months of high-intensity combat in Gaza, Hamas’ military formations have been decimated to the point that Israel’s leaders are now concentrating the IDF’s firepower on Hezbollah missile launching sites and other military targets across Lebanon. As of last week, Israel’s newest official war goal is to make it safe for 70,000 or more residents of northern Israel displaced by Hezbollah’s rocket attacks to return safely to their homes.
The fighting along the Israel and Hezbollah border has been escalating since the summer when Israel succeeded in assassinating several of Hezbollah’s top commanders. In retaliation, more than 1,000 rockets were fired at northern Israel by Hezbollah in both July and August, compared to about 300 a month since Hezbollah started attacking Israel on October 8.
At one point, when Israel uncovered Hezbollah’s plans to launch a particularly massive retaliatory missile attack, Israeli warplanes were able to strike first, destroying hundreds of Hezbollah rockets on their launching platforms just minutes before they were scheduled to be fired at Israel. That enabled Israeli defenses to shoot down almost all of the sharply reduced number of Hezbollah missiles that survived the Israeli first strike.
Meanwhile, Israeli leaders came to the conclusion that continued attacks by Hezbollah could no longer be tolerated and that it was long past time for them to start keeping their promises to end the misery of the more than 70,000 Israelis who were forced to flee from their homes and live in exile elsewhere in Israel since the war in Gaza started.
ISRAEL’S DEMORALIZING OPENING ATTACKS
The fighting escalated quickly last week, beginning with two consecutive days of exploding Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies that had been sabotaged by the Mossad, killing dozens of Hezbollah fighters and wounding thousands more.
A couple of days later, the Israeli air force launched a deadly strike targeting a secret meeting in the subbasement of an apartment building in the Beirut neighborhood of Dahiyeh, which killed 16 senior commanders of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan special forces battalion, which had been trained for infiltration operations, making it a major target for Israel.
The sabotage of Hezbollah’s communications gear was directly related to the Friday air strike in Beirut, because without secure beepers, walkie-talkies, and cell phones to communicate with, Ibrahim Aqil, Hezbollah’s Radwan special forces commander, and his top officers suddenly needed to meet in person to develop their plans for an October 7-type attack on northern Israel called “Operation Conquer the Galilee.”
Aqil was considered one of the most important surviving figures in Hezbollah’s senior leadership. He took over the role of top Hezbollah commander and confidante for Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah after Israel killed Fuad Shukr in July in another air strike on an apartment building in the same Beirut neighborhood of Dahiyeh.
Also killed in the same Israeli air strike was Ahmed Wahbi, a former commander of the Radwan Force, who was head of the terror group’s training unit.
HEZBOLLAH’S RETALIATION FALLS SHORT
Hezbollah responded to that attack by launching 200 rockets, cruise missiles, and drones at targets in northern Israel, expanding the range of the attacks to Haifa, Afula, and the Jezreel Valley, putting some two million Israelis in harm’s way. The vast majority of them were either shot down or fell harmlessly in open spaces. A few did inflict some damage but no Israeli casualties. Two of them hit residential buildings in the city of Kiryat Bialik. According to KAN, a rocket fell in Nazareth, and Mogen David Adom reported that a 60-year-old man was slightly wounded by shrapnel in the Lower Galil. There were also social media reports of rockets falling in Moshav Sde Ya’akov, and a fire breaking out as a result of a missile strike in Kfar Baruch.
Israel Army radio and KAN also reported that Hezbollah specifically targeted the Ramat David, the only major air force base in the north air base, 28 miles from the border with Lebanon. Hezbollah also said it targeted Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. one of the developers of the Iron Dome air defense system, whose headquarters is located near Haifa.
“We are in a war that’s getting more and more intense every day,” said Giora Zaltz, head of the Upper Galil Regional Council, bordering Lebanon, which has been decimated by the war. “From day to day, the war in the north just grows.”
Israel responded by launching a systematic campaign of pre-emptive air attacks against Hezbollah targets as deep into Lebanon as the Bekaa Valley. Hundreds of rocket launcher barrels that were primed for imminent attacks on Israel were hit in the strikes, the IDF said.
