Can Hezbollah drag Israel into a long war of attrition, threatening Tel Aviv?
In October 2019, former Israeli Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot and the former head of military security and cybersecurity programs at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, Gabi Siboni, jointly published a paper titled: 'Guidelines for Israel's National Security Strategy.' This paper identified seven principles as key to Israeli military security. One of these seven principles is the reduction of the duration of combat or war. According to them, any war or conflict that Israel engages in must achieve its objectives quickly and in the shortest possible time to minimize damage to the population and the country's infrastructure, which increases the longer the war lasts. In fact, what Eizenkot and his colleague wrote in this paper is not new. Since its founding in the mid-20th century, Israel has adhered to the principle established by David Ben-Gurion: the principle of a short war, or a blitzkrieg, which starts and ends quickly. This principle is based on the fact that it is not in Israel's interest to engage in long wars, as they are not compatible with its military, economic, or social structure.
Israel has clearly diverged from the principle of a short war in its current conflict with the Gaza Strip, which has now lasted for nearly a year with no end in sight.
This has occurred as Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has pursued a wide array of objectives, most of which remain unachieved despite the extensive violence and destruction inflicted on Gaza, resulting in the ongoing aggression.
Israel's departure from the concept of a short war has incurred significant costs for Israelis, both military and economic, over the past 12 months. However, these substantial costs have not deterred Netanyahu’s government from embarking on a new and dangerous venture in the north, aiming to engage in a war with Hezbollah in Lebanon with the stated goal of securing the return of Israeli settlers to the northern regions of the country.
The pace of fighting between Hezbollah and Israel began to intensify in mid-September, and it is clear from the severity of the recent Israeli attacks on Lebanon and the statements of Israeli officials that the occupation is prepared and willing to enter into a comprehensive war with Hezbollah for the first time in 18 years, specifically since 2006. This willingness became very clear on September 27 when the occupation decided to assassinate the Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, by targeting Hezbollah's command center in the southern suburbs of Beirut in a massacre during which residential buildings were completely destroyed over the heads of their residents using 85 bunker-busting bombs.
Israeli officials currently have optimism regarding the duration of the war with Hezbollah, stating that it will not be a long war like their conflict in Gaza and that they will not allow Hezbollah to impose a war of attrition on them. In their efforts to ensure the subjugation of the party and minimize the duration of the conflict with it, they killed a vast number of the party's leaders, headed by Hassan Nasrallah. Some may view this optimism as unjustified, given that Israel has been exhausted for a year in Gaza, where it is fighting the Palestinian resistance, which is less armed in both quantity and quality compared to Hezbollah. They have neither regained prisoners nor did it eliminate Hamas rule.
However, the situation in Lebanon at this time is completely different from the scene a few weeks ago. Hezbollah has faced unprecedented harsh blows at the leadership and infrastructure levels, and this undoubtedly weakens the party's ability to withstand. However, there is still a possibility that the war between Israel and the party could drag on and not end quickly as the Israelis want. This raises an important question: why doesn't the occupation want to get involved in a long war of attrition with Hezbollah? And will the assassination of the party's leaders, led by Nasrallah, contribute to ending this war quickly or even before it actually begins, thus allowing Israel to avoid bearing another cost added to its aggression against Gaza?
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Lebanon was a hot topic of concern in Israeli society during the general elections held in 1999, which were contested by then-Israeli Prime Minister and leader of the Likud party, Benjamin Netanyahu, against the leader of the Labor party at the time, Ehud Barak. During his electoral campaign, Barak promised Israeli voters that if he won the elections and became Prime Minister, he would withdraw the Israeli army from southern Lebanon within a year. Netanyahu, on the other hand, opposed this step and accused Barak of offering empty promises to the Israelis. However, the Israelis believed Barak's promises and elected him as Prime Minister, ousting Netanyahu in the May 1999 elections. Indeed, Barak fulfilled his promise to the Israelis and withdrew the Israeli army in May 2000 from the security zone or buffer zone that Israel had occupied for nearly 18 years in southern Lebanon, aimed at securing the settlements in the northern part of the country.
