Benny Gantz, a former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff who left his country's war Cabinet last month, was blunt during a security conference when addressing the ongoing conflict at the Israel-Lebanon border last week. “We can bring Lebanon completely into the dark, and take apart Hezbollah’s power in days,” Gantz said.
If there is anything Middle East experts can agree on, it’s that a large-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah would be a travesty for all involved. Inside Israel, it’s a different story; many Israelis believe another war with Hezbollah is inevitable, if not long overdue given the security environment Israel has faced since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack undermined the IDF’s perceived invincibility. The IDF have already approved plans for an offensive in Lebanon, and the language from some Israeli officials, including Gantz, suggests an operation will occur sooner or later. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for example, stressed over the weekend that more Israeli reservists will be deployed to the north as operations in Gaza wind down.
To Hezbollah, the Biden administration is making it plain that, while the U.S.-Israel relationship is tight, it can’t control Israel.
It’s a stark departure from where much of the international community stands. On June 21, U.N. Secretary General António Guterres told the U.N. Security Council, “The people of the region and the people of the world cannot afford Lebanon to become another Gaza.” Days later, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin reiterated to reporters at the Pentagon, “Another war between Israel and Hezbollah could easily become a regional war with terrible consequences for the Middle East.” Ditto German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, whose own rhetoric during a recent trip to Israel and Lebanon was nearly identical to America’s top defense official: “Another war would mean a regional escalation on a scale we can hardly imagine.”
Washington, for its part, has tried to prevent war in Lebanon by catering its messages depending on the audience. To Hezbollah, the Biden administration is making it plain that, while the U.S.-Israel relationship is tight, it can’t control Israel and it would therefore be wise for the U.S.-designated terrorist group to start cooperating on a diplomatic way out. Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to stress to Israel that, although it opposes a war, Washington will have Israel’s back come hell or high water.
President Joe Biden, though, needs to start getting real with Israel. Right now the administration is trying to have it both ways by stressing just how awful an Israel-Hezbollah war would be while echoing that the U.S.'s support is automatic regardless of what Israel decides to do. This is likely to embolden, not discourage, Netanyahu. And it’s a dangerous approach. What the U.S. should be doing instead is making it known to Israeli officials, both publicly and privately, that the U.S. doesn’t support a war in Lebanon and won’t bail it out if it initiates one.
Yet just because something is a terrible idea doesn’t necessarily mean it will be avoided. Israel and Hezbollah, two archenemies that have engaged in multiple armed confrontations over the last four decades, are in essence already in a war. Ever since Oct. 8, a day after Hamas’ deadly assault into southern Israel, the IDF and Hezbollah have turned the Israeli-Lebanese border region into their own personal firing range. Hezbollah has launched more than 5,000 anti-tank rockets, drones and missiles against various Israeli targets in the north of the country. Israel, in turn, has conducted airstrikes against Hezbollah positions nearly every day, killing high-ranking field commanders in the process. Nearly 350 Hezbollah fighters have been killed to date, a toll that surpasses the group’s casualty numbers during the 2006 Second Lebanon War. At the time of writing, Israel has registered a total of 25 deaths, 15 military and 10 civilian, on that front.
For most of the last eight months, the violence has been relatively contained to within approximately 3.5 miles of the U.N.-demarcated Blue Line, the unofficial boundary between Israel and Lebanon. The fact that tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border were evacuated allowed to keep civilian casualties to a minimum. Yet Israel and Hezbollah’s rhetoric, in addition to deeper Israeli airstrikes into Lebanon and Hezbollah’s use of more sophisticated weapons like precision-guided munitions and drones —one of which injured 18 Israeli troops this weekend — are a bad omen for averting an escalation that the Biden administration is working desperately to prevent.
A lingering internal displacement crisis is embarrassing for Netanyahu, whose entire career is premised on claims that he is the one man who can assure Israel’s security.
