The war on the Lebanese front did not truly erupt until September 17, 2024. Throughout the previous ten months of the war on Gaza, the clashes between Hezbollah and Israel were limited and governed by an implicit understanding between the two sides. Since October 2023, Hezbollah announced its policy of supporting Gaza and its resistance through low-intensity attacks on a few military targets on the Israeli side of the border, to which Israel responded by bombing Hezbollah positions in the Lebanese border area.
However, Israel did not hesitate, whenever the opportunity arose, to attack what it considered to be Hezbollah centers deep within Lebanon, particularly in the Bekaa Valley and in Syria. In late July 2024, Israel assassinated Fouad Shukr, described as the highest-ranking military official in Hezbollah. In other instances, it sought to assassinate other leading figures in the party’s military wing.
On September 17, Israel successfully carried out an unprecedented and unconventional intelligence operation when it detonated at least three thousand beepers that Hezbollah members had been carrying for a few months, which resulted in the deaths of dozens and injuries to thousands among the party’s elements and civilians. The following day, Israel executed a similar operation targeting the walkie-talkie communication devices used by Hezbollah for years, leading to the deaths of several more, including civilians, and wounding at least a thousand of Hezbollah’s members. Both operations marked the end of the limited engagement phase and indicated Israel’s intention to open the Lebanese front on a larger scale.
On September 19, Israel bombed Hezbollah leaders in the southern suburbs, and the operations escalated into an airstrike campaign that targeted various fronts in southern Lebanon, the southern Beirut suburbs, and the Bekaa Valley. Air strikes soon became a defining feature of the war on the Lebanese front, comparable to the ongoing air campaign against the Gaza Strip since October 2023.
Israel soon assassinated Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah on September 27, and subsequently targeted Hashim Safi al-Din, a prospective successor to Nasrallah, on October 3, though the results of this targeting were unclear.
In the second targeting operation specifically, Israeli military sources claimed that Safi al-Din was in a meeting with several of the party’s leadership members in a fortified underground headquarters. Israeli forces had begun attempts at a ground incursion into southern Lebanon at various points along the border as of October 1.
This round of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which erupted over a year ago, has revealed the incapacity of the Arab-Islamic system to influence the war’s trajectory, whether through direct intervention or by taking effective action on the international stage. It has also exposed the limitations of Russian and Chinese influence on international decision-making, especially concerning crises distant from the close neighborhoods of either power. However, it is clear that there are complexities surrounding the positions and goals of the parties involved in the conflict on the Gaza front and the Lebanese front, and what these parties can contribute. In other words, the outcomes of the war in Lebanon are not solely related to the positions and aims of Israel and the resistance forces (Hamas or Hezbollah), but also to the United States and the extent of its support for Israel, as well as to Iran and its commitment to supporting Hezbollah.
The Israeli Approach to War in Lebanon Israel’s perception of the threat posed by Hezbollah predates the outbreak of the Gaza war by many years, due to the close relationship linking the party to Iran. Israeli planners have consistently linked the dangers of the Iranian nuclear program to the growing military capabilities of Hezbollah in Lebanon, which they view as an Iranian attempt to deter any Israeli initiatives aimed at thwarting the nuclear program. It is certain that Israel had been planning, prior to October 7, 2023, and even before Hezbollah adopted the policy of supporting Gaza, to launch a preemptive strike against the party. Widespread Israeli security and intelligence infiltration operations targeting Hezbollah and its leadership and communication networks reveal the extent of Israeli focus on the party for many years.
Voices within the Israeli ruling class have called for turning to the north and launching a broad campaign against Hezbollah since the initial weeks of Hezbollah’s policy to support Gaza. However, it is likely that the military leadership, which had mobilized at least 120,000 soldiers for the war on Gaza, viewed the Lebanese front as a heavy burden that would be difficult to bear. Since the end of August 2024, as the scale of operations in the Gaza Strip diminished, the Israeli army began shifting its focus northward.
The Israeli government’s declared goal for the war against Lebanon and Hezbollah is to ensure the return of Israeli evacuees from the northern border strip to the cities and villages they had abandoned since the start of the party’s limited bombing operations to support the Gaza Strip. Israelis assert that resorting to force to secure the return of the evacuees was only agreed upon after Hezbollah rejected American mediation proposals to implement UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which Lebanese forces have never fully implemented. This resolution requires Hezbollah’s withdrawal beyond the Litani River and the abandonment of heavy weapons by its forces positioned south of the river, as well as Hezbollah’s commitment to dissociate from the war in Gaza.
However, Israel’s publicly stated objectives for the war are not fully consistent with its prior perceptions of the threat posed by Hezbollah. Simply withdrawing the party to north of the Litani River does not guarantee an end to its bombardment of Israeli targets, especially since Hezbollah’s medium- and heavy-missile centers and drones are located north of the Litani, not south of it. Moreover, if Hezbollah were to abandon its Gaza support policy—if the party agreed to such a thing—it would not put an end to the strategic threat it posed prior to the outbreak of the war on Gaza.