In addition to targeting Hezbollah’s missile sites, the Israeli jets sought to punctuate the message of intimidation to Hezbollah’s leaders and members in Beirut by breaking the sound barrier while flying low over the city, deliberately setting off sonic booms that sounded like explosions.
Israeli Air Force Chief General Tomer Bar said, “We are continuing to maintain the highest possible level of readiness in the Air Force. We’ve placed all the Air Force’s capabilities… on the table. Everything is ready.”
Israel’s civil aviation authority issued a notice closing the airspace from the coastal city of Hadera and northward. Ben Gurion Airport was unaffected by the notice because commercial airline flights using the airport generally do not need to fly that far north.
PREPARING ISRAEL’S HOME FRONT
According to new instructions from the Home Front Command, work, and educational activity will only be permitted in the north where an adequate shelter is nearby and can be reached in time if a warning sounds about a missile attack. In addition, gatherings are limited to up to 30 people outdoors and 300 people indoors.
Israel’s Health Ministry ordered hospitals in the north to operate from protected areas, and Israel’s national blood bank administrator made a public call for donations. Haifa’s Rambam Health Care Campus began to transfer its patients to the underground facilities that it built in preparation for war, following the Hezbollah missiles that fell in its vicinity during the 2006 war.
The U.S. Department of State issued a travel advisory urging American citizens to depart Lebanon via commercial flights while they are still available. It also urged U.S. citizens not to travel to Lebanon due to the unpredictable nature of the ongoing conflict between Hezbollah and Israel.
DESTROYING HEZBOLLAH’S MISSILE THREAT
On Monday, Israeli warplanes attacked an astounding 1600 Hezbollah targets, including many private homes in which Hezbollah had hidden its missiles. According to Lebanese authorities, the Israeli air strikes resulted in 492 killed and 1,645 injured, in what was, by far, the most violent day of fighting in the north since Israel’s 2006 war against Hezbollah.
The IDF’s main spokesman, Admiral Daniel Hagari, said that the air strikes would continue in the near term in order to degrade Hezbollah’s missile threat. Hagari then warned, “We advise civilians from Lebanese villages located in and next to buildings and areas used by Hezbollah for military purposes, such as those used to store weapons, to immediately move out of harm’s way for their own safety.”
Many Lebanese civilians received similar warnings from the Israeli army in calls and text messages to their cellphones, as well as in a radio broadcast. Tens of thousands of them responded by fleeing from their homes in southern Lebanon, clogging the roads heading north toward Beirut. For example, in the city of Sidon, all eight lanes of Rafic Hariri Boulevard were filled with cars pointed north sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic.
After Hagari showed a video of an Israeli air attack on a civilian structure which resulted in a tremendous secondary explosion, he said, “The sights that are now seen in southern Lebanon are Hezbollah’s weapons exploding inside houses. Every home we struck, there are rockets, drones, missiles, which were intended to kill Israeli civilians.”
Hagari also declared, “We will do whatever is needed to return the residents of the north home safely.”
Meanwhile, the head of the IDF’s Northern Command, Maj. Gen. Ori Gordin, met with the commanders of the divisions and brigades under his command “as part of preparations for the widening of the fighting in the area,” an IDF statement said.
NETANYAHU ANNOUNCES A CHANGE IN THE BALANCE OF POWER
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, speaking from an underground command center at the IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv, said that the intensified air strikes were intended to change the balance of power with Hezbollah and the ground rules of the undeclared tit-for-tat war since October, in which Israel had effectively been playing defense, reacting to the Hezbollah cross-border attacks.
“I promised that we would change the security balance, the balance of forces in the north [by Lebanon] — this is exactly what we are doing. We are destroying thousands of missiles and rockets that are directed at Israel’s cities and citizens.
“I would like to clarify Israel’s policy to whoever does not yet understand,” Netanyahu said. “We are not waiting for the threat, we are preempting it — everywhere, in every sector, constantly. We are eliminating senior figures, terrorists, and missiles.”
He then asked for the cooperation of Israel’s citizens as the war with Hezbollah unfolds. “We face complex times. Citizens of Israel, I ask of you two things: Follow the directives of Home Front Command, they save lives; and stand together with determination, responsibility, and, of course, patience. Together we will stand strong, together we will fight and, with Hashem’s help, together we will win,” Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu also had a separate message for the Lebanese people. He started by declaring, “Israel’s war is not with you. It’s with Hezbollah.
