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THE WAR IN THE NORTH-THE STRATEGIC BALANCE SHIFTS IN FAVOR OF ISRAEL

By Josef Olmert, PH.D.

Sun Tzu-’’All warfare is based on deception’’

Clausewitz-’’In war, more than anywhere else, things do not turn out as we expect’’

These famous sayings by two of the world’s most influential military thinkers seem to reflect the course of the THIRD ISRAEL-LEBANON WAR waged since 8 October 2023 when Hizballah started its unprovoked attacks against Israel, in support, as they have claimed ever since, of the Hamas war against Israel. On 24 June 2024, as was amplified in my piece, [‘’The war in the North-Does the strategic balance shift against Israel? -in the Palm Beach Center for Democracy and Policy Research] Hizballah seemed to have the upper hand in the conflict with Israel, and it was argued that it was an intolerable situation from an Israeli perspective and, therefore, a decisive, imaginative, and surprising Israeli action was urgently needed. There were Israeli Defense Forces [IDF] actions throughout the time since 8 October 2023, but they were always reactions, and were restricted in the use of troops and arms, surely lacking the cutting edge of sophistication, and all this due to political considerations dictated by the Netanyahu government. Chief among them was fear, and yes, this is the right word, FEAR, to take actions that might lead to strong reactions from Hizballah. This fear was based on intelligence accounts compounded by a deliberate scare campaign by various former military persons who cautioned that Hizballah has the capacity to cause havoc in Israel using accurate, sophisticated ballistic missiles. While Israeli leaders, first and foremost, Netanyahu denied that these were their concerns, rather claiming that the main IDF effort should focus on the campaign against Hamas in Gaza, the impression in Israel, particularly in the devastated Northern communities as well as in Lebanon itself and in the watching countries of the Middle East[ME] was, that it was Israel, not Hizballah which was the deterred side in the conflict. It was a bad impression, and in the ME, perceptions of weakness are damaging to the extreme.

THE TURNING POINT-25 AUGUST 2024 AND ONWARDS:

On 25 August 2024, Hizballah planned a massive ballistic missile attack on strategic, both civilian and military targets in central Israel. The oft-talked threat attack on Israel, supposedly leading to large-scale destruction in Israel with a high number of casualties, was about to take place. It was then when NETANYAHU finally ordered the IDF to act, and the IAF inflicted a devastating preemptive strike on Hizballah in which no less than 6000 missiles of all kinds and ranges were destroyed. This was the beginning of a sustained campaign that soon brought about a structural change in the military situation. On 17 September 2024, Mossad and IDF launched the ”Beepers operation” in which 1500-2000 Hizballah soldiers and other operatives were taken out of operational capacity, mostly injured. Many others were killed in one of the most 

imaginative, brilliant operations ever enacted in war, surely in the history of Israel’s wars. 

On 27 September 2024, IAF attacked the main command bunker of Hizballah in the Dahiyya of Beirut [South Beirut] and killed Hassan Nasrallah, the big-talker leader of Hizballah, who was the face and voice of the terrorists since 1992. With him, other senior Hizballah commanders and leaders were killed. Before and after this successful operation, which had political, military, and probably most importantly psychological effects, the IDF systematically destroyed the entire first line Hizballah military command and most of its political leadership and did it with daily lethal aerial attacks on Hizballah all over Lebanon, mostly, of course in Beirut, The South and the Biq’a valley in the East. According to careful, conservative estimates, the majority of the ”accurate” ballistic missiles of Hizballah, which for years, as well as the first 11 months of the war, were described as a mortal danger to Israel’s strategic installations, as well as its civilian population, were destroyed. Then, on 1 October, ground forces of the IDF, special commando units supported by tanks and artillery, and the ever-devastating IAF crossed the border to Lebanon, allegedly in a ”limited” operation which is designed to destroy Hizballah’s capacity to invade Israel with the Radwan Force, which for years was considered the force trained and prepared to invade Northern Israel. The NETANYAHU government defined the overall aim of the operation as creating the conditions that would allow the 100000 Israelis evacuated from their communities in the North to return safely to them.

