IDF intercepts Hezbollah drones over northern Israel, strikes in Lebanon

The most prevalent question being asked as the IDF and Hezbollah escalate their attacks on each other without any sign that either side will de-escalate or quickly deal a decisive blow is when or whether the IDF will launch a ground invasion of Lebanon.

Until Tuesday of last week, an IDF ground invasion of Lebanon seemed unthinkable and was mostly discussed by coalition government partners to the right of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he made a point of ignoring.

But the playing field has changed radically since last Tuesday, with Israel emerging, so far, much better off in the escalating conflict with Hezbollah than anyone could have dreamed.

This could mean an invasion within weeks or even within days.

Thousands of Hezbollah operatives were wounded by explosions of beepers and other electronic devices across Lebanon, many senior and mid-level Hezbollah commanders were killed, and on Monday night, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the IAF had destroyed tens of thousands of Hezbollah rockets within a matter of days.

The IDF’s success against Hezbollah is nowhere near ending the grave threat posed to Israel’s home front by the terrorist group, which has used rocket fire to force much of the northern third of the country, including Haifa, into lockdown since Tuesday night.

AS EARLY as December 27, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said: ‘We are in a multifront war and coming under attack from seven theaters.’ (credit: CHAIM GOLDBEG/FLASH90)

That being said, Hezbollah has not managed since last week to kill a sizable number of Israelis or damage critical infrastructure, but it has been taking a pounding regarding its strategic weaponry.

Juggernaut rocket arsenal taken major hit

All prior forecasts declared that in a major conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, thousands, if not more, of Israeli civilians would be killed, and large portions of the Israeli home front, including critical infrastructure, would be ravaged – even as the IDF would have the upper hand militarily.

The Jerusalem Post has learned that Hezbollah’s prewar juggernaut rocket arsenal of more than 150,000 rockets has taken a major hit both in volume and in quality.

However, the Post has also learned that Hezbollah is far from beaten, and the celebratory proclamations by some Israeli analysts that the danger has passed are highly exaggerated.
So what is next?

The IDF has reserved the possibility of attacking Beirut, as it has attacked southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley, but without actually doing so.

The strategy has been to hope that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah will want to save his capital, and himself, from the destruction he now sees in other areas where the IDF has attacked.

The problem is that while this strategy still could work, all indications are that Nasrallah’s religious perspective and pride will prevent him from falling in line with Israeli dictates even under threat of attacks on Beirut.

All of the major escalations that Israel has undertaken over the past week – including mass attacks on Hezbollah’s short-range threats in southern Lebanon, attacking its long-range threats in the Bekaa Valley, and attacking its senior commanders in Beirut repeatedly – seem to have just brought on greater fire from Nasrallah.

Even more worrying, Nasrallah has also escalated his attacks gradually. He has not yet tried to target Tel Aviv and central Israel, seemingly holding off on these threats hovering over Israel should it attack Beirut or try a ground invasion.

The main reasons Israel is more likely to launch a ground invasion now, rather than last week or at any earlier time in the war, are:

1. it is running out of other escalation cards to stop Hezbollah’s rocket fire.
2. the risk of going all out with a very weakened Hezbollah seems much lower now than it seemed a week ago.
3. Israel has given the US 11 months for diplomacy with Hezbollah without achieving anything, so it might have more slack from Washington to go all in than it would have last October or even six months ago.

Even a ground invasion, of course, does not necessarily mean one option. The Post has learned that if the IDF carries out a ground invasion, while all options are on the table, its first choice would likely be to take over a security zone in southern Lebanon to eliminate short-range rocket fire and have a chip to bargain with to get Hezbollah to remain out of the area.

It would only likely broaden the invasion if Hezbollah started to succeed in ravaging the home front with longer-range rockets embedded deeper in Lebanon – in which case, part of taking them out could require a deeper invasion.

When would this happen?

Last week, the deadline for a major escalation and invasion seemed like mid-October to try to finish most of it before November and the formidable Lebanese winter kicks in. But the past week’s events may have moved up the clock.

It is hard to see Israel allowing Hezbollah to shut down a third of the country and Haifa all the way until mid-October without upping the ante to an invasion.

