A Total War in Lebanon Could Only Spell One Thing for Israel – Total Defeat - Opinion - Haaretz.com
During the first eight months of the war, Israel's decision makers had no real intention of getting involved in a ground war in Lebanon. They made boastful threats, like saying that Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah "would be making the mistake of his life," but it was clear to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and the military brass that there was no point to such a conflict, because it wouldn't achieve anything that couldn't be achieved through diplomatic means, and the price was liable to be unbearably high.
But in recent weeks, the situation has changed a bit. Our humiliation by Hezbollah has become too much. Life in the north has been disrupted, drones have been penetrating our skies, Israel's vulnerability has been exposed and Netanyahu is having trouble swallowing it all.
And thus, suddenly, war "on the cheap" was born. No longer will we be returning Lebanon to the stone age or conquering southern Lebanon all the way to the Litani River. Instead, we're talking about a limited ground maneuver that would penetrate only a few kilometers into the country. Its main goal would be to tell residents of the north that the threat of a cross-border ground attack like the one the south suffered on October 7 has been removed, so they should go back home.
Although a diplomatic agreement has effectively already been completed, it can't be put into practice. From the start, it was conditional on an agreement in the south, and that isn't visible on the horizon. A deal for the hostages has become impossible, and we appear to be heading for a war of attrition in the Gaza Strip, in the unrealistic hope that maybe someday Hamas' leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, will fall into our hands, so we'll be able to say we won.
All these factors are, for the first time, making a ground maneuver in the north possible. But this would be a bad decision. The situation is difficult and humiliating, but a ground operation might well make it even worse.
It's hard to see how any benefit would be obtained from it. The IDF Spokesperson's Unit would talk about the soldiers' (genuine) courage, terrorists being assassinated and bunkers being blown up, but at the end of the operation, the Israel Defense Forces wouldn't remain in Lebanon. No one will repeat the mistake of the security zone Israel maintained in southern Lebanon from 1982 to 2000.
And once the army leaves, it won't be possible to honestly say that the threat of a ground attack has been completely removed. In any case, the parties will have to return to the agreement that has already been put on the table.
Israeli soldiers training near the northern border, this month.Credit: IDF Spokesperson
There's also an even bigger problem. Hezbollah's attacks on the Israeli home front are likely to cause painful damage, but also to turn the "little" war into a total war. Israel won't be able to avoid responding more forcefully to power outages and strikes on strategic facilities. Yet such a response now faces an almost impossible challenge.
Senior IDF officers have been threatening for years that in any war with Hezbollah, Lebanon would be destroyed, including its power, water and other infrastructure. Lebanon is Hezbollah and Hezbollah is Lebanon.
But in our current situation, with arrest warrants being sought from the International Criminal Court, a diplomatic tsunami and unprecedented isolation, could Israel actually bomb infrastructure in this bankrupt country, which the Western world is trying to keep alive by the skin of its teeth? And if we nevertheless do so, how will we be able to complain about Hezbollah's strikes on our strategic facilities – which will create numerous problems, among them, our transformation into a country considered dangerous for foreigners to invest in for years to come?
It's extremely regrettable that opposition leaders Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz once again aren't daring to publicly oppose a ground operation. This is a recurrent and depressing pattern for them, especially Gantz. An operation in the Gazan town of Rafah? We wanted this earlier, they say. Who's responsible for the hostage deal evaporating? Hamas. This behavior even occurred back when former U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from the nuclear agreement with Iran at Netanyahu's urging, as well as in their general attitude toward the agreement.
Gantz fears losing votes from the center-right. But along the way, he is losing a much more important asset – leadership.
What can be done in the north? There are no good options, but here is the least bad one: Israel should withdraw unilaterally from Gaza while declaring that the war against Hamas will continue and we're reserving the right to go back in whenever we see fit. We should then reach an agreement in the north, while substantially beefing up our defenses of the border and border communities in both the south and the north.
That is far from "total victory." But at least it isn't "total defeat," which is where we are currently heading.