With Hamas severely crippled and fighting in Gaza winding down, Israel has turned its attention to its enemy in the north.
This week, Israel began launching rocket strikes against Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed terrorist group operating in Lebanon. Hezbollah has fired rockets at the Jewish state almost daily since Hamas’ October 7 attack, but Israel has waited to retaliate until now. That was strategic, political analysts and national security experts tell The Daily Wire.
Observers point to a handful of factors that motivated Israel to strike Hezbollah now, including the failure of diplomatic talks, the freeing up of resources from the Gaza war, and a desire to neutralize Hezbollah and return displaced Israelis to their homes in the north before the onset of the brutal Lebanese winter.
For months, those pushing for a diplomatic solution to the Gaza war hoped that such a resolution would also cool tensions between Israel and Hezbollah. In February, Hezbollah Chief Hassan Nasrallah said, “when the shooting stops in Gaza, we will stop the shooting.”
But Hamas has repeatedly rejected ceasefire deals, as recently as this week. As such, a diplomatic solution is improbable, according to Asher Feldman, executive director of the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy.
“It is becoming clear that a diplomatic solution would not work with Nasrallah,” Feldman told The Daily Wire. “The only way to force Hezbollah back to allow the people of the north to go back home was by launching a military campaign.”
According to Feldman, the chief goal of the northern campaign — officially dubbed “Operation Northern Arrows” — is to make the area safe enough for the 60,000 Israelis who have been displaced for eleven months to return to their homes.
Israel conducted four rounds of air strikes against 1,600 Hezbollah targets on Monday, including long-range cruise missiles, rockets, and explosive drones, according to the Israeli Defense Forces. The Lebanese Health Ministry reports that 564 people were killed and 1,835 people were injured in what has been the largest attack on the terror group since the Second Lebanon War in 2006.
The IDF says many of the targets were homes where Hezbollah stored munitions, and shared a photo of a long-range rocket inside a home in Lebanon. IDF Spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari added that many terrorists who were killed were near the munition sites.
Photos released by the IDF today showing a long-range rocket stored inside a Lebanese home. pic.twitter.com/ReCAIBZzTy
— Kassy Akiva (@KassyAkiva) September 23, 2024
Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said that some Shiite Muslims in southern Lebanon are “paid monthly rent by Hezbollah” to keep rocket launchers in their homes, which are used to “shoot rockets at Israeli communities on demand.”
Videos circulated on social media Monday showing secondary explosions of Hezbollah munitions set off after an initial Israeli air strike. Israel gave several evacuation warnings to Lebanese civilians in southern Lebanon near military targets.
“This is Hezbollah’s plan — to turn southern Lebanon into a battlefield for its attacks on Israel,” Hagari said in a statement. “We cannot accept a terrorist group storing weapons inside people’s homes, and using them to fire at other civilian communities.”
According to Brigadier General Amir Avivi (res.), Israel is well positioned to attack Hezbollah now that Hamas combat brigades have been largely destroyed.
“Israel couldn’t attack on both fronts at the same time,” Avivi, who is also the founder of Israel Defense and Security Forum, said. “At this stage, Israel decided to shift the center of gravity from Gaza to the north to create the deterrence needed to bring back all of the citizens of the north safely home.”
Avivi said Israel plans to be as swift as possible with its attack, using “everything that Israel has” to hit “everything that Hezbollah has built in the last 20 years: all of the technologies, all of the capabilities.”
Avivi added that Israel is “more than willing to go to a full-scale war if needed” including a ground incursion to degrade Hezbollah’s capabilities “to such an extent that Hezbollah is not going to pose a threat to Israel for a very very long time.”
Hagari did not rule out the possibility of a ground invasion on Monday, noting that the army is in “full readiness” and will do “whatever is necessary” to bring back the displaced residents to their homes in the north, the Jewish News Syndicate reported.
Some experts who once supported a ground invasion, like Feldman, have been pleasantly surprised by the effectiveness of the recent airstrikes, and now think an invasion may not be necessary.
“I think if you’d asked me that 72 hours ago, I would have said that the ground invasion is going to be necessary, but the success of the airstrikes has been unbelievable,” he said.
According to Jonathan Schanzer, Senior Vice President for Research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, with the Gaza war largely under control, Israel is less burdened by criticism from the Biden-Harris administration.
“The Israelis are getting an earful right now from the Biden White House, which has tried to restrain the Israelis from the moment Hezbollah opened fire on October 8,” he said. “That may have worked while the Gaza fighting was heavy but now that things are largely under control there, Israel has the flexibility to pivot north to tackle the next front.”
Schanzer added that any threats from the Biden-Harris Administration to withhold weapons — as it has done to influence IDF strategy in Gaza — may “prove futile if Hezbollah cannot find an off-ramp for the war that it started.”
“Israel is seizing the offensive for the first time in this war, and at least for now, it appears to be working,” Schanzer said.
Eugene Kontrovich, a professor at George Mason University Scalia Law School and scholar at the Kohelet Policy Forum, thinks the war has only dragged on because of the Biden-Harris administration.
“It took the IDF longer than expected to destroy Hamas because Biden was holding them back,” Kontrovich told The Daily Wire. “The Biden-Harris Administration inadvertently extended the war and extended it into the election season. If they had let Israel fight normally, both fronts would have been over in the summer.”
Kontrovich added that the latest offensive is important for boosting national morale ahead of the first anniversary of Hamas’ October 7 attack and massacre of Israeli civilians.
The coming winter may also be motivating Israel to get the Hezbollah situation under control soon, experts say. The winters in southern Lebanon are known to be snowy and windy, with temperatures sometimes below freezing. Such conditions would make a ground war difficult, according to Feldman.
Drawing upon the lessons from the Second Lebanon War, Feldman argues Hezbollah cannot be trusted to abide by agreements of a treaty, citing UN Security Resolution 1701, which stated no armed forces other than the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) should be south of the Litani River. After October 7, he says many more Israeli decision-makers are coming to the same conclusion.
“The resolution wasn’t worth the paper it was written on,” Feldman said. “Under the watchful eyes of the Lebanese Armed Forces and the UNIFIL, Hezbollah went from about 10,000 rockets and missiles to 150,000 rockets and missiles. They didn’t even pretend to follow the resolution.”
The United States is sending additional troops to the Middle East to help Americans fleeing the conflict zone in Lebanon, NBC News reported. The United States currently has 40,000 troops in the region.