Whether the invasion is days away or might still wait a couple of weeks to get greater buy-in from the US for last-minute diplomatic efforts, in all likelihood, no one knows due to how dynamic the situation is.

Furthermore, it is important to keep in mind that an invasion is not an end in itself. There is no scenario in which the IDF will occupy all of Lebanon for a year like it has Gaza. This would not be possible militarily, diplomatically, or economically.

So, in all scenarios, Israel will eventually need to cut a deal with Hezbollah. It is just a question of when that will be and who has the upper hand regarding the terms.

The last question is whether Israel will manage to separate a Hezbollah deal from a deal with Hamas, or whether the sheer volume of rockets that Hezbollah has, along with its religious commitment, even after it is mostly “beaten,” will eventually force Jerusalem into a deal with Hamas to end the threat in the North.

For the next four days, leader after leader will take the podium at the UN General Assembly meeting that opened on Tuesday and, reflexively, blast Israel for its recent actions against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

For more than 11 months, many of those leaders were deafeningly silent as Hezbollah —with no provocation on Israel’s part – sent rockets, missiles, and drones flying to the north as a show of solidarity with Hamas’s barbaric attack on October 7.
Had the international community shown an ounce of the concern for Israelis getting fired upon by Hezbollah that it now shows as Hezbollah is getting pummeled, concentrated diplomatic efforts would have been made months ago to persuade Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah to stop firing on the Jewish state.

But this was not to be, and Hezbollah’s attacks were seen as a natural and even understandable show of solidarity with Hamas. The international community largely put the onus on Israel to prevent the tit-for-tat in the North from devolving into a full-fledged war, with calls on it to refrain from “escalating” the situation.

A week ago on Monday, Israel’s security cabinet upgraded the country’s war aims to include returning the 60,000 displaced civilians of the north to their homes – a sign that the nation was finally saying “enough is enough.”

Boys scouts carry a picture of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in Kfar Melki, Lebanon, September 19, 2024 (credit: REUTERS/AZIZ TAHER)

The next day, thousands of pagers exploded across Lebanon, demonstrating the country’s seriousness. Each day after, Israel stepped its actions up a notch, sending a clear message to Hezbollah that it is in their best interest to climb down from the high perch they’ve occupied for 11 months, stop firing on Israel, and pull their forces back to the Litani River, as outlined in UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which effectively ended the Second Lebanon War (2006).

Diplomatic efforts fail to resolve conflict

That war began on July 12, 2006, and lasted for some five weeks. Serious diplomatic efforts aimed at putting an end to that war started about three weeks into the conflict.

The current fighting in Lebanon has been ongoing for nearly a year. US envoy Amos Hochstein has been trying to broker a deal for months – basically an updated version of 1701 whereby Hezbollah would withdraw from southern Lebanon, the Lebanese army would move in, border disputes would be negotiated, and Israel would cease flyovers over Lebanon.

For months Hochstein came and went, but in perhaps what is a sign of America’s waning sway in the region, he was unable to put this deal together.

Israel has clearly signaled to everyone that its gradually ratcheting military pressure in Lebanon up notch after notch is designed to get Hezbollah to stop firing and to enable its displaced citizens to return home.

Notably, a senior State Department official, speaking anonymously to reporters on Monday, rejected this rationale, saying, “I can’t recall, at least in recent memory, a period in which an escalation or intensification led to a
fundamental de-escalation and led to profound stabilization of the situation.”

John Kirby, spokesman for the National Security Council, had this to say about the matter: “We believe that there are better ways to try to get those Israeli citizens back in their homes up in the north, and to keep those that are there, there safely, than a war, than an escalation, then opening up a second front there at that border with Lebanon against Hezbollah.”

He may be right, but Washington has not succeeded in trying to de-escalate via diplomacy. The US either does not have the right levers to pull or is not pulling them in the right way. Hochstein tried and failed.