“For too long, Hezbollah has been using you as human shields. It placed rockets in your living rooms and missiles in your garage. Those rockets and missiles are aimed directly at our cities, directly at our citizens.
“To defend our people against Hezbollah strikes, we must take out these weapons.”
URGING LEBANON’S PEOPLE TO GET OUT OF HARM’S WAY
“Starting this morning, the IDF has warned you to get out of harm’s way. I urge you to take this warning seriously. Don’t let Hezbollah endanger your lives and the lives of your loved ones. Don’t let Hezbollah endanger Lebanon.
“Please, get out of harm’s way now. Once our operation is finished, you can come back safely to your homes,” Netanyahu stressed.
The prime minister also repeated his warning to Hezbollah and Israel’s other enemies, by declaring, “Whoever tries to harm us, we will harm them all the more forcefully.”
Ever since the war in Gaza began, the Biden administration has been warning Israel against attacking Hezbollah, because of the risk that it would force Hezbollah’s sponsor, Iran, to get involved, widening the war. Instead, the United States has been pushing the negotiations with Hamas for ceasefire-hostage swap agreement, in the hope that Hezbollah would keep its promise to honor the ceasefire and halt its near-daily attacks on northern Israel once the fighting stops in Gaza.
U.S. GIVING UP ON A GAZA CEASE-FIRE DEAL
But according to a Wall Street Journal report, after months of claiming that a Gaza ceasefire deal was close at hand, senior Biden administration officials now privately admit that they no longer expect Israel and Hamas to reach such an agreement before Biden leaves office in January. That is because Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has made it clear that he wants the war in Gaza to continue indefinitely, in the belief that other enemies of Israel in the region, led by Iran and its proxy terrorist forces, would also attack Israel, or that the U.S. would eventually stop supporting Israel, forcing it to accept his demands for a ceasefire, by allowing Hamas to remain in power over Gaza, withdrawing all Israeli troops from Gaza, and releasing massive numbers of Palestinian security prisoners from Israeli jails.
Sinwar’s original calculation in launching the October 7 attack was that once he invaded southern Israel, Hezbollah, Iran, Yemen, the Syrian militias, West Bank terrorists, and Arab Israelis would all join in.
In his best-case scenario, Sinwar had hoped that Hezbollah would open a second front by invading Israel’s communities along the Lebanese border, just as Hamas was doing in the south, while using its huge inventory of long-range rockets to bombard large portions of Israel to create further chaos and put the IDF on the defensive.
Instead, Hezbollah initially launched a mostly symbolic barrage of rocket and drone attacks only on the Israeli villages and cities closest to the Lebanese border and failed to attack vulnerable nearby targets like the Golan Heights or cities like Tzfas, Akko, or Nahariya.
Yemen’s long-range missile attacks aimed mostly at southern Israel were never more than sporadic, while Iran did not attack Israel until April, in response to an attack that killed eight IRGC officers at an Iranian consulate building in Damascus, and since then has mostly remained on the sidelines.
But Sinwar is still hoping that Hezbollah as well as Iran will eventually join Hamas in the war against Israel.
Meanwhile, American diplomats have become particularly frustrated by the Hamas practice of repeatedly “moving the goalposts” in the negotiations whenever an agreement has seemed near. Under Sinwar’s orders, Hamas negotiators have repeatedly introduced new demands. But when the United States then pressures Israel into accepting them, Hamas keeps refusing to say “yes” to the modified ceasefire proposal and issues new demands for Israeli concessions.
As a result, a disappointed senior U.S. official recently admitted to the Wall Street Journal that, despite President Biden’s optimistic pronouncements that Israel and Hamas are close to agreement, “No deal is imminent. I’m not sure it will ever get done.”
But President Biden said that his administration was still trying to ensure that “both people in northern Israel, as well as southern Lebanon, are able to go back to their homes and go back safely.”
He also said that a ceasefire in Gaza was still possible, even though the current state of the negotiations looks bleak. Nevertheless, he told White House reporters, “A lot of things don’t look realistic until we get them done. We have to keep at it.”
