There is no question that Israel and the IDF had to respond and respond strongly when Hezbollah attacked the Jewish state on March 2, two days after Israel started attacking Iran.
Most Israeli defense officials also agree that the IDF needed to invade southern Lebanon again to eliminate any possible invasion threat, to make it harder for Hezbollah to strike Israeli civilian towns in the North, to put pressure on Hezbollah to either disarm or reduce its activities threatening Israel, and maybe to advance Israel-Lebanese government normalization efforts.
But what has Israel been doing in southern Lebanon since the April 7 ceasefire with Iran?
And even more controversial, what has Israel been doing in southern Lebanon since the framework deal last Wednesday with Iran?
These questions are not about an Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon for nothing.
They are about what, exactly, Israel can actually get in return for a full or partial withdrawal, compared to the inflated expectations that top political and some top defense officials have presented to the public.
In addition, these questions are about how far into southern Lebanon should the IDF have gone to achieve these objectives, at what points might the IDF have continued for tactical gains leading to strategic losses, and at what point or points should the IDF have just stopped shooting and advancing because the policies of US President Donald Trump had made it clear that he was imposing a ceiling on what we could get from additional fighting in that arena.
A growing number of IDF officials are raising questions
A rising number of Israeli defense officials are raising these questions, though some do not want to go public because, in a post-October 7 world, sometimes hysteria pervades any idea that might hint at accommodating (or negotiating) with the enemy.
The latest extremely dubious idea making rounds from many otherwise highly intelligent and respectable commentators is that if the IDF makes a single negotiation or concession in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza will suddenly and immediately threaten Israel and be under Iran’s umbrella, and that Palestinians in the West Bank will be under this umbrella next.
The premise of this domino effect theory (during the Cold War, the communist domino effect theory itself eventually fell like a house of cards) is that Israel’s power in Gaza and the West Bank, and everything it has done in those locations since October 7, is meaningless.
This premise falls apart in the face of facts.
Iran has not attempted to intervene in Gaza or in the West Bank.
In contrast, within days of Israel assassinating Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah in the fall of 2024, Iran fired close to 200 ballistic missiles at Israel.
Put differently, the Islamic Republic has always been protective of Hezbollah, its main Shi’ite ally and proxy for around 45 years, and has never been willing to start a direct fight with Israel relating to Gaza or the West Bank.
And the reasons why are obvious: Hamas in Gaza and West Bank Palestinians are Sunnis who are not even always allied with Iran, and have short-term transactional allegiances to and with it.
Israel fights with these Palestinians almost non-stop, with periodic breaks, whereas the Jewish state had no big conflicts with Hezbollah from 2006 to 2023.
Iran will try to help Hezbollah because it knows Israel’s commitment in Lebanon is weak, less important, and less of a major issue in the first place for the IDF, whereas it is of extreme importance to the Islamic regime.
Also, if no one noticed, Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank Palestinians literally cannot launch long-term threats on Israel.
They have not, in meaningful numbers, since January 2024.
If they could, they would, but they cannot, so they won’t.
This does not mean they are not threats, but to jump from negotiating over Lebanon to the end of the world on all borders ignores that the IDF has changed the reality on the various Palestinian fronts.
But back to questions about what IDF soldiers are accomplishing (or not accomplishing) in southern Lebanon.
Post-October 7 Hezbollah
The first Israeli sin with Hezbollah in the post-October 7 “conceptcia” was that the IDF, by force alone, would be able to fully disarm Hezbollah.
Almost no Israeli defense officials ever believed this.
There is an interesting debate between Israeli defense officials who believed and still believe that Hezbollah could be convinced not to rearm as much with fancy long range precision missiles, or that maybe they could be forced to keep rockets and missiles beyond the Zahrani River (north of the Litani River), or that normalization with Lebanon could be advanced, or that the chances of Hezbollah not returning to southern Lebanon would be higher, based on IDF actions in southern Lebanon.
But what all of these scenarios – which can be referred to as mediocre results – have in common is that no IDF action in this war was going to end Hezbollah as a threat, as it would involve a full occupation of Lebanon by the IDF. No IDF official thinks this is within its capacity, that it might not work, and that it would very likely completely derail relations with the US.
Once one accepts that a Hezbollah threat will continue to exist, one also has to accept that using deterrence (a very bad word in Israel and defense circles after October 7) will be part of the formula, and that IDF actions in southern Lebanon should be evaluated based on how much they can improve that imperfect deterrence.
This also means that any actions that do not give a clear additional benefit might be in vain.
All of this brings us up to April 7.
Hezbollah, for a short time, embraced a complete ceasefire when Iran, the US, and Israel agreed to that ceasefire.
If we are being honest, part of what led to Hezbollah continuing to attack the IDF, and eventually northern Israel, after April 7, was Israel and the IDF’s decision to continue aggressive actions in southern Lebanon instead of completely halting IDF soldiers where they stood.