LESSONS AND IMPLICATIONS OF THE MILITARY SITUATION-ISRAEL:

By mid-November 2024, Hizballah was a very badly beaten army, but it was not yet totally broken. While the fighting is still on, it may be presumptuous, as we remember Clausewitz quote above, to start summing up the current conflict, but not too early to draw some interim important conclusions that can already be considered valid and illuminating,

First, the situation since August 2024 is a resounding repudiation of an Israeli policy lasting nearly 18 years, mostly under NETANYAHU governments, the policy of containment. This is a polished term often used by Western political scientists, which, in effect, is something else altogether-it is part of a laundry of words designed to conceal the desire of a well-prosperous Western society NOT to look at the mirror, see dangers, and confront them on time. The justifications are always provided by more words used in Western scholarly vocabularies like deterrence, but the truth is that dealing with a phenomenon like Hizballah, being an army as well as a political and social movement cannot be based on Western notions of how to run, manage and contain conflicts. 

Hizballah, like Hamas, like Iran, THE country behind these movements, is preparing for a war in order to conduct it, and the only unknown about them is the WHEN, not the IF. Israel fell into the trap in 2006, allowing Hizballah to grow from a small Lebanese terror organization to becoming the largest, best-equipped army of terror in the world, an army that also possesses a state called Lebanon. THE problem with the Israeli view of this process goes much deeper than that, because along the road the Israeli political and military leadership dominated by Netanyahu has come to believe that the policy of containment is justified because Hizballah is REALLY becoming almost an existential threat to Israel. So, here is the most important question to be posed from an Israeli perspective-IF it was felt that Hizballah is using Israeli policy of containment in order to become such a formidable threat, why wait? Why not inflict a decisive preemptive strike? There was IDF activity against Hizballah, what became known as the Low-Intensity War, conducted for a few years by the IDF based on intelligence also from Mossad against arms supplies from Iran via Syria to Hizballah. The attacks were ONLY in Syria, were effective to an extent, but NEVER in Lebanon. Here was a major problem-The successes of many attacks were tactical, did NOT change the overall strategic equation, and this equation was shaped by Hizballah, NOT Israel, and was predicated on the Hizballah doctrine that they are the defenders of Lebanon, hence IF Israel does not attack them in Lebanon, then their deterrence works on Israel, not the other way around. In Israel, on the other hand, the word, probably the doctrine of deterrence, was understood differently. It was felt, SO wrongly, that Hizballah did not respond to the attacks in Syria because they were deterred. There was the conviction that at the end of the day, when figuring out rationally the overall strategic equation with Israel, Hizballah will be deterred from starting the third Lebanon-Israel war. This concept crumbled as of 8 October 2023 when Hizballah declared war on Israel. Yet even then it took the Israeli leadership 11 months to realize that its initial, long held concepts have proved so wrong. This fact leads to another troubling question-why wait when a war is already raging and see the North getting so damaged, people evacuated from their communities and with it the creeping sense of helplessness and despair, even more so, disbelief that Israel has the ability and resources to change the developing strategic equation.

This is a question becoming all the more relevant when we see how things changed after 25 August. First and foremost, the extent of the IDF and MOSSAD penetration into the very core, nerve center of Hizballah. Such a deep, overwhelming penetration was achieved during years of effort conducted by brilliant operatives. How come it was not used before 2023? This is a question relating again to the political realm. Israel simply deluded itself to believe that it may be ever TOO COSTLY to fight Hizballah. Some of the scaremongers even used terms such as ”the end of the Zionist project”. In three months since August 2024, the IDF proved how wrong it all was. Deception was used, but much more importantly, FINALLY political resolve by the Netanyahu government to do what it SO much did not want to do for SO much time, and above all -the courage, tenacity and professionalism of the IDF soldiers, both the regular army and the reserves.

It is way too premature to declare the Hizballah finally totally defeated. They still retain capacities, which can be damaging and painful, but they are on the retreat, and in the ground fighting, the ratio of casualties is 30 to 1 against them. Every fallen IDF soldier is for Jews like the entire world, but in a war, we have no choice but to count casualties. The IDF soldiers are much better than Hizballah’s, the IDF arms are superior, and the IDF intelligence is nothing short of a wonder. 

The overall implication from an Israeli perspective is that resolve and determination pay off. Fear, hesitation, and false concepts do not. Later, we shall analyze what should be the exit strategy of Israel, what will turn a victory in battles to a full victory in the war, but first we have to turn attention to the other actor, Hizballah. 