BIDEN HAS LOST HIS LEVERAGE OVER NETANYAHU
That means that the Biden administration has lost its leverage over the Israeli government to stop the rapid escalation of its conflict with Hezbollah into an all-out war. While some senior Biden administration officials are still publicly holding out hope for a diplomatic breakthrough, many top-level officials in the White House, State Department, and Pentagon have privately conceded that there is no longer any realistic chance of an agreement between Hamas and Israel because of Sinwar’s opposition,
They also cited two other reasons for their pessimism about the ability of their diplomatic efforts to prevent the fighting in the north from becoming an all-out regional war. The first reason is the large number of Palestinian prisoners that Hamas is demanding that Israel release in exchange for the surviving Israeli hostages still being held hostage in Gaza. This was a major sticking point in the negotiations even before Hamas murdered six of the hostages last month, including a dual-American citizen. They did not let them be freed by Israeli soldiers closing in on the tunnel where they were being held. Over the weekend, Prime Minister Netanyahu estimated that there are only about 50 hostages left still alive in Gaza, making it that much harder to justify the release of the jailed terrorists who will no doubt attack Israel again at the first opportunity.
Prime Minister Netanyahu’s American and Israeli critics have accused him of introducing new demands to drag out the ceasefire negotiations with Hanas, to extend the war, and his tenure in office as prime minister. However, Netanyahu does have sound security reasons for insisting upon maintaining an Israeli military presence forces in Gaza when the first six-week phase of a ceasefire goes into effect, especially along the Philadelphi corridor on the Egyptian-Gaza border, which is honeycombed with tunnels that Hamas has used to smuggle in weapons.
NETANYAHU DENIES HE IS BLOCKING A GAZA HOSTAGE DEAL
Netanyahu also denies the accusations by the family members of the Gaza hostages that he has been standing in the way of a deal for their release. He insists that Hamas is the intransigent party, having demanded 29 revisions to the American cease-fire proposal, while he has accepted, on behalf of Israel, all of the conditions laid out by the American mediators.
Also, despite their previous complaints about Netanyahu, American officials have agreed that Hamas is currently the major stumbling block to a ceasefire agreement.
The second reason is last week’s devastating series of Israeli attacks using exploding pagers and walkie-talkies to kill dozens and wound thousands of Hezbollah fighters, followed by the Israeli air strike that killed 16 top Hezbollah commanders while they were meeting to plan an attack on northern Israel.
That attack was carried out by Israel’s advanced F-35 stealth attack jets, which fired four missiles at the location of the meeting, two stories underground. One of the missiles destroyed a neighboring nine-story apartment building while the other three came in at angles enabling them to penetrate down to the subbasement where more than 20 commanders were taking part in the meeting.
The day after the attack, Lebanon’s health minister put the death toll at 37, including seven women and three children. Another 68 people were wounded and 23 people were listed as missing.
ISRAEL HAS KILLED ANOTHER TOP HEZBOLLAH LEADER
But the death of Ibrahim Aqil was the most serious loss from the attack on Hezbollah.
“He is among the people in Hezbollah who are most skilled, most trusted, and most knowledgeable of its internal organization and military operations,” said Randa Slim, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, a think tank in Washington.
Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari called Aqil the closest person to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
For years, Aqil commanded Hezbollah’s operations in Syria, helping dictator Bashar al-Assad fight his Western-backed civil war opponents, and building a close relationship with the Russian military forces which were also there to support Assad in the civil war.
“You take out Ibrahim Aqil, and you have made a significant dent in their capabilities,” said Matthew Levitt, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute think tank.
“They’re looking to take out people who matter,” he said. “So this is calculated.”
SHAKING HEZBOLLAH’S CONFIDENCE
According to Levitt, the attacks on Hezbollah’s electronic devices have shaken the confidence of Hezbollah members in their organization, by forcing them to ask “What gear can I use? Who can I trust? Where’s the mole?”
“What Israel has done is it has delivered a very powerful psychological and tactical blow to Hezbollah, and it’s devastating,” said Fawaz Gerges, a Middle East expert and professor of international relations at the London School of Economics. “How do the rank and file feel now? They feel rattled, they feel shocked. They’re off balance.”
