Nearly a year has passed since Hezbollah initiated a mid-intensity conflict with Israel, ostensibly to “support” Hamas in Gaza (a goal it failed to achieve) and, more significantly, as part of Iran’s multi-front strategy of attrition. As the nature of the fighting in Gaza evolves – it is now essentially a mopping-up phase of operations – and following the IDF’s successful preventive attack on Hezbollah on August 25, 2024, Israel faces a choice between four options in the North:

1. More of the Same: Continuation of the ongoing war of attrition, preventing the return of tens of thousands of Israelis to their homes.
   
   
2. A diplomatic solution: A problematic but perhaps possible diplomatic arrangement leading to the withdrawal of Hezbollah strike forces beyond the Litani River.
   
   
3. All-Out War with Lebanon as a State: A war waged mainly from the air, with a high cost exacted in terms of Lebanon’s national infrastructure if Israeli civilian targets are extensively attacked.
   
   
4. A ground assault aimed at destroying Hezbollah’s main forces. This option will undoubtedly lead to casualties among non-combatants trapped in the crossfire, but the purpose would be to diminish Hezbollah’s capabilities, not to devastate Lebanon).

Of these four options, the latter offers potential for a strategic shift in relations with Lebanon in the post-conflict era and would have the most profound impact on the region-wide confrontation with Iran and its proxies.

The Goals of Hezbollah’s War of Attrition

Why did Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah order his organization to launch a campaign of limited yet painful attacks on Israel the day after Hamas’ assault in southern Israel? Officially, he claimed that by opening another front – alongside the Houthis from Yemen, and other Iranian proxies in the region – he would alleviate IDF pressure on Gaza. But this is not what happened: once the IDF fully mobilized its reserves, it had (and continues to have) the necessary resources to fight off Hezbollah’s challenge while systematically diminishing Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s (PIJ) capabilities in Gaza.

Still, Hezbollah persisted in this effort – which has led to the depopulation of a significant swathe of northern Israel, the death of nearly 20 soldiers and more than 20 civilians (including 12 children killed in Majdal-Shams on July 27, 2024) and extensive material damage and forest fires. It came at an even higher cost for the organization, which has lost its military commander, Fu’ad Shukr, and nearly 500 of its men in Israeli preventive and retaliatory raids.  Lebanon meanwhile faces an ever-deepening internal and economic crisis exacerbated by the flight of tens of thousands from south Lebanon.

Nasrallah’s directives, in other words, have little to do with the situation in Gaza, which Hezbollah has been unable to change. They reflect the need for Hezbollah to justify to itself and to the Lebanese its ongoing stranglehold on the state – presumably, to enable it to carry out its “Jihadi” mission. Its actions are also the inevitable derivative of Iran’s much broader strategy of conducting a proxy war of attrition aimed at breaking the resilience of Israeli society and ultimately creating the conditions for the elimination of the “fake Zionist regime” (as outlined in Supreme leader Ali Khamenei ‘s “roadmap” tweet of November 2014).

At the same time, the events of August 25   – when  the IDF effectively pre-empted a large-scale revenge attack, aimed at high-value targets in central Israel, and Nasrallah responded by claiming fantasy achievements and then returning to the existing pattern of limited strikes – clearly indicate that Hezbollah is under considerable constraint not to expand the war further at its own initiative, given that a distinct majority of Lebanese, of all confessional groups, fail to see why their country, already on  the verge of collapse, should be dragged into war in the service of a foreign power, namely Iran. In any event, the limited attrition war suits Iran’s strategy.

The First Option: More of the Same

Given this significant constraint, it is likely that, with the “revenge for Shukr’s death” now out of the way, Hezbollah will choose to continue the war’s present trajectory – while Iran plans its own revenge (probably by igniting action in Judea and Samaria based on the infrastructure it has developed there). Israel has faced this pattern of Hezbollah attacks on its military bases and on towns and villages close to the border for nearly a year now – some places, like the town of Metula and Kibbutz Ramim (Manara) have suffered extensive damage, with many of their houses in ruins – and may well be able, in practical terms, to sustain this pattern for months to come: most of the population from these areas has been evacuated early on, and the loss of life has been limited.

This option, however, is becoming increasingly unpalatable, strategically and politically for Israel. The range of Hezbollah drone and rocket attacks (as distinct from anti-tank weapons fired directly into houses near the border) means that residents in a much broader area are now under threat. Hezbollah’s continued preparations for an “October 7-style” invasion leave many Israelis fearful for their future unless the presence of the “Radwan Force” – Hezbollah’s equivalent of Hamas’ “Nukhba” (elite) troops – is removed well away from the border.

Above all, from the perspective of foundational principles, doing so constitutes an essential contradiction to any government’s responsibility towards all its citizens – as well as with the basic Zionist ethos – to allow a significant part of the country to remain de-populated indefinitely. Hence the increasingly salient statements by political and military leaders alike regarding their commitment to make it possible for the evacuated families to return safely to their homes (or at least to their hometowns, given the scope of the damage to many houses).