Of course, a question arises: What forced the occupation to withdraw unilaterally from southern Lebanon? This question becomes more significant when we know that the Israeli army at that time had achieved considerable operational successes in southern Lebanon, meaning the withdrawal was not due to a military disaster on the ground. What is surprising is that this withdrawal occurred despite most of the Israeli army's leadership opposing this step. However, Barak challenged them and carried it out against their will, which means that the decision to withdraw was more of a political decision than a security or military one. So why did Barak proceed with this withdrawal?
Ephraim Sneh, the Israeli Deputy Minister of Defense at that time, stated: "Honestly, we are leaving Lebanon due to a weakness in the Israeli public's ability to endure. This is the truth, and there is no point in pretending otherwise." Sneh was referring here to the psychological impact of Hezbollah's military activities against the Israelis, whether in southern Lebanon or northern Israel, which primarily involved targeting Israelis with ambushes and Katyusha rockets. Katyushas are primitive, inaccurate rockets, and the casualties on the Israeli side were not significant, but they had a considerable negative psychological impact on the morale of the Israeli home front. This psychological impact was reinforced by a series of security incidents, most notably the death of 73 Israeli soldiers in a collision of two Israeli army helicopters in February 1997 while heading to the occupied security zone in southern Lebanon. In this context, the Israeli women's movement known as the "Four Mothers" emerged, founded by the mothers of four Israeli soldiers who were serving in southern Lebanon. the movement called for the withdrawal of the Israeli army from Lebanon, the protests against the presence of the Israeli army in Lebanon began to surround Netanyahu's office, who was still the Prime Minister. The demonstrators were chanting slogans like "Lebanon is Vietnam" and "We don't have kids to send to war." In the end, the general mood in Israel and the low morale of the home front were the main reasons that led Barak to decide to withdraw from southern Lebanon.
From this perspective, we can understand the important statement made by Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on September 23, 2024. Gallant said that the resilience of the home front is the key that allows the Israeli army to fight and achieve successes. He continued that we are entering days where the Israeli public must exhibit calmness, discipline, and complete obedience to the directives of the home front command. This was said on the same day the Israeli occupation army killed nearly 500 people, including women and children, in one of the fiercest airstrike campaigns on southern Lebanon as part of its military operation called "Arrows of the North," which caused tens of thousands to flee southern Lebanon and leave their homes.
The massive displacement from the south towards the Lebanese interior undoubtedly puts pressure on Lebanon, which has already been economically distressed for years. The Israelis are counting on this to create internal pressure on Hezbollah, pushing it to retreat and accept their conditions. In contrast, Hezbollah, despite the severe and unprecedented blows it has received, especially in September, which included the bombing of communication devices and the assassination of several of its prominent military leaders, including the party's Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, still theoretically has the tools to exert pressure on the Israeli home front from the north to the south for an extended period. This could turn the conflict with the Israeli occupation into a war of attrition characterized by a series of strikes and counterstrikes without one side eliminating the other. This is a nightmarish scenario that Israel is keen to avoid, especially at this time, as Israel is effectively transitioning from one war to another—from an ongoing war in Gaza to a war in Lebanon. The cost of the Gaza war has already exceeded all expectations for the Israelis, and it has not been paid for yet.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, while presenting the Israeli budget for 2025 at a press conference held in early September, said: "We are in the longest and most expensive war in Israel's history, and its cost will range between 200 and 250 billion shekels, which means between 54 and 68 billion dollars. Last February, in an unprecedented move, the credit rating agency Moody's downgraded Israel's credit rating for the first time in its history, which increased the cost of Israeli debt. This cost is likely to rise in the coming period after Moody's downgraded the Israeli credit rating again on September 27, but this time, the downgrade was two notches at once. Alongside this, the economy has been affected by the Israeli army's call-up of hundreds of thousands of reservists to participate in its military efforts, primarily targeting the Gaza Strip over the past year. Reservists make up about 71% of the Israeli army soldiers.