LESSONS AND IMPLICATIONS OF THE MILITARY SITUATION-HIZBALLAH:

In 2010, I published an article [‘Hezbollah and the possibility of another war”, Jewish Policy Center, 12 August 2010] in which I referred to Hizballah following the war of 2006, in particular to its leader Hassan Nasrallah. I called him the modern-day Abu Ali, the legendary Arab folk hero. After the 2006 war in a moment of rare candor Nasrallah admitted that he would not have provoked the war had he known its results. Then something interesting happened, as many commentators, especially Israelis, started to refer to the war as an Israeli failure, as a defeat. Nasrallah was quick to adopt this narrative and to present himself and Hizballah as the great victors. Lebanese of all sectarian persuasions, Arabs outside of Lebanon, Israelis

, and many others also adhered to this narrative and, in the case of Israel, started to act in line with it, which meant the policy cited above of not touching Lebanon. Nasrallah created a full-fledged doctrine based on his presumed victory, and the main point was that any Israeli infringement on Lebanese territory would be countered by Hizballah, and that meant that any Lebanese casualty would lead to Hizballah exacting similar, if not a higher price from Israel. In other words, Nasrallah wanted to create a complete balance of deterrence with Israel. Imagine what used to be at that time. A small terror organization wanted to create strategic equality with the strongest, most feared military power in the Middle East. Clearly, this doctrine was supposed to be the preparatory step for the attainment of the final, most important goal-the military defeat of Israel, something that should happen and would happen in conjunction with the overall goal of the mother country Iran, which is to destroy Israel. Tenaciously, with sophistication and so much resilience and patience, Hizballah consolidated both its domination in Lebanon and its image as the one force that not only talks about standing up to Israel but also being capable of doing it. The evidence seemed to be simple for all to see-Israel refrained from going after Hizballah in Lebanon. Hence, Israel was deterred. Here is THE fault of the Israeli policy of containment -it was MISUNDERSTOOD BY HIZBALLAH TO BE A SIGN OF WEAKNESS. Nasrallah gave the famous COBWEB speech on 26 May 2006 about the gradual decline of Israel and became a real believer that this was the reality, as he understood Israel’s policies to be dominated by the fear of another war. This is when he became the modern-day Abu Ali, and THIS IS WHY HE INTERVENED IN THE WAR WITH HAMAS FROM ITS INCEPTION. He did not expect Israel to do what it finally did -but from his perspective who can blame him? It took Israel 11 months to do it, and during this time, Nasrallah felt that he had the initiative, and he was right about that.

He himself is no more, but Hizballah is still around, though greatly weakened and ABOVE ALL HUMILIATED. This is the Middle East, and humiliation is an important factor, so no more Abu Ali, rather DAIF, the WEAK. First, it was Hassan Nasrallah himself, and after his elimination, it has been Hizballah. Viewing how the Lebanese Shi’i population in South Beirut and South Lebanon obediently evacuate itself from areas about to be bombed by the IAF despite pleas by Hizballah NOT to do so is indicative of the humiliation and the strategic change. So is the case when hundreds of the evacuees stay standing close to the destroyed Hizballah command posts, buildings, warehouses, and arms depots and take pictures of the destruction while joking about the Hizballah helplessness. In simple words-in a period of 3 months Hizballah lost its aura of invincibility, much more importantly the legitimacy of its claim to maintain its army being a state within a state in order to save and protect Lebanon. No more. As of 25 August, more and more former allies of Hizballah have raised their voices in a call to the Shi’i movement to end the war. Sunni leaders, the Druze Junblatt, even the traditional ally Nabih Berri, the Speaker of the Parliament, all but pleaded with Hizballah to find ways to end the conflict, and lastly, the Free Patriotic Front, the mostly Maronite pro-Hizballah allies joined the calls. Surely, the Lebanese Forces, the main Maronite party, the Phalangists and the Shamunites as well as the Maronite Patriarch unequivocally join the chorus. That was to be expected, but it has to be emphasized that ALL these factions and personalities have still not resorted to acts of physical resistance to Hizballah, with the exception of some Druze and Christian villages, which forcefully prevented refugees from South Lebanon from entering their villages. The facade of Lebanese patriotism led by Hizballah, the self-styled defenders of Lebanese sovereignty was broken. The greatest of all problems for Hizballah is the refugee problem. As over a million Shi’is mostly from South Lebanon, but also from the Biq’a valley fled to the Beirut area under the burden of the relentless IDF attacks and with that happening, Hizballah lost its claim to be the defender of its own people, the Shi’is, let alone Lebanon in general. Hizballah has been pushed to the place where it always was, despite its claims to the contrary-being a sectarian Shi’i movement in the service of Iran, even at the expense of Lebanese Shi’is, surely to the mortal detriment of the Lebanese state. 