The multifaceted nature of the war in Lebanon suggests that Israel has turned to the Lebanese front to deal with the threat posed by Hezbollah in all its political, military, Lebanese, and regional aspects. In other words, the objective of this front in the war is to put an end to the entire threat: the destruction of Hezbollah’s military capabilities, whether at the leadership structure level, the human resources level, or in heavy equipment, and politically weakening the party while restructuring the Lebanese sectarian equation. This includes paving the way for the rise of Lebanese forces willing to sign a peace agreement with Israel and targeting Hezbollah’s popular base through displacement and the destruction of properties and livelihoods, thereby undermining the Lebanese Shiite embrace of the party and diligently addressing Hezbollah’s military bases and capabilities in Syria.
Thus, it is likely that Israel’s airstrike campaign will continue targeting all facilities believed to be associated with Hezbollah, both military and civilian along with service facilities, and that campaigns of displacement against Lebanese people in the south, the suburbs, and the Bekaa Valley will persist, as well as the targeting of residences, factories, and farms in those areas. Additionally, there could be continued attempts to assassinate political and military leaders of the party, and ground incursion attempts along the border strip may evolve into an effort to occupy all areas south of the Litani, if possible, even extending to the bombing of targets outside of Hezbollah’s traditional areas of influence, including Lebanese infrastructure unrelated to the party or its constituents. The campaign against Hezbollah’s control sites in Syria could also escalate into an invasion of the Syrian depth.
This war path is suggested by the words of the head of Israel’s Shin Bet, Ronen Bar, who stated that the defense of the state and the people of Israel can no longer be achieved only from inside Israel but must be pursued from outside as well. This is also mirrored in Netanyahu’s address to the Lebanese people, urging them to take their fate into their own hands and learn from what happened to Gaza and its people.
Hezbollah’s Defensive Strategy Hezbollah did not initially wish to engage in a large-scale and highly intense war with Israel, fearing a repeat of the destruction it faced in 2006 and the devastation inflicted on its popular base and Lebanon as a whole. Thus, the party was careful to keep its support for Gaza within a limited framework, occasionally ignoring Israeli strikes that exceeded the low engagement threshold. However, Hezbollah was taken aback by mid-September by the scale of the Israeli strikes directed at it and no longer had any doubts among its remaining leadership that Israel was expanding the scope of the war, both on land and in the air, in Lebanon and Syria.
At the onset of the Israeli ground incursions, Hezbollah had, at least militarily, regained its balance and rebuilt its control and command centers. The strikes aimed at the party’s leadership do not seem to have significantly impacted its military wing’s status. Similarly, the mass detonation of communication devices affected the mobile communication network but not the one linking military sites.
The intensive bombing campaign over several weeks of fighting on the Lebanese front, less intense in Syria, along with consecutive assassinations in Syria and Lebanon and the destruction of mobile communication networks, has resulted in Hezbollah losing several thousand of its soldiers and cadres, and possibly an indeterminate part of its equipment.
It appears that, despite Israeli claims, Hezbollah’s capabilities for conducting ground attacks within Israeli borders have been weakened. However, the party’s military resources, both in terms of personnel and equipment, remain substantial by any measure. It is certain that Hezbollah retains enough resources to efficiently execute a defensive mission.
Hezbollah seems to be pursuing a twofold defensive policy: the first pertains to addressing all Israeli attempts at ground penetration and infiltration along the Lebanese-Israeli border, as well as any efforts to breach through the sea along the coastal strip from southern Beirut to Ras al-Naqura. The second is a gradual escalation of rocket attacks and drone strikes on Israeli targets, both in terms of the depth of the targeted sites and the nature of those targets.
Attacks that began to reach Israeli locations and villages close to the border strip gradually expanded to Safed, Acre, Haifa, and northern Tel Aviv. Targets that were initially limited to Israeli military positions broadened to include factories and military-strategic facilities. The leadership of Hezbollah hopes that the resilience of its defenses, on one hand, and the political, economic, and moral impact its attacks are expected to have on the Israeli interior, on the other hand, will convince Israeli leadership of the impossibility of achieving its objectives on the Lebanese front and compel them to lower the conditions for a ceasefire.
Since Hezbollah aims to halt the war on the Lebanese front before it escalates further, it has left the door to a political agreement ajar. This suggestion was echoed by Naeem Qassem, Hezbollah’s Deputy Secretary-General, in a recorded speech on October 8, when he referred to the mandate given to Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri to negotiate. Multiple reports indicated that the party is amenable to a temporary ceasefire for several weeks during which negotiations would take place regarding the implementation of Security Council Resolution 1701 and other issues related to the war (such as the connection between the Lebanese front and the war on the Gaza Strip). However, the statements from Hezbollah leaders have not yet clarified whether the party would agree to withdraw north of the Litani directly upon a ceasefire, if they would negotiate solely regarding the Lebanese front, or if they would insist on ending the war on both the Lebanon and Gaza fronts.