One Hezbollah official admitted to a reporter that the terrorist group and its remaining leaders are struggling to regroup amid worries about the extent to which its communications infrastructure was compromised by the Israelis. It has been trying to determine whether any of its networks are safe, as it searches for security gaps and hunts down possible moles in the organization.
Even the Hezbollah-affiliated Al Akhbar newspaper in Lebanon recognized that Israel’s attacks using Hezbollah’s pagers and walkie-talkies vividly demonstrated its technological and intelligence superiority and delivered the worst blow to Hezbollah since the Gaza War began.
“What happened inspires great awe at the enemy’s ability to inflict pain on its rivals, without hesitation in executing any operation,’ it wrote. “And now we face a new reality. The rules of the game have changed.”
Another challenge that Hezbollah faces is that one of its targeted operatives was the head of Hezbollah’s signals unit, which runs its communications systems.
It is also investigating the possibility that one of its members might have leaked information about its procurement procedures to Israel enabling it to trick Hezbollah into buying the booby-trapped pagers and walkie-talkies.
Hezbollah leader Nasrallah said in a speech addressing the pager and walkie-talkie attacks, “There is no doubt that we have been subjected to a major security and humanitarian blow that is unprecedented in the history of the resistance in Lebanon at least and unprecedented in the history of Lebanon.”
Nasrallah has been worried about the possible penetration of Hezbollah’s communications networks since February, when urged his rank-and-file members of Hezbollah to throw away their smartphones because Israel could use them for surveillance or targeting.
Levitt said that Israel was looking to neutralize Hezbollah’s capability to wage war by targeting key personnel, such as Aqil, telecommunications networks, and weapons systems. He predicted more such strikes, including potentially against Hezbollah’s long-range rockets that carry bigger warheads and its precision-guided munitions.
“It’s more than just [sending] a message,” he said. “It is actually intended to pull the carpet out from under Hezbollah’s military capabilities and make it so that they no longer pose the threat that they have been posing very tangibly for the past 11 months, and have been threatening for much longer.”
KILLED HEZBOLLAH TERRORIST WAS WANTED BY THE U.S
Aqil has also been high on the U.S. list of wanted terrorists. Last year, the White House announced a $7 million reward for information leading to Aqil’s arrest, because he was one of the masterminds of the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut that killed 63 people. He also played a role in the October 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, which killed 241 U.S. service members. In addition, he oversaw the abduction of American and German hostages in Lebanon.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan called Akil’s death “a good outcome” and said he had “American blood on his hands” for the embassy attack.
“You know, 1983 seems like a long time ago,” Sullivan said. “But for a lot of families and a lot of people, they’re still living with it every day.”
Aqil previously survived several Israeli assassination attempts, including one in February 2000 when Israeli Apache helicopters fired missiles at his car, leaving him lightly wounded.
Ahmed Wahbi, who was killed in the same air strike, played major roles within Hezbollah for decades and was imprisoned in an Israeli jail in southern Lebanon in 1984. He was also one of the Hezbollah field commanders during a 1997 ambush in southern Lebanon that left 12 Israeli troops dead.
It will likely take Hezbollah some time to adequately replace its longtime leaders like Aqil and Wahbi. Their deaths have weakened Hezbollah’s command and control capabilities, but not enough to force it to agree to end its attacks on Israel.
HEZBOLLAH LEADER WAS PLANNING ANOTHER OCTOBER 7 ATTACK
IDF spokesman Hagari told the media that, “Aqil and the [other] Radwan Force commanders. . . intended to raid Israeli territory, occupy the communities of the Galilee, and murder and kidnap Israeli citizens — similar to what Hamas did on October 7.”
He added that “the commanders who we eliminated today” had been overseeing attacks on Israeli citizens since October 8, and planned to carry out more such attacks.”
During an interview with British-based Sky News, Israeli President Yitzchak Herzog held up an IDF poster showing some of the other senior Hezbollah leaders who were killed in the strike with Aqil and Wahbi.
“All of these leaders were meeting to launch the same horrific, horrendous attack that we had on October 7 by Hamas, by burning Israelis, butchering them. . . taking hostages, old people, and little babies,” Herzog said, and noted that Hezbollah was operating, “under the plans of the Empire of Evil of Iran.”
