Israel needs a broad strategy for Hezbollah, not just tactical wins - opinion

Whoever attacked Hezbollah this week not only executed the most extensive and precise military strike in history, but also did something that could potentially shift the balance of power in the Middle East.

For 11 months, Hezbollah has relentlessly launched rockets and explosive drones into Israel, and for the most part, Israel has shown restraint. 

Rather than unleashing the full might of the IDF, the Netanyahu government evacuated more than 50,000 citizens from their homes, effectively turning parts of the North into ghost towns and shooting galleries for Hezbollah’s anti-tank missile squads.

Did Israel receive any credit from the international community? Of course not. Instead of supporting Israel, certain Western governments and media were spinning narratives blaming Israel. 

According to this corrupt version of reality, Hezbollah was merely attacking due to the rising Palestinian death toll in Gaza. This narrative claimed that if Israel simply halted its war in Gaza, Hezbollah would cease its attacks.

As absurd as this was, Israel, in its effort to avoid broader conflict, tried to play along. It allowed a terrorist group to attack its sovereign territory, responding only to contain the situation and prevent it from spiraling into a regional war.

Israel had its reasons for this strategy. First, it needed to focus on one front at a time. Hamas in Gaza had to be crushed to prevent another October 7-style massacre. Recovering the 101 hostages still in Hamas captivity is another pressing priority.

To fight the war in Gaza, Israel needed as much international support as possible, especially the continued supply of arms and equipment from America. 

With President Joe Biden telling Israel to refrain from a larger assault in Lebanon, the government did not have much of a choice but to heed the advice.

Of course, there was also the fear of Hezbollah’s missile arsenal. While there is little doubt that Israel will ultimately defeat Hezbollah in a future war, we cannot ignore the devastation that Hezbollah can cause the Israeli home front, a scale not known before in this country. This, too, was a natural deterrent from going to war.

The attempt to contain the situation was evident throughout the past year. Hezbollah murdered 12 children in Majdal Shams in July, and Israel responded in a limited way; in Metula, Hezbollah destroyed around 200 homes, and Israel refrained from escalating. Even after more than 30 strikes were carried out on towns not evacuated over the past two weeks, Israel still held back.

What has changed?

SO WHAT’S changed now? There are a number of possibilities. One theory floated was that the boobytrapped beepers, which had reportedly arrived in large quantities in Lebanon over the past year, were on their way to being discovered, and that if Israel was going to detonate them, it needed to do so now.

While possible, just because you have a ticking clock on an operation doesn’t mean you press the button unless it fits into a larger goal, and in this case, the attack – if carried out by Israel – does.

The situation in the North has long been unsustainable, and while there was hope that a ceasefire in Gaza would put a stop to Hezbollah’s attacks, Hamas has shown that it does not want a deal. 

American officials made this clear recently, explaining that Hamas keeps upping its demands, making a deal almost impossible to reach.

Moreover, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has long yearned for a regional war. As long as he believes it is possible, he will continue to avoid a deal, hoping a conflict in Lebanon will draw Israeli forces north and leave his grip on Gaza intact. For Sinwar to see that this strategy won’t work, Hezbollah must be neutralized.

What has also changed is that the ground offensive in Gaza is largely complete. While there are still pockets of Hamas operatives in parts of Gaza, the IDF has completed its mission of significantly degrading Hamas’s capabilities and destroying its military capabilities. 

Last week, for example, the IDF announced that it completed its operation in Rafah, where it broke Hamas’s last brigade and destroyed most of its terrorist infrastructure.

Does Hamas still exist? Yes. Does it still have armed fighters and even rockets? Also yes. However, the next steps in Gaza depend more on the diplomatic plan that Israel needs to put in place than on the military. This shift frees up IDF units to move to the northern front.

Two options for how explosions fit into Israel's strategy 

There are two options for how the series of pagers and hand-held radio explosions fit into a wider Israeli strategy. 

First is the possibility that this is part of a larger preemptive strike against Hezbollah, and if so, it is quite brilliant. The people who were in possession of the communication devices were frontline Hezbollah operatives – some mid-level and some senior, as seen by the reports that even the Iranian ambassador in Lebanon was injured in the blast.

If you are about to launch a larger offensive against an enemy, it would make a lot of sense to take out its internal communications systems while simultaneously injuring thousands of operatives.

Even if this is not part of a wider war, there is still significant value in such an attack. 

As the past year has shown, while Hezbollah has had no problem attacking northern Israel, it has held back from escalating the conflict. In other words, Hezbollah wanted to show its solidarity with Hamas and engage Israel in a war of attrition in the North, while at the same time avoiding a larger conflagration.

Launching the communications device attack now exposes significant and deep vulnerabilities within Hezbollah. 

It is an intelligence penetration of the greatest kind, showing how the organization is weak and susceptible. If Israel can hack smartphones and boobytrap old-school pagers, what communication system can be trusted now? The likely assumption is none.

This can have a destabilizing effect on Hezbollah, and while the attack will likely not convince the terror group to stop firing rockets into northern Israel, it has the potential to make it realize that a wider war is not in its interest.

This boosts deterrence; if this is what Israel – or whoever is responsible for the attack – can do today, Hezbollah has to fear what that same adversary can potentially do tomorrow.

DESPITE THE success, it’s important to remember that there are significant risks involved. By the time you read this, it’s possible that a larger war has erupted, engulfing most of the country.

Such are the calculations that Israel’s government must constantly weigh. However, there is another critical consideration for any government: the exit strategy.

While the pager attack is significant, it is a tactical move on a much bigger chessboard, and any country that does something like this needs to consider how it wants the wider conflict that can potentially evolve to end before it even begins.

Unfortunately, when it comes to long-term planning, Israel’s current government has shown a vacuum. 

The lack of strategic thinking stems from a dysfunctional coalition dominated by far-right extremists and a prime minister who often appears to be prioritizing personal political survival over the national interest.

A war with Hezbollah may be inevitable, and it would always be wiser for Israel to initiate the war, when it is ready, rather than being caught off guard like it was on October 7.

Entering any conflict requires foresight. Knowing how you want the war to end is just as important as knowing how you want it to begin.

The writer is a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) and a former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post.