The Second Option: A Diplomatic Solution

In theory at least, one way to achieve the goal of allowing the residents of northern Israel to return home safely is to come to an agreement – indirectly, given the utter refusal of Hezbollah or the frightened Lebanese state to sit at any negotiating table with Israel – which would involve effective implementation of UNSCR 1701 (passed in 2006 to end the Second Lebanon War, but never implemented – at least not in terms of removing Hezbollah’s presence along the border region or limiting its rearmament). The assumption is that Israel would offer a symbolic gesture as regards the delineation of the land border (the sea border between the respective EEZs was agreed in 2022), and in return Hezbollah would withdraw from southern Lebanon and the Lebanese military would replace it, while UNIFIL would be charged with ensuring Hezbollah does not return. In the context of an end to the fighting in Gaza, peace would return to the north, and Israel would be able to recover its lost sovereign rights and allow the evacuees to return.

All this is tempting enough for the U.S. administration – represented by veteran negotiator Amos Hochstein, who put together the controversial maritime deal two years ago – as well as the French (dancing, as usual, to their own tune) to try and negotiate such a deal. Given the sentiments of the majority of Lebanese, and the basic preference of the Israeli government to avoid an all-out war, there is at least some prospect for the success of their endeavors: after all, on October 11, 2024, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the key partners who joined his wartime cabinet that day – former Chiefs of Staff Benny Gantz and Gadi Eizenkot – decided to take President Joe Biden’s advice not to expand the war, despite the proposals put forward by the IDF and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for decisive action against Hezbollah.

Still, there are several reasons why this may well turn out to be a false promise:

1. Few Israelis trust either the UN or the Lebanese Army to deliver – the implementation of UNSCR 1701 has been an abject failure, and some of the Lebanese Army brigades are in Hezbollah’s grip. A deal, in other words, may not suffice to persuade the evacuees to return.
   
   
2. Politically, the cost of a deal with Hezbollah – given Netanyahu’s own attacks on the maritime agreement, during his election campaign against Prime Minister Yair Lapid in 2022 – may prove to be high.
   
   
3. Hezbollah, for its part, may be tempted to raise new demands, in pursuit of a strategy of demoralization and attrition which serves the interests of Iran. It may also have come to doubt, over time, the credibility of Israeli threats that the alternative would be an Israeli military initiative.
   
   
4. In any case, the prospects for the deal seem to depend on a cease fire in Gaza – giving Hamas every reason to resist any compromise, since it is Yahya Sinwar who thus holds the key to escalation in Lebanon (which he very much hopes for).
   
   
5. Finally, even if achieved, such a deal is unlikely to last long, given the increasingly volatile situation created by the acceleration of Iran’s nuclear project, and the near certainty that if Israel (or the U.S.) would act, Hezbollah would be pushed by Iran to use all that it has to exact a price.

The Third Option: All-Out War with Lebanon as a State

The argument has been made again and again by knowledgeable Israelis that under these circumstances, the IDF should position itself to dominate the escalation ladder by preparing to attack the Lebanese  state’s  assets – given its almost symbiotic relationship with Hezbollah – and make the cost of continued attacks on Israel prohibitively high by destroying its already fragile national infrastructure, forcing Lebanon to turn against Hezbollah, and finally curb its activity from Lebanese soil.

The upside of such a focus of action is obvious: It would be primarily an Israeli Air Force mission, it could reach easy targets with little effort, exact a high price, and avoid the searing experiences of past ground incursions.

The downside, however, is equally obvious. The lessons of previous rounds, in both Lebanon and Gaza, point to the limited impact of serious harm to significant infrastructure and civilians on the willingness of the hybrid terrorist/government entity to accept Israel’s terms. There is no guarantee that destroying Lebanon’s ports, roads and power stations would induce Hezbollah, a Jihadi organization, to cease and desist. Its ability to strike deep inside Israel would not be sufficiently degraded from the air. International reactions may become quite sharp, undermining the legitimacy of Israel’s assault; and ultimately, Israel does not have an interest in seeing Lebanon as a state collapse into the chaotic conditions of a failed state, drawing Israel in and burdening it with responsibility for its reconstruction.

The Fourth Option: Focusing on Reducing Hezbollah

A rather different way to conceive an all-out campaign in Lebanon is to focus, in strategic and operational terms, on the actual destruction of Hezbollah’s capabilities as swiftly and thoroughly  as possible – bearing in mind that harm to non-combatants is inevitable in this type of warfare, but Lebanon in itself – and its citizens – are not the target. The manner in which Israel retaliated for the butchery in Majdal Shams, with a pin-point strike against Hezbollah’s most senior military figure, indicates a preference for such action over an extended attack on Lebanon as such.

This course of action would come at a higher price in lives lost and require the capability (increasingly practiced in Gaza) to combine aggressive ground maneuver, effective support by fire, extensive measures to protect the civilian communities against missile and drone attacks, and the level of detailed operational intelligence already demonstrated to a remarkable extent on August 25. It will necessarily pose serious policy dilemmas as it threatens to draw in new players.

Still, despite the difficulties of the actual fighting on the ground, the fourth option would seem to be the preference of the defense establishment. It would reduce the tensions brewing up with Washington; give Israel the political window enabling the IDF to carry on; and would help create political conditions, once the fighting is over, for those Lebanese who hate Hezbollah to join forces against it while building up (perhaps) a better relationship with Israel. Among difficult options, this may turn out to be the preferred choice.

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