Israel is already at war in the North, escalation with Lebanon is inevitable - opinion

Close to 100,000 Israelis from the North are currently evacuated from their homes. For years they have heard much about threats of Hezbollah infiltrating into Israel, attacking Israeli communities on the northern border, and kidnapping Israelis into Lebanon, but the threat was never truly taken seriously. 

That changed instantly on October 7, when Hamas infiltrated into southern Israel, massacring and kidnapping Israelis. 

It is not just the threat of infiltration that Israelis in the North fear. They also fear their homes being shot at by missiles as Iranian-backed Hezbollah forces have been doing, day after day, for the past few months.

Today’s reality of Israel’s northern border is that while perhaps called officially by another name, there is already a war taking place. It’s on a low flame, but it is war. 

Why is full-scale war with Lebanon inevitable?

It is inevitable that the current conflict will continue to escalate into a full-scale war with Lebanon for one simple reason: No Israelis from the North will be returning to their homes until they feel absolutely confident that it will be safe for them to live there. Otherwise, they are not going back. 

No diplomatic solution will bring that level of security because no one believes any longer that such diplomacy will last. United Nations Resolution 1701 from 2006 has been ignored by the international community, which was supposed to keep Hezbollah far from the border and stop their stockpiling of rockets. 

Even if Israel were forced into another diplomatic “solution,” many Israelis would not return to their homes up north, knowing that the international community cannot be relied upon to prevent attacks from Lebanon that would endanger their lives.

On top of this, Israel can no longer allow Iran’s octopus terror network to terrorize us. For years, Iran has developed a terror network in Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Judea & Samaria, and Gaza, as well as Lebanon. 

With each day, this terror network endangers Israeli lives more and more.

Israel must put an end to the Iranian regime’s threat to Israeli lives on Israel’s borders, and that can only be done by Israel finally destroying the Iranian capabilities in Lebanon.

Just as the war in Gaza is a just war, so too is the inevitable war in Lebanon. It is actually the same war, just on different fronts. 

Which brings up the final reason why war with Lebanon is inevitable.

October 7 has taught the Israeli people two important lessons:

1. Our enemies are not killing us because of where we live in Israel but because we are Jews living in Israel.
2. Appeasement does not work.

That is why the majority of the Jewish people in Israel today expect our leaders to finish the job with a total victory. They no longer want to live in fear of another October 7 – not from Gaza, Lebanon, Judea & Samaria, or from an enemy population within Israel.

Our leaders will only be able to deliver on finishing the job with total victory with a war up north.

Ultimately, Israelis have learned the very hard and painful way that despite our years of trying to make peace via various diplomatic solutions, we finally must have a clear and total victory over our enemies to properly deter them from ever contemplating attacking us again. Finally going to war to destroy the Iranian terror apparatus in Lebanon is a much-needed step for Israel to regain its position of deterrence in the region. 

However, destroying the Iranian threat on our northern border still ignores the root cause of our conflict. Israel must finally recognize that the reason the Shiite Iranian regime joined with the Qatari Sunni regime to destroy Israel by supporting Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Palestinian Authority is because our conflict is not a land conflict but a religious conflict, which is why they called this war Al Aqsa Flood.

As previously stated, Israelis have learned the hard way that our Arab Muslim enemies are not killing us because of where we live in Israel or because of our political opinions but because of who we are, Jews.

Our future in Israel is bright after we defeat our enemies militarily and as we stand up for ourselves and our rights as the proud, historic people of Israel, resettling our ancestral homeland after overcoming more than 2,000 years of exile and persecution, to have returned as sovereign in our ancestral homeland. 

No more ignoring that truth. We should proudly own that truth.

No more appeasing our enemies. 

Ultimately, that is the true deterrence. ■

Avi Abelow is host of the Pulse of Israel podcast and CEO of 12Tribe Films Foundation.