The French, whose president Emmanuel Macron highlighted this week the country’s special relationship with Lebanon – France was granted a mandate over Lebanon by the League of Nations after World War I – also tried their hand at diplomacy but failed. The reason is simple: Iran is the only country with real leverage over Hezbollah.
According to various media reports, in addition to France and the US now stepping up their efforts, Turkey, Qatar, and even Cyprus – which has a good relationship with Lebanon – are getting involved and have either sent, or are sending, envoys to Lebanon.

Expectations should not be great, as those countries, too, have limited influence on Hezbollah.

Hezbollah is embedded in the Lebanese government, a government that remains without a president and has only a caretaker prime minister.

Turkey, in competition with Iran for influence in the Middle East, has limited sway with Hezbollah, as does Qatar.

Plus, putting any stock in Qatar is a fool’s errand.

Qatar, which does have leverage over Hamas because it has funded it for years and hosts its leadership in Doha, has been unwilling or unable to use its sway on Hamas to force a hostage deal, so expecting that they can move Hezbollah is nothing but wishful thinking.

And then there’s Russia.

Russia developed a relationship with Hezbollah when it moved into Syria in 2015, as both had an interest in making sure that President Bashar Assad’s regime survived. This relationship included military coordination, collaboration, and a significant economic component.

Russia, however, has no interest in de-escalating the situation in the Middle East. Its interest, rather, is to destabilize it for a number of reasons: to weaken US influence in the region; to divert US military resources from Ukraine to Israel; to divert the world’s attention from the war in Ukraine.

As White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said, a diplomatic resolution to the crisis in Lebanon is certainly preferable. But achieving one seems unlikely.

Until now the international community has largely remained indifferent, and those with real leverage over Hezbollah – first and foremost Iran – have no incentive to push it to back down and agree to a diplomatic solution that will lead to a withdrawal from southern Lebanon.

This makes the continued IDF escalation almost inevitable. Pummeling Hezbollah and inflicting upon it the most serious damage since its founding may incentivize Iran to use its leverage. If Iran sees its multibillion-dollar investment in Hezbollah going up in flames, it might, just might, press it to stand down to salvage what it can of its most significant proxy – a strategic asset it has spent years and a fortune building up.

But even this is far from certain. 

Hezbollah’s decision to begin attacking Israel the day after the October 7 massacre has now led Lebanon into yet another major crisis.

Lebanon was already lurching from crisis to crisis before Hezbollah’s latest move provoked Israel into a larger war. The country was in financial distress in 2022, and it suffered the Beirut Port explosion in 2020.

It’s worth understanding how Hezbollah has brought Lebanon back to the brink. It’s also worth looking at this history to understand what went wrong.

It now looks like Hezbollah has brought upon Lebanon another war within 20 years. It last did this in 2006, when it attacked Israel and kidnapped the bodies of two soldiers. Hezbollah at the time was at a crossroads. It had forced Israel to withdraw from Lebanon in 2000. It then had five years of relative peace.

Hezbollah chose to murder former Lebanese prime minister Rafic Hariri in 2005, and this led to protests and the ejection of the Syrian army from Lebanon. Syria had occupied Lebanon since 1976, when it intervened in the Lebanese civil war.

People and members of the military inspect the site of an Israeli strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon, September 20, 2024. (credit: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY)

Hezbollah found itself in a precarious situation in 2005-2006. There was rising frustration against it by Sunnis, Druze, and Christians. It forced Lebanon into war in 2006 via the attack on Israel so that it could burnish its credentials and harm the country.

Hezbollah exploits Lebanon’s turmoil

Why would Hezbollah want to harm Lebanon? Through destruction, it gains street credibility. It ruins areas and then helps with reconstruction, becoming both the arsonist and the fire department. This is a model for Iranian-backed proxies.

For instance, the Iranian-backed militias have helped bankrupt and ruin Iraq, and their behavior likely contributed to the rise of ISIS. They then helped defeat ISIS and “saved” Iraq. They are the arsonist and the fire department rolled into one.

The Houthis serve a similar function. Their decision to march on Aden in 2015 led to Saudi Arabia intervening in Yemen. The growing war led to much harm to civilians. The Houthis benefited from it, however, and they are now sowing crisis in the Red Sea.