The presence of all these numbers in the army and their consequent exit from the labor market was one of the main reasons that led to thousands of Israeli companies closing their doors. All of this is happening despite the huge American aid approved by the Joe Biden administration in favor of Israel. Israel is currently, after reaching the end of its military path in Gaza and achieving the maximum that can be achieved militarily there, according to many American officials in statements to the New York Times, at a crossroads.
Either it continues its aggression against Gaza as is the case now without opening a second front, or it moves towards a settlement and accepts a deal to cease fire and exchange prisoners and withdraw from Gaza, or it heads towards war in the north. Each scenario has its own calculations and costs. The Israeli Institute for National Security Studies studied these three scenarios and tried to predict last August how the Israeli economy would be affected in light of each scenario.
The conclusion of this study was as follows: If the situation continues as it is and the Israeli army remains focused on Gaza, the growth rate of the Israeli economy in 2024 will not exceed 1% and the budget deficit will reach 8% in 2024 and 6.5% in 2025 and the debt to GDP ratio will reach 70%. However, if the Israelis go for the second scenario and make a prisoner exchange deal with Hamas and withdraw from Gaza and there is calm on the northern border, then in this case the economy will be better off. The growth rate will range between 1.5 and 2% and the budget deficit will be 7% in 2024 and 6% in 2025. The debt-to-GDP ratio will range between 68% and 69%.
As for the worst scenario of all, according to the Israeli institute, it is the scenario of the outbreak of war in the north with Hezbollah. First, the economy will not grow, but it will shrink by a rate ranging between 2 and 10% and the budget deficit in 2024 will reach 15% before declining to 10% in 2025 and the debt to GDP ratio will range between 80% and 85%.
What is noteworthy is that the researchers made their calculations in the third scenario on the basis that the war with Hezbollah will last only one month, meaning if the war between the two parties The longer the economic costs continue, the more they will increase. However, despite this, we cannot say that the increasing economic costs are what make the Israeli occupation keen not to get involved in a war of attrition with Hezbollah. Rather, there is a more important reason, which is the morale of the home front.
In 2004, former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Allon said that the Israeli public is the weakest link in the Israeli national defense strategy due to its lack of endurance. He continued by saying that the Israelis are not prepared to fight and risk their lives to achieve their goals. From this perspective, Hezbollah realizes that the best way to pressure the Israeli leadership and push it to retreat is to continuously escalate pressure on the Israeli home front, and this is done by keeping it under the fire of its missiles all the time.
The Israelis, on the other hand, understand the party’s strategy very well, which is why they have tried in recent days to ensure its failure and prevent the party from implementing it by assassinating the party’s military leaders, all the way to its Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah. Here, one might ask why the pressure on the home front throughout the past months did not push the Israelis to stop their aggression on Gaza.
The answer is simply that over the past 12 months, there has been no strong, real, continuous pressure on the Israeli home front. We are talking about the pressure that makes the Israelis, especially in central Israel, live in shelters. They are constantly afraid and their lives are disrupted. In this context, there is an important issue that we must pay attention to, which is the relationship between the center and the periphery in Israel. The two most important and largest ethnic groups to which the Jewish population of Israel belongs are the Mizrahim or Eastern Jews and the Ashkenazim or Western Jews.
The most affected by the current Israeli aggression on Gaza and Lebanon are the Mizrahi Jews because they are mainly settled in the outskirts of Israel in its periphery, meaning they are present in the northern settlements near Lebanon and the southern settlements near Gaza. Due to the ongoing Israeli aggression for about a year, they were forced to leave the homes they lived in, whether in the north or the south and migrate to the Israeli interior and have been suffering since then.