During the Israeli siege of the PLO in Beirut in summer 1982, Yassir Arafat said that the Palestinians would turn Beirut into their Stalingrad, to which Walid Junblatt responded ‘’leave… Beirut is not yours’’. After August 2024, many Lebanese said to Hizballah and Iran ‘’stop… Lebanon is not yours’’. 

The leader who succeeded Nasrallah, Naim Qassem, finally seems to have gotten the message, partly at least, as he alludes in public to the possibility of ending the war WITHOUT connecting it to the situation in Gaza, which from 8 October 2023 was the oft-repeated Hizballah condition to end of hostilities with Israel.

That said, we come to what should be the terms of an end to the war, and that is mainly addressed to the Israel side, but also to Lebanon and the Western world.

HOW TO END THE WAR -THE FUTURE OF LEBANON:

Israel needs to come out of the war with Hizballah as the undisputed winner, and that should be in total contrast to the impressions created after the 2006 war. It has to be the LAST war with Lebanon, or with factions inside Lebanon. The idea, therefore, is to lead to that result, which, IF achieved, will be THE victory for Israel as well as for Lebanon. Here is what Israel should not demand. First, no more talks about a new political order in Lebanon based on restoring some kind of Christian privilege-the days of Christian domination are past due and will never be restored. Along the same line, Israel should NOT try to intervene against the interests of the Shi’i community as such, as Shi’s are NOT the enemy. It is Hizballah, which is the enemy, serving the interests of IRAN, which are not necessarily compatible with that of ALL or even the majority of the Shi’is. That said, here are required terms from an Israeli perspective: First-Hizballah is to be ONLY a political movement. Should be totally disarmed. The disarmament to be performed in this way-Until the Litani river, 20 Km north of the border by an international force AND the IDF, and NO IDF withdrawal from areas in Lebanon under its control until the IDF declares full satisfaction with the total disarmament of Hizballah. 

In this area, from the Litani throughout the rest of Lebanon, Lebanon’s army AND international forces will seek the total disarmament of Hizballah. The international forces should NOT be comprised of troops from countries that are hostile to Israel, and will not be under command and supervision of the UN General Secretary, even if for formal reasons it will be 

considered a UN force. The ideal is that the command will be in coordination with NATO.

Second, Israel will maintain the right to use force whenever there is an activity by ANY hostile force in Lebanon against Israeli territory and civilians, obviously such activities by Israel will be unnecessary IF the international forces will do what they have NOT done for so many years, and this is to prevent the creation of a monster army of terror like Hizballah was.

Third-International effective force should be stationed along the Lebanese-Syrian border, and 

It may be surprising to my readers, but participation of RUSSIA in this effort will be welcome, as RUSSIA is already heavily involved with the Assad regime and has an interest in its existence. 

This interest is endangered by the Iranian presence and influence in both Lebanon and Syria.

Fourth, and this is about IRAN-you want an end to Iran subversive influence in Lebanon. Then make sure that the above specified conditions are fulfilled, BUT ADD ANOTHER ONE-Provide Lebanon with a very generous economic aid, and in order to prevent the inevitable typical Lebanese corruption, make sure that the aid is controlled by the LEBANON INTERNATIONAL 

RECONSTRUCTION TRUST, run by a combination of Western states, led by the US with 

EU participation and MASSIVE GULF STATES CONTRIBUTIONS. This body will give the Shi’is what is their due and thus will make the Iranian investment in Lebanon unnecessary, in fact, forbidden.

So … what about the pathetic UN SC Resolution 1701, which theoretically is in force? Keep it in the UN books, but ignore it. Do what has to be done, and IF the above approach, even with some changes, will be adopted, the greatest winners will be NOT only the ISRAELIS but also, and simultaneously, the LEBANESE people, who deserve to see their land of beauty and talent living in peace and prosperity.

Can that happen? Hopefully, but not certainly. Should it happen? No doubt about that, and it is not too idealistic and bombastic a vision. 

Dr. Josef Olmert is a Senior Fellow at the Palm Beach Center for Democracy and Policy Research and an adjunct professor of Political Science at the University of South Carolina