Israel plans ‘new ground war against Hezbollah’
Israel’s military has drawn up plans to invade southern Lebanon, risking a further escalation in the war in the Middle East and in the face of calls for restraint from its western allies.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) says it wants to drive Hezbollah forces in the southern Lebanon north to the Litani River, a line of symbolic importance for both sides.
The two sides have been exchanging artillery and missile fire since the start of the war in Gaza in early October. Initial fears that the conflict would spread more seriously to other fronts were lowered when Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, said the group would not launch a major offensive unless provoked or unless Hamas was on the verge of an overwhelming defeat.
However, Israel’s politicians and military strategists say they have decided that they cannot accept a simple ceasefire with Hezbollah at the end of the current war in Gaza.
About 86,000 people have fled or been evacuated from the border area since the missile exchanges began, and a senior IDF officer said on Sunday that many would be unlikely to return even with a ceasefire. Given Hezbollah’s much greater strength compared with Hamas, the IDF feared the scale of a potential October 7-style attack in the north of Israel.
“What happened in the south is nothing compared to what they could do here,” the senior officer said. “Israeli doctrine is to take the war to the other side.”
The decision as to whether to launch a ground force across the border is one for Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, and his war cabinet.
The dirt road towards the Israel-Lebanon border. Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, is said to be nervous about starting a conflict on a new front
But there could be no going back to the status quo before October 7, Lt Col Jonathan Conricus, an IDF spokesman, said. “The IDF is prepared, has been preparing,” he added. “The IDF chief of staff has approved plans and defined schedules for readiness.”
There has been internal debate within the war cabinet from the beginning as to how seriously to take the threat from Hezbollah, which is both a political and militia force in Lebanon, backed with a large arsenal of weapons provided by Iran.
Some assessments say that Hezbollah is afraid of a political backlash inside Lebanon if it became sucked into a serious conflict with Israel, which has repeatedly threatened to rain destruction on the country if that occurred.
Hezbollah is dominant due to its own Shia community, which forms a majority in the south, but needs some political cover from Christian, Sunni and Druze communities which would also be devastated in the case of an all-out war.
However, the IDF believes that Hezbollah nurses hopes of limited attacks in northern Israel, and it already regards the abandonment of the border area by its civilian population as a victory.
Of the war cabinet, Netanyahu is said to be the most nervous about starting a conflict on a new front, even as the IDF continues to face fierce resistance in Gaza and worldwide opposition to the extent of the civilian casualties it is inflicting there.
Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defence minister and former IDF general, has been bullish about the need to deter Hezbollah, however.
Earlier this month, he demanded that Hezbollah withdraw its forces north of the Litani, or that Israel would force it to do so. Israel would “act with all the means at its disposal” if no peaceful means to ensure that were not enacted, he said.
On Sunday he went on the offensive again. “We want to restore peace and we will do it either through an agreement, or with forceful action, with all its implications,” he told soldiers at the northern border.
The Litani River is significant because at the end of the brief 2006 conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, a UN ceasefire resolution agreed on the removal of all armed forces in Lebanon to north of the river, except for the UN peacekeeping force and the official Lebanese army.
Hezbollah has nevertheless made the area a well-fortified stronghold and missile base, claiming as part justification that Israel has not withdrawn from a small disputed area of the Golan Heights it has laid claim to.
Many analysts have assumed that the heightened Israeli rhetoric is largely an effort to put pressure on countries with ties to Lebanon to force a Hezbollah concession. France has said it would be prepared to make that argument.
However, there is little sign Hezbollah would ever withdraw voluntarily — its forces on the Israeli border playing a major role in its argument that it is the main power “resisting” Israel.
The Israeli government is also under increasing pressure to take action from residents of the area, keen to return to their homes.
“We are terrified here,” said Benny Pilveri, 62, a manager at a large egg farm in Dovev, on the border with Lebanon. “We need to get rid of Hezbollah, get them far away from the border.”
For historic reasons, the border area is home to 70 per cent of Israel’s egg production, and Pilveri and two colleagues, who have evacuated with their families to Tiberias further south, return every day to collect the eggs from the 250,000 chickens they oversee. Their coops were hit by a Hezbollah rocket two weeks ago, only eggs and no chickens were destroyed, and another rocket hit and killed an electrician restoring power to the farm.
The three men bring a bottle of cognac with them on their daily mission, which they say helps numb the fear. But they agree this is not a long-term solution.
Israel Yakouti, Dovev’s mayor, said the government wanted the community to invest millions of dollars in new coops, but this was unrealistic without security. “There’s no way people are going to come back while this is all happening,” he said.
The other concern is that the IDF, already seen by some as having set itself unreasonable goals in Gaza by insisting it will “eradicate Hamas”, would be taking an even bigger risk in trying to take on Hezbollah, a larger and better equipped force.
The IDF’s performance in the 2006 war was widely regarded as poor, including by its own officers. They insist, however, that lessons have been learned and Hezbollah, now battle-hardened from its role in the Syrian war, will not be under-estimated again.
At a watch-tower on the border yesterday, a sergeant who gave his name as Itai, a veteran of the 2006 war who has been called up again from the reserves, said he was now much better trained for the sort of guerilla fighting at which Hezbollah excels.
“What happened in 2006 was a total disaster,” he said. “But we will not make the same mistakes again.”
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