The October 7 attacks changed the reality not only in the south. The escalation on the northern border, and the understanding that the security situation there is unlikely, require Israel to examine ways to change the situation not only vis-à-vis Hamas, but also vis-à-vis Hezbollah.
Defense Minister Galant: "If Nasrallah makes a mistake, he will decide Lebanon's fate" // Photo: Elad Malka
The working assumption in Israel is that Hezbollah is not interested in war. Black Saturday taught the need to take any working assumption with a grain of salt, and yet if Hezbollah wanted to, it already had several opportunities to join the campaign.
The fact that it refrains from doing so shows several things: that Hezbollah and its Iranian patrons are not interested in wasting the military power they have built up for Hamas over several decades; that Hezbollah sees the pictures from Gaza and fears copy-paste that will destroy Lebanon; And that the organization is deterred by the American presence in the region, which could turn into active military involvement.
A threat of a different magnitude
Ostensibly, Hezbollah had an opportunity to attack at the same time as Hamas. He didn't do it because he was just as surprised as Israel. Nasrallah admitted this himself, and his organization took time to step itself to full operational readiness.
Map of Israel Lebanon,
This gave the IDF precious time to prepare for the campaign in the north: the settlements were evacuated, the reserves were mobilized, and along the border a deployment was completed that does not allow Hezbollah to implement one of the central principles of its action plan: raids into Israel by the Radwan Force, whose units are deployed in southern Lebanon.
But Hezbollah also could not be left completely behind. As a resistance organization at the heart of the Iranian axis of terrorism, it should have shown at least minimal identification with Hamas. He chose to do so by means of daily attempts to challenge IDF forces along the border, mainly by launching anti-tank missiles and mortar shells, and in some cases also by drones and drones carrying explosive devices.
The IDF paid expensive tuition fees in the first days of this fighting, but quickly learned lessons, reduced exposure and sharply reduced the number of targets available to Hezbollah. At the same time, he sharply increased the intensity of the attacks on Lebanese territory: not only the destruction of firing squads, but targeted attacks against Hezbollah's operational and intelligence assets in southern Lebanon. The result was dozens of fatalities for Hezbollah, which was forced to withdraw some of its forces from the border area in order to suffer less casualties.
IDF forces on the northern border, photo: AP
Hezbollah is also facing pressure from within its ranks to respond, which is one reason for the escalation of recent days. A second reason is parallel pressure exerted on him by Hamas members in Lebanon, who want to identify with their brothers in Gaza. Hezbollah has unleashed the restraint on them to act, but to a certain extent.
In general, the events of the past few days can be divided as follows: Hezbollah focuses on activity against military targets, while Hamas also fires at civilian targets (including rockets fired at communities in the north).
Seize the opportunity
This activity was also intended to confine the IDF with large forces to the north, in order to make maneuvering in the south more difficult. The IDF says Iran is trying to "undress" Israel – including by firing from Yemen and Syria – in an attempt to delay and disrupt its activity in Gaza. It is clear to the Iranians and their proxies that Israel has defined Hamas in Gaza as the main objective of the war, from which everything is derived, including refraining at this time from opening a parallel northern front.
Several senior officials in the political-security leadership believed that we should take advantage of the opportunity that Israel was attacked on Simchat Torah, that the economy was shut down, and that hundreds of thousands of reservists had been mobilized, in order to attack the greater enemy and arrange matters in the north as well.
Fire following IDF shelling in the village, Photo: AFP
It seems that the issue has been dropped from the agenda, partly due to American pressure and lack of legitimacy, and also due to the definition of the goals of the war. Although the IDF is prepared for war on two fronts at the same time, a northern campaign will make it difficult for it to focus on defeating Hamas and releasing the hostages in Gaza.
Therefore, Israel is waging a "fire campaign" against Hezbollah, out of a desire not to escalate into an all-out war. It's a delicate and explosive game that could spill over at any moment.
If that happens, the IDF will have to deal with a challenge of a different magnitude: an array of some 150,230 rockets, most of them short-range, located south of the Litani River, but also a large number of long-range rockets deployed deep inside Lebanon, including precision rockets with heavy warheads; dozens of advanced anti-aircraft batteries and anti-ship missiles; naval and underwater forces; the Radwan Force battalions deployed in the <> Shiite villages in southern Lebanon; UAV and drone units, and more.
Change from the ground up
This threat is intended to exact an unprecedented price from Israel on the front and on the home front. It created the balance of terror that has deterred Israel from attacking Lebanon since the Second Lebanon War. But the October 7 attack changed the equation, not only because Israel and Hezbollah have been bickering for weeks, but because residents of the northern conflict line will refuse to return home when forces are on the other side of the border that could massacre them as Hamas did in the Gaza envelope.
Nasrallah speaking from the screen in Beirut, photo: Reuters
The political-security leadership also pledged to change the situation in the north as part of the war. It has three ways to do this: first, by war or by a limited military move that will keep the Radwan Force away from the fence (although it is not clear how to uproot the enormous military array that Hezbollah has built in the Shiite villages in southern Lebanon);
the second - in a diplomatic move (although one has to be really naïve to believe Hezbollah, which has already grossly violated Security Council Resolution 1701 which prohibited it from deploying militarily south of the Litani);
The third is a different military deployment along the border, which will ensure a significant degree of protection for the communities and deter Hezbollah from acting against them.
Israel may have to combine several alternatives in order to achieve the goal of removing Hezbollah from the fence, but it must not be naïve. If there is one illusion that has been shattered in Simchat Torah, it is that Israel knows and will know what the other side is planning to do, and will know how to thwart it and respond accordingly.
Even if the current decision is to focus on the south, all eyes should be on the north at all times – in order to prevent an immediate war, but also to look for ways to fundamentally change the situation there.
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