Despite Gantz’s aggressive language, there is some truth to it. Outside of the United States military, the IDF is still the region’s most powerful military force. If Israel can turn Gaza into a wasteland of rubber and rebar, it can certainly do the same thing in Lebanon. This isn’t supposition but fact; Israel has invaded or bombed Lebanon so many times over the preceding decades (1978, 1982, 1993, 1996 and 2006) that it’s difficult to keep track. The 1982 invasion, which aimed to disband Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization for good, was especially deadly for the country, caused considerable friction with the United States and resulted in a nearly two decade-long occupation that created the very terrorist organization — Hezbollah — Israel is now seeking to deter.
The 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war was deadly as well. Approximately 1,200 Lebanese lost their lives, as did 158 Israelis (the vast majority of whom were soldiers. Much of Lebanon’s public infrastructure, including the Beirut International Airport, was bombed. Even so, a new war with Hezbollah would make the 2006 conflict look tame in comparison. The 2006 war was a tactical success but a strategical failure for Israel, as it destroyed a decent chunk of Hezbollah’s offensive military capabilities but jeopardized Israel’s international reputation. The Lebanese militia was bloodied but not destroyed.
The Hezbollah of 2024 is larger, better armed, more experienced and more politically powerful today than the Hezbollah of 2006. The group continues to boast its insurgent roots but increasingly resembles an army, possessing as many as 200,000 rockets and missiles of various ranges. Some of those missiles can reach any point in Israel, which means that, in the event of a war, Israel’s critical civilian infrastructure — airports, ports, electrical networks and power plants — could be targeted. Millions of Israelis would be living in bomb-shelters as the country’s major cities, from Tel Aviv to Haifa, are subjected to barrages that the Iron Dome anti-missile defense system would have a tough time neutralizing. Israeli ground forces, meanwhile, would be fighting against an organization that learned a great deal about military tactics, processes and procedures after years of ground operations in Syria, where Hezbollah proved crucial in saving Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad from becoming the Syrian version of Muammar al-Qaddafi. In short, Israel would be acting against an adversary that is not only the Middle East’s strongest non-state actor but one that frankly fights more effectively than most of the region’s regular armies.
The main motivation behind a hypothetical Israeli offensive is to allow its people to return to their homes. This is both a humanitarian and political imperative — humanitarian because Israelis, like people anywhere else, have the right to live in peace; political because a lingering internal displacement crisis is embarrassing for Netanyahu, whose entire career is premised on claims that he is the one man who can assure Israel’s security.
Yet it’s hard to see how launching a full-scale war in Lebanon accomplishes this. Any war is going to produce tremendous materiel and physical damage, not only to the lives of ordinary civilians but also to the towns, small villages and kibbutzim that dot the Israeli side of the Israeli-Lebanese border. Israel’s economy in the north would be even worse off than it is today as more Israelis pull out of the area for their own safety.
Israel has to think bigger. Any war with Hezbollah increases the risk of Iran or proxy militias in Syria, Iraq and Yemen escalating their own direct involvement. It’s important to note that Hezbollah is Iran’s most valued asset in the region, a group that is meant to not only tie Israel down but to deter Israel and the United States from taking military action against Iran itself. While Iranian intervention of some sort is not a guarantee, it’s certainly possible if Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps believe it’s necessary to preserve Hezbollah’s longevity.
U.S. forces deployed in Iraq and Syria wouldn’t be out of the woods either; as demonstrated multiple times in the past, U.S. military outposts in both countries are opportunistic targets for Iran-backed militias who wish to send a message of disapproval about U.S. or Israeli policies. Although attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria have largely subsided since the Biden administration bombed dozens of militia and IRGC-linked targets in February — retaliation for a militia drone strike that killed three U.S. troops at a remote basis along the Syrian-Jordanian border — nothing is permanent in the Middle East. U.S. officials will have to be aware that, in any Israel-Hezbollah war, there’s a chance Americans wouldn’t be immune from the fallout.
The Biden administration should keep this in mind and conduct itself wisely with Israel. The U.S. may not be able to control Israeli policy but it doesn’t have to be trapped by it, either.