Now, back to Hezbollah. Hezbollah emerged in the 1980s, and it benefited from the Syrian civil war. Hezbollah also benefited from Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Israel invaded Lebanon to stop Palestinian terrorist groups from using southern Lebanon as a base to attack Israel.

This is oddly similar to what Hezbollah did. Whereas once the pro-Palestinian states in the region used Palestinians as a proxy to hollow out Lebanon and turn it into a front against Israel, Iran later did the same with Hezbollah.

Hezbollah grew out of the poverty-stricken and sidelined Shi’ite community in Lebanon. Lebanon was dominated by Christians up until the civil war in the 1970s. The civil war led to the Syrian occupation of part of Lebanon, and it led to the Israeli invasion in 1982. Chaos also eroded the Christians’ power in Lebanon, eventually leading to the Saudi-brokered deal to end the war in 1989.

But the war didn’t really end. Israel continued to control a part of southern Lebanon until 2000. Hezbollah benefited from Iranian support and the rise of pro-Iranian groups in the region, and it filled the vacuum left by Palestinian terrorist groups that were forced to leave by Israel’s invasion. As such, Hezbollah was the main beneficiary of the Israeli invasion, of the Palestinian failure in Lebanon, of the civil war, and also of the Syrian intervention and Iran’s Islamic revolution.

Multi-front threat with Iran

After 2000, Hezbollah emerged as the major non-state armed group in Lebanon. It used this to stockpile weapons and start the 2006 war. After the war with Israel, the UN was supposed to keep Hezbollah away from Israel’s border. Just as the UN did in Gaza after Hamas took over in 2007, however, the UN ended up emboldening Hezbollah. Hezbollah became exponentially stronger since 2007, just as Hamas did. These two groups then formed terrorist armies on Israel’s borders.

Israel did not recognize the emerging threat. Slowly, Iran built up these multiple fronts. While Israel was focused on the campaign between the wars in Syria during the Syrian civil war, and focused on the Iranian threat, Hezbollah and Hamas emerged much more powerful than before. Iran knitted them together into a multifront threat that emerged in the wake of the Syrian civil war.

In fact, Hezbollah was a major beneficiary of the Syrian civil war, which basically lasted from 2011-2018. As such, Hezbollah became even more powerful, reaching a new phase of its power after 2019. Israel, while focused on the Hezbollah threat, did not see the emerging multifront axis that Iran was constructing.

Israel also didn’t do enough to get the international community to focus on Hezbollah. As such, Hezbollah has now dragged Lebanon back into another war. Hezbollah has carried out 11 months of attacks on Israel, and the international community has refused to stop the attacks.

Now, Lebanon once again risks ruin, because it has allowed itself to be used as a frontline state against Israel, with proxy groups hollowing out Lebanon and using it as a base for attacks. One wonders if the international community will learn from this and try to end the Hezbollah phenomenon once and for all.

Israel Air Force jets struck dozens of Hezbollah terror targets in the Beqaa Valley deep in Lebanon, in addition to various southern Lebanese localities, the military said on Tuesday night, adding that the attacks were still ongoing. 

A senior IDF air force official on Tuesday rejected criticism of Israeli attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon as illegal, saying that no other country warns the enemy where it is attacking hours before.

The Golan Regional Council told its residents on Tuesday to stay near safe rooms and reduce movement and gatherings following the rocket sirens that sounded in the area earlier on Tuesday, Israeli media reported.

Wizz Air, Iberia, British Airways and Azerbaijan airlines cancelled their flights to and from Israel on Tuesday.

Residents are reporting GPS disruptions in central Israel on Tuesday.

Israeli Border Police, Jerusalem Police, and the Tax Authority conducted a joint operation in East Jerusalem targeting a man suspected of economic ties with Hamas. The suspect, a prominent Hamas operative in the Shu'afat refugee camp, is accused of laundering money and financing terrorist organizations through his businesses, including a supermarket chain.

During the operation, authorities seized over 200,000 shekels in cash, checks totaling one million shekels, various electronic devices, and documents linked to the financial activities. Five suspects were arrested and transferred for further investigation.

The intention of Israel's military operations in Lebanon is to cut "Hezbollah from the war with Hamas," according to an Israeli official who spoke to CNN.