However, the suffering of the Mizrahim in the peripheries has always been a marginal factor that does not greatly affect the steadfastness of the Israeli home front. The steadfastness of the Israeli home front remains in danger as soon as the center of Israel is targeted, where mainly secular Ashkenazi Jews live, who are considered the country’s elite and the class that dominates the economy, academia, media, and judiciary. Therefore, the best way to pressure the Israeli home front is by pressuring the central areas such as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and pushing their residents to feel permanent This danger has not happened systematically and continuously up to the present moment, and this is because the Palestinian resistance in Gaza does not possess the appropriate missile arsenal to have this effect neither in terms of quantity nor quality. In addition, its ability to launch missiles declined sharply after the occupation’s ground incursion into the Strip in late October 2023.
At the same time, Hezbollah, which is considered the party most capable of pressuring the Israeli home front thanks to its large missile arsenal, estimated to have ranged between 150,000 and 200,000 missiles before Operation Flood of Al-Aqsa, has been clashing with the Israelis for more than 11 months within the framework of unwritten rules of engagement between the two parties.
The intensity of the clashes between them was either weak or medium, except for some quick, strong strikes from time to time, most of which were carried out by the Israeli side. Consequently, over the past year, there has been no real, strong pressure on the Israeli home front, neither from the resistance in Gaza nor from Hezbollah.
This situation began to change last September after a series of harsh and unprecedented strikes that the party was subjected to by the Israeli occupation, which began with the bombing of pagers and wireless devices, followed by the assassination of a group of leaders of Hezbollah’s Radwan Force in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
In response to these steps, Hezbollah began to strike intensively with missiles deep inside Israel, far from the northern border, where most of the clashes with the Israelis over the past year, then the matter developed to strike Tel Aviv, but what is striking is that the party, up until now, is keen to target only military installations and facilities, without targeting civilians or infrastructure. In fact, the party's insistence on controlling its response to the Israeli attacks, during which the Israeli Air Force launched thousands of raids on southern Lebanon, during which hundreds were killed, including women and children, and part of the party's military equipment in the south was destroyed, reflects the party's desire to drag the Israelis into a long war of attrition.
It does not want a comprehensive war in which everything is permissible, because without a doubt the biggest loser in a quasi-war is the party, and all of Lebanon, whose basic infrastructure, which is already fragile, will simply be destroyed. From this standpoint, it is in the party's interest that its war with the Israeli occupation be a long war of attrition, a war in which it tries as much as possible to absorb the Israeli strikes and preserve its survival.
In parallel with this, it applies missiles to the Israeli home front for a long period and bets on the fatigue or boredom of the Israelis and their inability to live permanently under fire. The situation in the shadow of the war of attrition will remain like a game. Fingers are biting between the two parties, each party betting on who will break the will of the other and destroy his morale. The first, and the longer the war lasts, the more it will extend everywhere. This is in the interest of the party and against the interest of Israel, which tends towards a quick resolution and hates wars of attrition.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said, “We will not allow Iran and Hezbollah to drag us into a war of attrition. They want to neutralize the threat posed by Hezbollah to them and force it to separate from the southern front in Gaza as quickly as possible.
In their quest for this, they broke all the rules of the game with Hezbollah that we knew and attacked the party with a series of harsh strikes, leading to the assassination of the party’s Secretary-General, Hassan Nasrallah. Until recently, almost everyone ruled out the Israelis taking such a step, considering it a reckless step that would open the gates of hell on Israel. However, at some point, the Israelis decided that despite the danger of this step, they could deal with its consequences. There are no more red lines, at least for the Israeli side.
The party, on the other hand, has not yet activated a comprehensive war posture, although there are doubts about its ability to activate this posture, in light of the huge losses suffered by its ranks, especially at the level of senior leaders, most of whom have been assassinated, the ones known to this moment.
The Israelis rely exclusively on the air force to exert pressure on Hezbollah, but despite the harsh strikes it is being subjected to, Hezbollah, it is unlikely that air strikes alone will succeed in neutralizing the party’s threat to Israel or causing it to lose its strength, a large part of which it currently retains. Estimates vary regarding the damage to the party’s military capabilities after the violent Israeli bombing campaign in recent days. A report published by Yedioth Ahronoth on September 26 says that Hezbollah has so far only activated 10% of its capabilities. In contrast, the Israeli media reports statements by Israeli officials that they have succeeded in destroying 50% of the party’s missile capabilities.
