An Israeli war in Lebanon would not bring anything good

Mlast weekFormer Israeli minister and retired general Benny Gantz said Israel could destroy Hezbollah forces within days, but if such a thing were possible, Israel would have done it already. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also promised a “total victory” against Hamas after October 7.

These statements are dangerous noise. Not only do they predict eventual devastation for both Lebanon and Gaza, but the military goals they suggest are maximalist and largely unattainable. Israel tends to underestimate the militias it is fighting and to use a hammer to attack a problem that has never been solved with a hammer.

War has been a reality for civilians on both sides of the Israeli-Lebanese border since October 8, when Hezbollah fired its first rockets into northern Israel in support of Hamas after 17 years of relative calm. Israel’s relentless, systematic shelling of a five-kilometer-deep area along the border in Lebanon has created a de facto uninhabitable death zone. Some 90,000 Lebanese have been displaced and civilian infrastructure, livestock and agricultural land have been destroyed. Israel has had some success attacking Hezbollah fighters, killing 349 of them – but at least 50 Lebanese civilians have also been killed.

Graeme Wood: Israel is ready for another war

Hezbollah’s shelling of Israel was less intense and devastating, but it penetrated deeper into Israeli territory. Some 60,000 Israelis were evacuated from their homes in the north. 25 Israelis, including civilians and soldiers, were killed. The conflict continues to simmer but now threatens to escalate as both sides stockpile weapons and Israel masses troops on the border. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned that a full-scale war would be “catastrophic.”

The contours of a deal that would end the fighting are already known. Israel is demanding that Hezbollah cease its cross-border attacks and withdraw its best fighters and heavy weapons from the border area, and that the Lebanese army be stationed near the border in greater numbers. Hezbollah is demanding that Israel stop shelling Lebanon, withdraw from disputed border points and stop planning overflights over Lebanon. And yet diplomacy has stalled – in part because Hezbollah is making Lebanon’s fate dependent on the prospects of a ceasefire in Gaza, while Netanyahu’s political survival depends on the continuation of that conflict.

The alternatives to diplomacy are bleak. As I have written here before, neither Iran, Hezbollah’s patron, nor Israel want a full-scale war in Lebanon. But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. The most devastating scenario would be a large-scale Israeli bombing of Lebanon, along with a ground assault. Hezbollah would then launch a barrage of rockets into northern Israel – enough to overwhelm the Iron Dome and cause significant damage and many lives. A protracted war could restore Hezbollah’s credibility as a resistance movement against Israel, an aura it lost when it became a major player in Lebanon’s corrupt political system and fought for the rule of dictator Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian civil war.

No decisive blow could destroy Hezbollah’s military strength in a short period of time. A full-scale war would leave Israel and Lebanon in a tight spot for months or even years. Today’s Hezbollah is no longer the militant group that brought Israel to a stalemate in 1996 and 2006. It now has 150,000 rockets, including precision-guided ones, and hundreds of battle-hardened men who have fought in Syria and elsewhere. A conflict in Lebanon could draw militias from Iraq and Syria into the war. In the worst nightmare scenario, such a war could draw Iran and the United States into the war.

Perhaps the two sides could manage a more limited escalation, focused on specific areas and military targets, with unspoken but clear rules of engagement. In this scenario, Israel would increase the tempo of its attacks on Hezbollah and Iranian targets in Syria, as well as Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley, without attacking Lebanese infrastructure such as the airport, power plants, or bridges, which it has often attacked in the past. Hezbollah would likely respond with a more sustained barrage of fire on Israel, especially in areas deserted by civilians, and by targeting military sites and launching cyberattacks. But real life is not a war exercise, and containing such an escalation would be difficult and dangerous.

Border conflicts could continue at their current intensity, a war of attrition with no clear end in sight. But in hardly any scenario would Israel gain more from a military confrontation with Hezbollah than from a diplomatic dispute. And Israeli leaders should know this from history: The fight against Hezbollah, even before it became as strong as it is today, never brought the crushing defeat that Gantz and others have promised, nor has an open war in Lebanon.

Hezbollah was founded after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 – an incursion originally intended to drive the Palestinian guerrilla fighters operating there away from the border with Israel. But the Israeli government did not stop there. In his book Slopes of LebanonIsraeli journalist and peace activist Amos Oz writes that Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin imagined he could “clean up the chaos in the Middle East once and for all.” Israel sent troops as far as Beirut to install a friendly Christian president in Lebanon, force the Syrian military stationed there into submission, and destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization. Israel besieged Beirut for two months, and the fighting left 17,000 people dead in Lebanon.

The PLO left Beirut, but in every other respect the war was a strategic disaster for Israel. The Christian president was assassinated, Lebanon abrogated the peace agreement it had signed with Israel within a year, Syria became even more powerful, Iran gained a foothold in Lebanon, and Israel ended up occupying southern Lebanon for two decades.

Yet this was not the last time Israel waged war there. In 2006, Hezbollah kidnapped and killed several Israeli soldiers at the border, and Israel responded with a devastating military campaign against Hezbollah and Lebanon. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared that Israel’s goal was not only to bring the captured soldiers home, but also to destroy Hezbollah.

Read: Hezbollah goes to the theater

Israel later adjusted its objectives, saying it simply wanted to limit Hezbollah’s ability to fire rockets at Israel. Within a month, Israel had sent troops into Lebanon and was stalled, calling on the U.S. to call a ceasefire. Lebanon had lost 1,200 lives and much of its infrastructure, but Hezbollah could still fire as many rockets as before. Although Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah later expressed regret for the devastation the group’s first operation in Lebanon had caused, the militia declared victory and its popularity soared throughout the Arab world. Mutual deterrence was established and calm reigned on the border for nearly two decades. During that time, Hezbollah built up its arsenal, amassed political power in Lebanon, and became a regional paramilitary force with influence and fighters in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. It has much to lose if war breaks out, which is why it has shown remarkable restraint – even if the people of northern Israel may not see it that way. But like Hamas and other guerrilla groups, Hezbollah knows that in the long run it can operate much better than a traditional army – even one as powerful as Israel’s.

The 1982 invasion of Lebanon was the first time Israel fought a guerrilla force rather than a traditional army, as it had previously done successfully against Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. It was also the first time Israel captured and bombed an Arab capital. It did not win that war, and has not won any since. In 1982, Oz wrote, “There is no redemption for what we did in Beirut.” Yet that campaign became a textbook example. Today Gaza lies in ruins and thousands are dead, but most of the hostages are still held captive by Hamas, and the group still stands. The war was a strategic disaster for Israel. Netanyahu may view it as a kind of victory, if only because he is still in power. But as he looks north, where a far more formidable opponent awaits him, he should remember the lessons of the Begin era, when he was deputy ambassador to the United States: There is no military victory to be won in a full-scale war against Lebanon.