Asked about the risk of causing a wider war, Herzog agreed that the recent escalation of the fighting “is clearly a very dangerous situation,” but he also stressed that, “Hezbollah started this war following the horrendous [attack] of Hamas on October 7.”
Hezbollah, he continued, has been “bombarding us endlessly,” and until now Israel has shown restraint. “But something has to end,” he said, and added that returning displaced residents to their homes “is the natural obligation of any nation to its citizens.”
Herzog said Israel has a “simple message. We don’t want war. We absolutely did not seek this war. This war was instigated by the empire of evil, by the Iranian proxies in the region, under the command of Iran.
“Israel is fighting for its well-being, for its existence, its citizens.
“We are working to change the equation” which has perpetuated the low-level war with Hezbollah since October 8, and, “in order to change the equation, one has to fight,” he said.
Asked about civilian casualties from the pager explosions, Herzog refused to confirm that Israel was behind the attack but noted that a Hezbollah rocket attack this summer had killed 12 Israeli Druze children. Herzog said, “There are terrible tragedies in this war, and we never want to get there but we have the inherent right to defend ourselves. We have to take action like any normal nation would do to defend its people.”
The attack that killed Aqil and Wahbi in Dahiyeh was the third high-profile assassination carried out by the Israeli air force since the beginning of the war in Gaza. In the first attack, on January 2, founding senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri was killed in another attack in Dahiyeh, and in the second, Fuad Shukr, then Hezbollah’s chief of staff and Nasrallah’s closest advisor was killed in a July 30 attack in the same neighborhood, in apparent retaliation for the Hezbollah missile strike which killed 12 Syrian Druze children playing on a sports field in the Druze village of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights.
BEHIND THE PAGER AND WALKIE-TALKIE ATTACKS
There is an ongoing debate in the media over whether the detonation of the pagers and walkie-talkies had been planned by Israel to launch the current escalation of the conflict with Hezbollah, or whether Israel had been forced to detonate the devices because of fears that Hezbollah was about to discover that they had been rigged to explode. Under the latter scenario, the Israelis faced the choice of using the exploding devices quickly or losing the opportunity to do so.
“It was a use-it-or-lose-it moment,” one U.S. official said describing the reasoning Israel gave the U.S. afterward for the timing of the attack.
Either way, there is no doubt that they created widespread panic among Hezbollah’s fighters, seriously disrupted Hezbollah’s command and control capabilities, and wounded 3,000-4,000 Hezbollah operatives.
The pagers were produced under license from a well-known Taiwanese manufacturer by a front corporation that was set up in Hungary by Israeli agents. Similarly, 2,000 exploding Hezbollah walkie-talkies looked like a popular Japanese model. Both devices seemed to function normally until they were triggered by a coded signal sent by an Israeli agent.
The walkie-talkies exploded with more force than the pagers because they were larger and contained more explosive material. They were meant to assist Hezbollah during its planned ground attack against northern Israel. Hezbollah purchased these devices about five months ago — around the same time that the sabotaged pagers were acquired.
When President Biden’s adviser Amos Hochstein visited Israel on the day before the pagers were detonated, Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant were busy for hours with security consultations about the attack, but when they met with Hochstein, they didn’t give him a clue about what they were planning to do.
The only advance notice the U.S. received came the next day, just a few minutes before the pagers began to explode, when Gallant called Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to tell him that Israel was about to conduct an operation in Lebanon, but gave him no further details.
ISRAEL’S FOCUS HAS SHIFTED FROM HAMAS TO HEZBOLLAH
By that time, it was obvious from the public statements made by both Netanyahu and Gallant that their main focus had shifted away from the war against Hamas. Gallant had declared that war to be essentially over on August 21 because the last of Hamas’ 24 battalions in Gaza had been defeated by the IDF. They were now focused on their promise to enable the safe return to their homes in the north of the 70,000 Israelis displaced by the threat from Hezbollah’s missiles and had made it a primary mission of the war.
To keep that promise, Defense Minister Gallant said the IDF was shifting the army’s elite 98th Division, made up of paratroopers and commandos, from Gaza to the northern front. The unit is expected to play a key role in the IDF’s plans to conquer the commanding ridges of southern Lebanon, and clear out the underground infrastructure that Hezbollah has built on the Lebanese side of the Israeli border apparently in preparation for a possible ground invasion.