However, regardless of the nature or extent of the losses incurred by the party in recent days, air strikes alone will not allow Israel to defeat Hezbollah in a way that would secure the return of settlers to the northern settlements. The Israelis have launched an Israeli ground invasion of southern Lebanon, through which Israel will try to push Hezbollah north or beyond the Litani River and establish a security buffer zone similar to the area from which it withdrew 24 years ago. Despite the severe blows that the party has been subjected to, which are capable of completely paralyzing its leadership, the ground war in southern Lebanon will not be easy, but let’s assume that the Israelis actually succeeded in occupying an area in southern Lebanon and making it a security buffer zone to secure…
Their settlements in the north of the occupied Palestinian territories will not solve their problem or end the war of attrition with Hezbollah. On the contrary, it may cause it to continue for a period that exceeds the Israelis' ability to bear, unless Israel succeeds in forcing the party to reach some kind of settlement. The Israeli defense strategy to secure the Israeli home front in the context of the war of attrition is based on three elements: the first is the buffer zones in which there are security fences monitored by electronic devices, the second element is the shelters and protected places in which the Israelis hide as soon as they hear the alarm, and the third and final element is the multi-layered air defense missile system.
At the present time, Hezbollah does not need more than to prolong the pressure on the Israeli home front through missiles and drones, a significant portion of which bypass the Israeli defenses and achieve casualties, and even those that are intercepted, the mere sounding of sirens and forcing the Israelis to rush towards the shelters constitutes severe psychological pressure on the Israeli front, especially since it has become exposed to threats from various fronts.
To what extent can Israelis live with this situation?
Last August, retired Israeli General Yitzhak Brick warned in an article published in Haaretz that Israel would collapse within a year if the war of attrition against Hamas and the Lebanese Hezbollah continued. Considering that this was said in August, Hezbollah’s entity changed in September after the severe blows that certainly contributed to weakening it and neutralizing part of its danger to the Israelis.
However, its danger to the Israelis still exists and is strong, and the possibility of a war of attrition with the Israelis still exists, even if it has become less likely in light of recent developments. Netanyahu turned the tables and pounced on the party with astonishing speed that surprised almost everyone. Although his strategy seems successful at the present time, especially since it has not yet ignited a regional war as expected, no one knows to what extent things can lead soon. Despite everything, the round is still open, and Netanyahu’s insistence on attacking Lebanon and striking the party violently and almost without rules, and in a manner disproportionate to Hezbollah’s strikes, seems to reflect his desire and the desire of the Israeli leadership in general to re-establish Israeli deterrence in the region, which was greatly damaged after Operation Flood of Al-Aqsa, and to send messages to friends and enemies, most notably Iran, Hezbollah’s closest ally, which has so far refrained from engaging directly with the Israelis. It is likely that in this context, Netanyahu is adopting the doctrine and philosophy of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon regarding the nature, essence, and foundations of Israeli deterrence. In his autobiography published in 1989, Sharon, in the context of his discussion of the military clashes between the Israelis and the Arabs in the fifties of the last century, said the following: “During this period, my thoughts about the function of the Israeli army’s operations changed, and I reached the conclusion that the goal of our operations is not merely revenge or even deterrence in its usual sense, but rather the goal is to create a mentality of defeat among the Arabs and inflict defeat on them, every time.” We confront them and defeat them decisively until they reach the conviction that they will never be able to achieve victory over us. To achieve this, every time we come to strike them, we must cause them heavy losses.
Our goal must be to neutralize the Arabs’ desire to wage war against us and destroy their will to fight. We must convince the Arabs that war is useless and that it will bring them nothing but humiliation and destruction. This is Sharon’s philosophy, which Netanyahu seems to be convinced of and wants to achieve with enemies such as Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas, and with friends as well.