Israel-Hezbollah Battle Closer Than Ever
The Israel-Hezbollah battle is closer than ever as it seems another push to impose a ceasefire in the Gaza war is failing. Israel is preparing to face a more powerful enemy across the border in Lebanon, which could bring limitless devastation to both sides and prove that Netanyahu still faces the greatest challenge.
The Israeli military has a long history of battling Hezbollah, a force that has long been considered Iran’s strongest and most armed ally in the Middle East.
However, former Israeli officials warn that the current path towards war, fueled by cross-border escalations and fiery rhetoric, could push the entire region towards a full-blown crisis of unknown dimensions.
Eran Etzion, who served as the deputy head of Israel’s National Security Council during the last major Israel-Lebanon war in 2006 and later worked as the director of planning at Israel’s Foreign Ministry, told Newsweek about the danger of war with Hezbollah: it’s very hard to see how a quick or any victory could be achieved in this war.
He added, from my perspective, I think this will be a war that Israel will lose in the first 24 hours simply because of the images we would likely see in the event of a full-scale war with Hezbollah of mass killings in very sensitive areas in Israel on a scale we have never seen before.
Israel has not yet recovered from the unprecedented October 7 attack led by the Palestinian Hamas movement, which caught it by surprise eight months ago and turned into the longest and deadliest war in Gaza.
Nevertheless, attention these days is increasingly shifting from Gaza to the escalating battle on the northern front between the Israeli army and Hezbollah, a force that has significantly improved its arsenal since the last full-scale war 18 years ago, the 33-day war in the summer of 2006.
In that month-long war, which began after a deadly cross-border attack by the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, it was estimated that the group had around 10,000 rockets and other types of munitions.
Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, Israeli officials have told Newsweek that Hezbollah now has around 200,000 rockets, mortars, drones, surface-to-air and anti-tank missiles, and other weapons in its underground warehouses.
Shmuel Meir, former head of the arms control division in the strategic planning department of the Israeli army, told Newsweek that Iran built Hezbollah’s long-range missile arsenal for a strategic purpose: preventive defense to deter Israel from attacking its nuclear facilities.
He added that this explains Iran’s activities and the frequent visits of its senior officials to Beirut to ensure that Hezbollah does not waste its missile arsenal like in the Lebanon war in 2006.
Many of these weapons have now found their way to the battlefield, as Hezbollah has now launched a more complex border war than before. The group even claims that for the first time in history, it destroyed one of Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system launchers earlier this week.
The Israeli army has not yet confirmed this attack, but Hezbollah has released footage of the moment its missile hit an Iron Dome system.
Additionally, Hezbollah has recently caused widespread fires in northern Israel with a group of suicide drones and rocket barrages in areas that have largely been evacuated since the October 7 attack.
Israeli officials have told Newsweek that about 80,000 residents in the northern strip of Israel have been displaced since October 7, while the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has reported nearly 93,000 war-displaced people in southern Lebanon.
According to reports, at least dozens of civilians have been killed on both sides of the border during limited clashes in the past eight months.
According to Israeli officials, about 1,200 people were killed in southern Israel during the October 7 Hamas attack, and nearly 300 Israeli soldiers have been killed in clashes in Gaza since then. Palestinian officials in Gaza estimate their casualties at over 36,500, most of whom are women and children.
However, this figure does not distinguish between fighters and civilians.
Even with this staggering number of casualties, unprecedented in decades of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a new conflict between Israel and Hezbollah has the potential to exceed this number given the level of firepower both sides are likely to employ.
Meir called it a war in which neither side can win due to the balance of widespread mutual destruction of population centers.
He said a large-scale attack and invasion by the Israeli army into Lebanon, as some politicians are calling for, would lead to retaliatory massive Hezbollah missile attacks on Haifa and Tel Aviv.
However, the pressure Israel feels over the situation on the northern borders adds an increasing cost to the already hefty expenses of the Gaza war.
While Hezbollah calls for an immediate halt to the Israeli army’s attack on Gaza, Israeli officials demand the full implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which was achieved at the end of the 2006 war.
This resolution sought to create a buffer zone that was first established after Israel’s first invasion in 1978 along the border, followed by a larger invasion in 1982 that began the first major Israel-Lebanon war.
This conflict began with repeated Palestinian militia attacks against Israel and led to the extensive occupation of southern Lebanon amid the country’s multi-faceted civil war, from which the newly established Hezbollah eventually emerged as the most powerful anti-Israeli force until Israel’s complete withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000.
However, tensions continued, and both sides continued to accuse each other of violating United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701.
While occasional tensions have occurred over the years at the Lebanon-Israel border, today’s intense battles have brought stronger rhetoric from Israeli leadership regarding the prospect of a new attack.
Netanyahu on Tuesday at an Israeli army base near the border town of Kiryat Shmona, which was affected, promised to restore security to the area and emphasized that we are ready for very severe action in the north.
Netanyahu’s remarks are accompanied by recent warnings from senior military officials, such as General Herzi Halevi, Chief of Staff of the Israeli army, who announced on Monday that we are approaching a point where a decision must be made.
General Uri Gordin, commander of the northern front of the Israeli army, also announced during a ceremony commemorating the 2006 war that Israeli forces are ready, and when commanded, the enemy will face a strong and prepared army.
As Netanyahu and other senior Israeli officials now openly talk about the possibility of a new war with Hezbollah, the Lebanese group has both downplayed this rhetoric and declared its readiness to respond to any threat.