In addition, the IDF forces already deployed in the north completed exercises simulating combat in Lebanon, and several army reservists received orders in recent days to report for active duty in the north.
IDF chief of staff, General Herzi Halevi, has also approved a new set of battle plans for the northern front against Hezbollah.
In response to rising tensions, the Pentagon said last week that it was sending the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman to the eastern Mediterranean, to join the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier group that is already in the region. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also canceled plans for a trip to Israel, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, out of fears that a regional war, in reaction to a possible Israeli invasion of Lebanon, could break out at any moment.
From last Thursday through Sunday, the Israeli air force carried out four major attacks on Hezbollah’s missile forces, destroying an estimated 500 rocket launchers as well as several thousand rockets.
Defense Minister Gallant then told his air force commanders to keep up the “targeted action to eliminate the operational elite of Hezbollah,” and promised to continue the attacks on Hezbollah’s missiles until Israel’s northern residents could return home. “This is the goal, this is the mission, and we will use everything necessary to achieve it,”
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Netanyahu said in a video statement shortly after the strikes, “If Hezbollah doesn’t understand the message, I promise them — they will understand the message. We will take whatever action is necessary to restore security.”
RE-ESTABLISHING A SOUTH LEBANON SECURITY ZONE
One of Israel’s primary goals in Lebanon is to establish a Hezbollah-free security zone south of the Litani River, 10 miles north of the Israeli border, to make it safe for Israeli civilians to return to their homes along that border. Such a zone had been envisioned by U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 which ended the Second Lebanon War in 2006. It was supposed to have been enforced by UNIFIL, an international United Nations peacekeeping force, but UNIFIL has been unable to keep Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon or keep it from re-arming.
This is not a new problem. After Israel invaded and conquered most of Lebanon in 1982 to end repeated attacks from there by Palestinian terrorists, it withdrew from most of the country, except for a security zone on the southern border. Israel occupied the zone from 1985 to 2000, when then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak ordered an Israeli withdrawal to put an end to the losses from repeated attacks on the occupying Israeli forces by Hezbollah terrorists.
Since October 7, the U.S. has been urging Israel to hold off on an attack on Hezbollah while it worked to achieve a diplomatic solution that would have Hezbollah agree to voluntarily move its force several miles off the Israeli border to the line agreed to in Resolution 1701.
Those U.S.-sponsored talks hit a dead end months ago. Part of the problem, according to a Wall Street Journal editorial, is that from the outset, “Nasrallah tied Hezbollah’s actions to a Gaza ceasefire. This has mortgaged the future of Lebanon to the priorities of Hamas’ Yahya Sinwar.
“Even the Biden Administration has now recognized that Mr. Sinwar doesn’t want a deal. . . [and it is now clear that] one way or another, Israel is going to return its displaced northern citizens to their homes.”
TIME RUNNING OUT FOR A PEACE DEAL IN THE NORTH
Israel’s leaders agree that time is running out to find an alternative to war. After almost a year of internal exile, the 70,000 former residents of northern Israel are anxious to return to their homes, and Israel’s government now seems prepared to do whatever it takes to stop Hezbollah’s constant cross-border missile attacks.
Nir Barkat, Israel’s economy minister, said in a recent interview, “We cannot leave the north the way it is. I don’t think that Hezbollah will volunteer to move to the north. So there’s another part of the war ahead of us.”
Since the inconclusive end of the Second Lebanon War in 2006 Israel and Hezbollah have been fighting each other according to an informal set of rules which limit which types of weapons they can use, where the fighting can take place, and how many civilians or combatants can be killed.
For example, while Israel frequently struck at weapons transfers to Hezbollah in Syria over the past decade, it was careful to avoid killing Hezbollah members. Israeli officials now say that they regret having observed those constraints because they permitted Hezbollah to rearm while entrenching itself further in southern Lebanon along the Israeli border.
But the Israeli air strikes on Hezbollah’s senior leadership in their stronghold in Beirut changed the rules of the game and sent the message Israel no longer respects those former red lines.
ISRAEL CHANGING THE RULES AND ERASING RED LINES
“Those red lines no longer exist,” said Carmit Valensi, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies and an expert on Hezbollah. “Things dramatically changed in these rules of the game.”
