Last month, I wrote in this section that Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia based in southern Lebanon, were moving toward an all-out war after nearly a year of relatively contained fighting along the Israel-Lebanon border. Unfortunately, they have gotten only closer. Last week, a series of Israeli operations against Hezbollah has underscored just how quickly the situation can spiral out of control.
As the Israeli military was tied up in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was largely content with letting the less-intense war in the north play out below a certain threshold. Netanyahu, who despite his penchant for tough talk is a fairly risk-averse politician, didn’t believe it was wise to fight two resource-intensive conflicts simultaneously. Others in his coalition government didn’t have the same opinion; one of the most extreme ministers in his cabinet, Itamar Ben-Gvir, publicly talked about invading Lebanon as far back as May.
The events of last week, however, have turned those assumptions to dust. On Sept. 17 and 18, explosives planted in thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah detonated simultaneously in one of the most elaborate operations conducted by Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency in recent memory. The attacks killed at least 39 people and injured thousands more. Shortly thereafter, an Israeli airstrike struck a building in Beirut’s southern suburbs, where commanders of Hezbollah’s elite commando force were meeting. One of the fatalities was Ibrahim Aqil, a high-ranking Hezbollah commander who was wanted by the FBI for his involvement in the 1983 terrorist attacks against the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in Lebanon.
The fighting escalated further over the weekend. Southern Lebanon is now a de facto war zone. On Sunday, the Israeli military claimed it had hit 400 militant sites. Another 800 targets were struck Monday, with Lebanese health officials reporting that more than 270 people have been killed in the strikes. Civilians are being told by the Israeli military to evacuate their homes, an order that will swell Beirut’s population and strain the country’s already-struggling health infrastructure.
Hezbollah, of course, isn’t sitting still. It is continuing rocket attacks in northern Israel, and the group has enlarged the scope of its targeting to the coastal Israeli city of Haifa. Escalation begets escalation.
Netanyahu is clearly tired of living with the status quo. Just as he’s under considerable pressure to get a hostage deal finalized in Gaza, he is also under growing pressure from the tens of thousands of Israelis from the north who haven’t seen their homes in a year. Unlike the war in Gaza, which has split Israel’s political parties over the efficacy of Netanyahu’s strategy, there is consensus across the fractious Israeli political landscape that allowing northern Israel to be virtually uninhabitable is a sign of the nation’s weakness and therefore unsustainable. Speaking at the Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv on Monday, Netanyahu insisted that the job of reclaiming Israel’s sovereignty in the north was well underway.
Israel’s aim is clear enough: Push Hezbollah back from the border, ideally north of the Litani River, and provide the space for Israelis in the north to return to their communities.
One option would be for Israel to do what it’s currently doing — ramp up the air campaign in southern Lebanon in the hope that Hezbollah will be coerced into withdrawing. Hezbollah, however, is highly unlikely to cave since doing so would lay waste to its reputation as the Middle East’s most formidable, committed anti-Israel movement. Instead, Hezbollah could choose to intensify its attacks by using the precision-guided munitions and longer-range missiles that it has held in reserve so far. If Hezbollah crosses that Rubicon, Washington’s efforts to prevent a full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah likely would quickly unravel.
Another option for Israel would be to go big. In other words, ramp up the air campaign and authorize a ground invasion of southern Lebanon to push Hezbollah fighters farther north. Operationally, it’s doable, but it would leave Israel with extremely difficult problems. For instance, who would police the cleared area to ensure Hezbollah doesn’t come back over time? The United Nations peacekeeping mission in Lebanon is one alternative, but the Israelis view the U.N. warily for its inability to fully enforce the 2006 U.N. Security Council resolution that ended a previous Israel-Hezbollah war. The Lebanese army is another option, but would it want to clean Israel’s mess? The Israeli military could presumably take on the mission, but Israel has tried to carve out buffer zones in Lebanon before — it occupied southern Lebanon from 1982 to 2000 — and that was at best a costly and temporary solution.
A diplomatic agreement is by far the most preferable, at least from the U.S. perspective. Amos Hochstein, one of President Joe Biden’s special advisers, has spent months trying to get both sides to sign a deal that would move Hezbollah away from the Israel-Lebanon border, allow the Lebanese army to take control of the area and cease all attacks. It’s great in theory but hard to implement, in large measure because Hezbollah has made it absolutely clear that no agreements will be signed with Israel until the war in Gaza stops. The war in Gaza won’t stop as long as Netanyahu and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar hold diametrically opposite positions on what a cease-fire should look like.
Meanwhile, the United States looks docile, if not impotent, relegated to carping from the sidelines about how war isn’t in anybody’s interests without doing much of anything to convince Israel to de-escalate.
Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune.
Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.