Israel is now pushing to finish off Hezbollah once and for all

Much of the city was eerily quiet, swathes of Tyre’s population having fled north to the capital Beirut, while those who had stayed took what shelter they could from the intermittent colossal explosions in and around the city.

The now open war between the two sides, that was to last 34 days, had been precipitated by cross-border rocketing of northern Israel by Hezbollah fighters and an attack on an Israeli army patrol on the other side of the border fence, during which two Israeli soldiers were captured and taken by Hezbollah to Lebanon.

A few days after their abduction, Israel’s then chief of staff, Dan Halutz, in a television news broadcast, made Israel’s position clear. “If the soldiers are not returned, we will turn Lebanon’s clock back 20 years,” Halutz warned.

Fast-forward that clock the best part of two decades and once again Israel and Hezbollah are facing off with all the dire implications that has for the citizens caught up in this battle between these two implacable foes.

Speaking at the UN General Assembly on Friday, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that there was a Hezbollah rocket in “every kitchen, every garage” in Lebanon, which seems to suggest that every citizen of Lebanon is a supporter of Hezbollah. Not only is this far from the truth but it sends out a message that nothing is off the target list should Israel decide to escalate the war by putting boots on the ground with an incursion like that in 2006.

Only a matter of hours after Netanyahu spoke at the UN in New York, Israeli forces carried out a massive attack on Hezbollah’s headquarters in the southern suburbs of Beirut that appeared to be aimed at killing its leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.

An Iranian demonstrator shows a portrait Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on his cell phone during a demonstration in support of Hezbollah at the Felestin (Palestine) Square in downtown Tehran, Iran, early Saturday, Sept. 28, 2024. (AP Photo)

Nasrallah dead

At the time of writing, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) issued a statement saying that Nasrallah has been killed.

“Hassan Nasrallah will no longer be able to terrorise the world,” it claimed on the IDF’s X account. Hezbollah also confirmed his death.

In an edited 52-second video clip, of what appears to be a briefing alongside other army officials, the IDF’s Chief of Staff Lt Gen Herzi Halevi says that “in the end, after a lot of preparation”, the Israeli military “activated” their plan in Lebanon to target Nasrallah and Hezbollah’s headquarters in a strike. “It was the right time, [we] did it in a very precise way.” “This is not the end of our toolbox, we have to be very clear. We have more capacity going forward,” Halevi said.

The video clip, which was posted on the IDF’s social medial platforms, also warned of the its capacity to strike wherever it deems necessary.

“The message is very clear. Whoever threatens Israeli citizens we know how to get [them], in the north, south, or further away,” Halevi added, in what some regional observers say is a thinly-veiled warning to Hezbollah’s backers Iran over any thoughts of retaliation.

With reports of Nasrallah’s death and as Israeli air strikes intensified across Lebanon yesterday, speculation turned to what the next phase of Israel’s military campaign will be and whether a ground invasion like that carried out in Gaza last year is forthcoming.

Should that be the case, then just what would such an incursion look like and what would be its likely outcome?

The first thing to say here is that Israel has already made clear that its war aim in taking on Hezbollah is to create the conditions necessary for the return of 60,000 Israeli citizens to communities in the north of the country after they were displaced by Hezbollah rocket fire.

Netanyahu reiterated that very point even more forcefully in this speech on Friday.

“Enough is enough,” he told UN delegates. “We won’t rest until our citizens can return safely to their homes,” he said. “We will not accept a terror army perched on our northern border, able to perpetrate another October 7-style massacre,” he added, referencing the attack by Hamas last year that precipitated Israel’s invasion of Gaza.

But even to achieve this limited objective of making northern Israel safe enough for displaced citizens to return to their homes, the Israeli military would need to be successful on two counts, say security analysts.

The first of these would be to reduce Hezbollah’s estimated arsenal of as many as 200,000 rockets and short-range ballistic missiles. The second objective would be to push Hezbollah’s fighters north of the Litani River that stretches east to west across much of southern Lebanon, thereby creating a buffer zone.

Families gather in Martyrs' square after fleeing the Israeli airstrikes in Beirut's southern suburbs, Saturday, Sept. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

Demilitarised zone

BACK in 2006, at the end of the war, the Litani River was mentioned in UN Security Council Resolution 1701 that called for a complete cessation of hostilities between Lebanon and Israel, and the establishment of a demilitarised zone controlled by the Lebanese Army and UN peacekeepers.

But given that such a zone was never established and Hezbollah instead bedded down in the area south of the Litani, from which it was able to strike Israeli communities across the border, the IDF now appears to be preparing to move in to oust Hezbollah and occupy the area.

Such a move could prove tricky for the Israelis, even if they have spent the past weeks degrading Hezbollah’s command and control capacity by targeting its military commanders and leaders including Nasrallah himself.

During my time in southern Lebanon in 2006, I well recall seeing the extent to which the IDF faced stiff resistance from well dug-in Hezbollah fighters who were often very successful in striking at Israeli armoured units.

Since then, Hezbollah have learned many lessons and are an even more formidable force having trained up and expanded their cadres. They have also imported Iranian missile and drone technology and extended the network of tunnels – thought to be larger than Hamas’s in Gaza.

There, Hamas’s “metro”, as it has been dubbed, although dug through soft sandstone, has still proven hard to destroy, resistant to Israeli electronic surveillance, and an effective hideout for fighters and their weapons.

Many of Hezbollah’s tunnels are bored into rock and far more elaborate and sophisticated. And just as the IDF has spent years building an intelligence picture of Hezbollah targets, so too has their foe. With an estimated potential to fire as many as 3,000 rockets and missiles a day, according to Reichman University’s International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, Hezbollah has mapped out Israeli targets and studied how Israel responds to its drone attacks, including several that slipped past air defences.

