For nearly a year, Israel has fought a defensive war on its border with Lebanon. Since 8 October, the pattern has been familiar. Civilians on both sides of the border have fled. Hezbollah, the Shiite militia in Lebanon, has fired missiles and launched explosive drones towards the towns and bases near Israel’s northern border. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) has responded in kind with artillery and air strikes. That pattern has now been broken.
Last year, following the surprise attack by Hamas on 7 October, Israeli intelligence officials admitted they had taken their eyes off the Gaza-based group. They had spent the previous years focusing their efforts mainly on Hezbollah, a much more formidable enemy. The latest events have proven that Israel’s level of penetration of Hezbollah is indeed extensive.
On 17 September, thousands of pagers used by members of the militia blew up simultaneously, killing dozens, wounding thousands and wreaking havoc on the movement’s communication networks. The next day, hundreds of walkie-talkies were detonated to similar effect. The attacks signalled a shift, with Israel taking the initiative in ratcheting up the war.
Two days later, Israel went further, bombing and destroying an apartment building in Beirut’s Dahiyeh neighbourhood, Hezbollah’s main stronghold. The strike killed Ibrahim Aqil, a founding member of the movement and its operations chief, along with commanders of the elite Radwan Force; Lebanon’s health ministry says at least 45 people were killed.
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Israel has assassinated other senior Hezbollah commanders in Beirut. On 30 July, it killed Fuad Shukr, Hezbollah’s de facto military chief. But Mr Aqil’s assassination was a calculated move by Israel to change the dynamics of the conflict and begin extracting higher prices from Hezbollah.
Since the pager attack, Israel has also begun nightly air strikes, hitting much deeper within Lebanon than it has over the past year. Israeli officers say they have destroyed over 300 of Hezbollah’s missile-launch sites as well as some of the militia’s long-range missiles, which it has yet to deploy. One officer described this as the “denying capability stage” and “another click on the escalation dial.
”Hezbollah, still in disarray following Israel’s most recent attacks, took its time responding, but early on the morning of 22 September, it launched a salvo of 115 rockets towards northern Israel, firing further into the country than it has until now. Most of these missiles were intercepted by Israel’s defence systems. Only a handful of civilians were wounded by those which got through.
Despite the escalation, this is not yet all-out war. Neither side has unleashed anything close to their full firepower. From Hezbollah, that would mean firing much larger salvoes, including long-range missiles towards key civilian and military locations in central Israel, and mounting multiple ground incursions into Israeli territory.
For Israel, it would include a much wider bombing campaign against Hezbollah's missile network, including launch sites within civilian areas, and as a final resort, destroying civilian infrastructure in the hope of turning the Lebanese population against the organisation (many Lebanese already resent the group's war with Israel). Military sources say that Israel is also planning a ground offensive that would include the capture of a buffer zone consisting of a few miles of territory north of the border.
The IDF has announced the deployment of a second division that was in Gaza until about a month ago to the north in readiness for this. However, during a visit to the border over the weekend, such an invasion did not seem imminent. Combat units were training over the Sabbath on bases in the north but had not yet begun to muster in staging areas by the border. "The plans for a ground invasion are ready," said one reserve officer involved in the preparations. "But we're still a way off from having sufficient forces here to carry them out."
The timing of Israel's latest steps masks the divisions within its upper military and political echelons. Some are urging a much speedier escalation, arguing that Israel should take advantage of the chaos within Hezbollah's ranks to destroy a much larger proportion of its capabilities and capture territory. More cautious generals, including Yoav Gallant, the defence minister, favour the current, more gradual strategy, which they hope will give Hezbollah space to reconsider its position and back down.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, has promised to return the residents of the north safely to their homes. "Our goals are clear, and our actions speak for themselves," he insists.
In fact, the priority for Mr Netanyahu is to prove to an increasingly critical Israeli public that he can deliver at least on one front. In Gaza, Israeli forces have destroyed much of the coastal strip and, with it, the Hamas military structure, killing over 40,000 Palestinians, according to health officials in the territory. But they have failed to rescue the 101 hostages still held there or to force Hamas to accept a ceasefire on Israel's terms. Mr Netanyahu wants to shift focus to the north and decouple the two fronts.
On 19 September, a visibly shaken Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's secretary-general, took to the airwaves to address his members. He insisted, as he has since October last year, that "We will not stop our attacks as long as the enemy does not halt its war in Gaza."
Unlike in Gaza, the framework for a ceasefire to the war in Lebanon already exists in the form of United Nations Resolution 1701. It mandates a withdrawal of Hezbollah forces to the Litani River, nearly 30km from the border. But Mr Nasrallah refuses to do so until Israel withdraws from Gaza.
For now, it is far from certain that Mr Netanyahu can restore calm or enable Israeli citizens to return home to the north. Whatever the prime minister says, neither his goals nor his strategy are clear. And yet it is increasingly apparent that in its war with Hezbollah, Israel is not prepared to wait until they are.