As Lina Khatib, an associate fellow at Chatham House, a London-based research organization told the New York Times, “Eighteen years of mutual deterrence has now given way to a new phase of one-sided superiority on the part of Israel. The facade that Hezbollah had been presenting to the world of it being an impenetrable organization is shattered, and Israel has displayed with flair how much of an upper hand it has in this equation vis-à-vis Hezbollah.”
“Hezbollah has been backed into a corner by Israel,” Khatib said. “Even if its military arsenal remains intact, its ability to deploy it has been curtailed.”
According to Paul Salem, a vice president at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C., “It has been very clear since the first months of the war that Israel is saying, ‘This threat that we lived with for 18 years, we are not able to live with it anymore. We can’t have this massive force on our northern border.’”
AFTER OCTOBER 7 ISRAEL IS MORE READY FOR WAR
Salem adds that before the Gaza war, Israeli actions in the north were restrained by its reluctance to risk taking losses or sustaining damage compared with the apparent willingness of Hezbollah fighters to die for their cause. But since the October 7 attack, that, too, has changed.
“The simple threat of Hezbollah causing damage no longer has the same effect on Israel that it had before Oct. 7,” Salem said.
Yaron Buskila, the CEO of the Israel Defense and Security Forum, told Maariv that the strike on Beirut which killed Ibrahim Aqil sent a message that Israel has decided to “take the gloves off” in its engagements with Hezbollah.
“The strike itself in the Dahiyeh district of Beirut is essentially a statement. It doesn’t matter who the target was. The fact that terrorists were struck in Beirut is a very significant message from Israel to Hezbollah,” Buskila said.
“There is no intention to continue playing this symmetric game that Israel has been playing with Hezbollah so far. . . For Israel, there is readiness for war, and the center of gravity is shifting to northern Israel. The IDF has decided that the Northern Command will become the main arena, while Gaza will become secondary. . . even if it means entering a much tougher war.”
He went on to say, “Iran and Hezbollah understand that Israel is determined to move forward, and it’s also a message to the Americans [who] don’t want Israel to go into a campaign against Lebanon right now.”
“They are focused on maintaining regional stability. However, [Israel is] unwilling to accept what has been. What was will not continue to be. . . We want to return our residents to their homes safely, without the threat of Hezbollah sitting right on the border. . .
“Negotiations have failed so far, and Hezbollah hasn’t withdrawn or reached any agreements. As a result, we are prepared to use all available force. Even without relying on American munitions — since their supply has diminished. . . Israel will utilize everything at its disposal to strike Hezbollah and restore peace to the northern border.”
Before the ground rules of the war between Israel and Hamas were changed last week, the fighting since October 8 had resulted in 26 civilian deaths on the Israeli side, as well as the deaths of 22 IDF soldiers and reservists. On the other side, Hezbollah named 503 of its members who have been killed by Israel, mostly in Lebanon but also some due to Israeli attacks in Syria. Another 79 members of other terrorist groups, one Lebanese soldier, and dozens of Lebanese civilians have also been killed.
ISRAEL WON’T HOLD BACK
But as one Israeli official warned, “If [Hezbollah leader] Nasrallah escalates, then the price he’ll pay in [his] Dahiyeh [stronghold] in Beirut will be very high.” Israel won’t hold back from striking again at Hezbollah’s nerve center, as it did last week when it killed his commanders, Aqil and Wahbi, Nasrallah’s longtime confidante, Fuad Shukr in July, and Hamas founding member Saleh al-Arouri in January.
Israel has also demonstrated its ability to neutralize the threat from Hezbollah’s missile force by conducting large-scale pre-emptive air strikes based on its superior intelligence about Hezbollah’s intentions. Israel is also willing to target Iranians who have been working with or on behalf of Hezbollah. Israel killed a group of senior Iranian military officials in a strike on an Iranian consulate building in Damascus in April, and launched a commando raid on an Iranian-controlled factory making weapons for Hezbollah earlier this month.
The success of these Israeli operations, as well as the exploding pager and walkie-talkie attacks, has revealed significant problems in Hezbollah’s security, communications, and counterintelligence.