“They learned and also we have learned,” said Shlomo Mofaz, former head of the counterterrorism arena at IDF intelligence, speaking recently to the Financial Times.

This weekend, the IDF continued to mass troops along Israel’s border with Lebanon in preparation for a possible invasion as they braced for Hezbollah’s response to their massive strike on the militant group’s Beirut headquarters.

Reporters on the ground in northern Israel noted a substantial uptick in military traffic along main roads near the border areas that are largely emptied of their civilian population after months of Hezbollah shelling. Military bases and staging grounds have sprung up, too, in the mountains and inside evacuated kibbutzim.

Last week, Israeli officials announced that two regiments of reserve forces had been called up to the Northern Command, the branch of Israel’s military engaged in fighting Hezbollah.

While the news signalled that Israel may be planning to escalate the conflict further, analysts who spoke to the broadcaster Al Jazeera remain sceptical that a ground invasion is imminent, requiring, as it would, far greater number of troops to be in a position of readiness.

Smoke rises from an Israeli airstrike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon, Saturday, Sept. 28, 2024. AP Photo/Hussein Malla

Less powerful

Two regiments “is not a lot, not for an invasion of Lebanon”, Ori Goldberg, an Israeli political analyst, told Al Jazeera. He added that in Gaza, Israel deployed a much greater number – and that was for an enclave that is far smaller than Lebanon and against a force in Hamas that is less powerful militarily than Hezbollah.

But that said, Israel has more troops in the north than it has had for the past nine months and the numbers continue to grow at staging posts daily. In total, it has three divisions in the north, the same number it deployed during the failed 2006 war, and less than the four divisions that fought in Gaza.

Should it come to a ground invasion, it would pit Israel’s troops, battle-weary after months of combat in Gaza, against a well-armed and hardened Hezbollah enemy on its own soil and now, in light of Nasrallah’s reported killing, perhaps even more motivated.

While IDF chiefs will doubtless be pleased with their decapitation of Hezbollah’s command structure, they know that having Israeli troops stepping on to Lebanese soil is a very different prospect.

Unlike in Gaza, where they vow the total defeat of Hamas, Israeli generals acknowledge it is near impossible to end Hezbollah’s dominance in Lebanon.

This weekend, there’s little doubt that Hezbollah is reeling from the killing of so many of its leaders.

The group’s officials concede that the recent attack on communication devices put 1,500 fighters out of commission because of their injuries, with many having been blinded or had their hands blown off.

But while events of the past days and weeks represent major blows to its personnel, it represents a fraction of Hezbollah’s strength, which a recent report for the US Congress putting it at 40,000-50,000 fighters, a number some analysts say is perhaps on the conservative side.

Since October, when Hezbollah began firing at Israel in support of its ally Hamas in Gaza, it has redeployed fighters to frontline areas in the south, including some from Syria, according to Hezbollah sources cited by Reuters news agency. They say that replacements for senior commanders killed have also been made.

While all eyes will be watching for the start of any Israeli ground operation they will also be focused on what Hezbollah’s main backer, Iran, will now do.

On Friday, Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, made his UN debut just hours before reports surfaced that Nasrallah had been killed in Beirut.

At the UN, Pezeshkian reiterated that his country did not want war with Israel and he seems to have the support of Ali Khamenei, the hardline supreme leader, to pursue diplomacy with the West.

But such overtures appeared to fall on deaf ears when it comes to Netanyahu.

The “long arm of Israel” can reach the “tyrants of Tehran” anywhere in Iran and the Middle East, the Israeli leader told the UN on the same day.

This weekend, there are reports that Khamenei had called an emergency meeting of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council at his home compound, in response to Israel’s strike that targeted Nasrallah.

There are also reports that Khamenei was then subsequently transferred to a secure location inside the country with heightened security measures in place, according to two regional officials briefed by Tehran who spoke with Reuters.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - SEPTEMBER 27: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at the United Nations headquarters on September 27, 2024 in New York City. World leaders convened for the General

Combating Israel

The sources said Iran was in constant contact with Hezbollah and other regional proxy groups to determine the next steps in combating Israel.

Meanwhile, the IDF’s Lebanon military campaign, which it has named “Operation Northern Arrows”, continues relentlessly. For Netanyahu and those right-wing ultranationalist members of his government, this is a showdown with Hezbollah they have long wanted.

It’s hard not to sense that they see this as the best opportunity ever to alter the political landscape of the region by destroying both Palestinian and Lebanese-based resistance once and for all.

It’s not surprising, then, that comparisons are currently being drawn not just with 2006, but with Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

On both occasions, Israel’s invasions and the ensuing wars produced horrific civilian casualties, and even when Israel’s military campaign was over, Hezbollah lived to fight another day.

It was the then-Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert who back in 2006, in the wake of that war, said that the most important lesson Israel learned from that conflict “was to teach ourselves – which is almost impossible – to be more modest”.

Olmert went on to add: “A full-on conflict with Hezbollah, which could expand to a full-on conflict with Iran, is going to be very painful, very bloody.”

But as events of the past few days have starkly illustrated, Israel’s military strategy in taking on Hezbollah has so far been anything but modest, and that doomsday scenario of a full-blown war between Israel and Iran is as close as it’s ever been.

As for Lebanon itself, a country no stranger to war and the pain and suffering it brings, should an Israeli ground offensive begin then the bloodshed inflicted on the civilian population could be on levels scarcely imaginable.