Top IDF sources told The Jerusalem Post that the decision was made to respect the ceasefire north of southern Lebanon, but not in areas where the IDF was already operating.
The purpose was to keep the pressure on Hezbollah to continue to lose its assets and fighters in southern Lebanon to achieve some of the possible mediocre results.
Has Israel come any closer to achieving any of those results in the 10 weeks since April 7?
It has killed several hundred more Hezbollah fighters, destroyed many more Hezbollah tunnels and weapons, and eventually even took over some areas beyond the Litani River and Wadi Saluki, all of which are sound tactical wins.
But other than possibly advancing the normalization process with the Lebanese government, which might have happened anyway based merely on the IDF simply holding its already advanced positions in southern Lebanon as of April 7, it is unclear that any of these military moves since then have netted Israel any strategic gains toward achieving its mediocre goals.
Some Israeli defense officials warned about this dilemma as early as April 7.
More to do with domestic Israeli politics?
According to some of these officials, the bigger reason the IDF was continuing to expand its activities in Lebanon after April 7 had more either to do with domestic Israeli politics – wanting to show Israel was still tough somewhere even if Trump was forcing it to stop bombing Iran – or with some Israeli defense officials fearing that if they did not continue aggressive moves they would be later accused of falling into October 7 passivity.
If these objections to Israel’s aggressive moves since April 7 are correct, then the strategy of trying to keep fighting south of the Litani River afterward was a failure.
Once the IDF kept fighting south of the Litani River and Hezbollah decided to fight back and break the ceasefire again, the military and the Israeli government had a new dilemma: escalate to try to de-escalate, or recognize that trying to ignore the ceasefire south of the Litani River had been an error and back off, accepting a ceasefire there as well.
Israel and the IDF chose to escalate with the hope that this would scare Hezbollah into de-escalating and accepting its aggressive actions in southern Lebanon as long as it left Hezbollah alone north of the Litani River and especially in Beirut.
Hezbollah refused this “deal.”
Iran also refused this “deal.”
But as of Wednesday last week, when the US and Tehran signed a new framework agreement, Washington had not accepted the Islamic regime’s demand that Israel would have to withdraw from southern Lebanon for nothing.
Rather, it appeared that Trump would use the Israel-Lebanon theater to pressure Iran to comply with the nuclear concessions it had committed to and potentially to move normalization forward with the Lebanese government.
Hopefully, these items are still on the table.
However, the Israeli government and the IDF have taken some particular risks in Lebanon since Wednesday.
They decided to seize a few more key topographic areas in southern Lebanon, such as Ali Taher Ridge in the East near Nabatiya, Tibnin in the center, farther north of Bint Jbail, and in the west near valleys leading to the city of Tyre.
All of these areas have tactical significance should the IDF need to engage Hezbollah in battle in the near future. They either provide new high ground positions or take away areas which would be ideal for Hezbollah to use for launching drones and rockets against nearby IDF positions in southern Lebanon.
In Tibnin, the IDF was also able to surround some 30 or so Hezbollah fighters who were trapped in an underground layer.
There has been a constant back-and-forth of retaliations between the sides since April 7. In some instances, Hezbollah violated a new temporary ceasefire more than the IDF, but in this particular case, the IDF's move to trap the Hezbollah fighters was especially aggressive and probably led to Hezbollah’s unusually aggressive volley of 50 rockets over the weekend (whereas most days they have “only” been launching a couple of drones).
Since Wednesday of last week, several IDF soldiers have been killed, and dozens have been wounded.
Was this worth it to slightly improve the tactical situation once Trump had imposed a deal that made it clear that Israel’s best-case results would be mediocre?
Once again, the question is not about what is right, fair, or just. If that were the question, someone would snap their fingers, and Hezbollah would disappear.
The hard-nosed question which should have been asked and likely been decisive on April 7 and again on Wednesday of last week was: Given the limits imposed on Israel by Trump, by Iran, and its own limited (however impressive) forces, should Israel have pushed to keep fighting and expanding its control of new nearby areas in southern Lebanon or should it have embraced a ceasefire in all of Lebanon, even the South?
All top Israeli defense officials would agree that Israel and the IDF should not withdraw fully or partially from southern Lebanon without getting some kind of mediocre goal as a price.
And if Hezbollah tries to smuggle in new precision long-range weapons, they would all support Israel returning to targeted strikes to prevent such a buildup as a lesson from the Second Lebanon War in 2006, when Israel ignored Hezbollah’s rearming, allowing its rocket arsenal to grow into a 150,000 rocket colossus.
But if Israel and the IDF are unrealistic about what that price will be and continue to think tactically instead of strategically about new military actions going forward, it will get harder and harder to argue that some soldiers will not be dying in vain.