In his third speech since Nasrallah’s assassination, Naeem Qassem appeared more determined in resistance, confident that the course of the war would be determined on the battlefield, reiterating that Hezbollah’s commitment to support the resistance in Palestine is fundamentally a defense of Lebanon as well. Qassem did not mention the implementation of Security Council Resolution 1701, which has become a cornerstone of the Lebanese caretaker government’s efforts to halt the war, but he emphasized that the path to relieving both sides of the burdens of war, including the return of Israeli evacuees to their towns and villages in northern Israel, lies in a ceasefire, without revealing whether he links the ceasefire on the Lebanese front to one in Gaza or whether he now sees separation between the two fronts.
In general, it does not seem that the caretaker government’s efforts centered around Resolution 1701 cause concern for Hezbollah. What worries the party politically is the movements that began with meetings among parties and groups opposing Hezbollah in Lebanon, led by the Lebanese Forces headed by Samir Geagea. These movements seem to enjoy regional and international support and aim to recreate a balance of power in the Lebanese political arena, by electing a new president for the republic independent of Hezbollah’s will and steering Lebanon towards implementing international resolutions 1559 (issued in 2004) and 1701 (issued in 2006), concluding the war in Lebanon, and then disarming the party, transforming it into a purely political entity, while monopolizing arms with the Lebanese army.
Potential Developments in the Iranian Stance Iran is not a direct party in the war on Gaza or the Lebanese front, but it is a highly influential party, and its relationship with the war may evolve from sporadic clashes with Israel (retaliation and counter-retaliation) into more continuous and broader engagement. Iran has a close relationship with Hezbollah, which dates back to the early days of its founding that was encouraged by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in the early 1980s. While Israelis accuse Iran of being the primary supporter of Hamas, they see that Hezbollah cannot continue to exist without Tehran’s support and backing, and that the party’s decisions are, in reality, Iranian decisions. This has prompted Israel to target the building associated with the Iranian consulate in Damascus in April 2024, thinking of it as a center for planning, fostering, and coordinating supplies to Hezbollah.
Iran responded to the bombing of its diplomatic headquarters in Damascus with a missile attack campaign against a few military targets inside Israel. However, the missiles used in the attack were small and slow, allowing Israeli air defenses (supported by American interception systems, with Jordanian involvement) to intercept most of them, whether over Jordanian skies or within the occupied territories.
However, the Iranian leadership, after months of restraint and attempts to reach a ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon, felt compelled to launch a new missile attack campaign against Israel on October 1, in response to Israel’s violation of Iranian sovereignty and the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. This time, Iran used more efficient and faster ballistic missiles compared to those used in the first campaign, resulting in significant destruction of the targeted Israeli military bases.
Senior Israeli officials, including the Prime Minister and Minister of Defense, assert that Israel is on a path to respond to Iran, and that the response will be painful and precise. However, there are other indications that the Americans are pressing to stop Israel from escalating its conflict with Iran and from targeting Iranian oil or nuclear facilities. The Israelis need American assistance, whether attacking Iran should Israel choose to use its air force, rather than missiles and drones alone, or in defending Israel against anticipated Iranian retaliation, which gives the Americans the opportunity to intervene in defining the nature of the targets Israel could aim for in Iran.
It has been evident since the start of the war on Gaza that Iran, like Hezbollah, did not want direct involvement in the war and is particularly keen to avoid turning Iranian territory into a battlefield like it did during the years of the Iran-Iraq War. It appears that the pace, scale, and impact of the Israeli response, followed by the expected counter-response from Iran, will represent a critical turning point in determining the nature of the Israeli-Iranian confrontation. In the event of a strategic escalation of the confrontation, and if responses and counter-responses spiral out of control, it is conceivable that Iran could open the Syrian front and encourage its allies in Iraq, Yemen, and Lebanon to escalate their attacks on Israel.
However, Iran retains another role of equal importance in the political sphere surrounding the Lebanese front. Despite repeated signals from Iranian officials about Hezbollah’s decision-making autonomy, it is certain that Iran is the only party capable of persuading the party to accept a negotiation deal to end the war in Lebanon and is the party that can negotiate on Hezbollah’s behalf with other regional powers regarding the election of a new president for the Lebanese republic.
Yet, alongside the ambiguity surrounding Iran’s stance on the issue of separating the Lebanese front from the war in Gaza, it seems unlikely that Tehran will accept what Israel seeks to achieve, and what opposing Lebanese forces demand, especially the push toward implementing Security Council Resolution 1559, which implies a call for disarming the party and its transformation into merely a political force.
Shifts in the U.S. Position The Americans do not want further escalation of the war in the Middle East, or at least that is what President Joe Biden and senior officials in his administration repeat, especially with the U.S. presidential elections on the horizon. However, the Biden administration has refrained since the start of the war from exerting any tangible pressure on Netanyahu’s government, neither regarding the overall war strategy and objectives nor concerning the tactics used by the Israeli army and its methods of extermination in the Gaza Strip, which it has begun applying in Lebanon. Simultaneously, the United States has not ceased for a moment to respond to Israel’s military needs and demands, while providing protection for it in the UN Security Council and the International Court of Justice.
The Biden administration, which appointed a special envoy for Lebanon, has sought to contain the entire Lebanese front since the early days of the war and the onset of limited clashes between Israel and Hezbollah. The American proposal, which found support from France, revolved around a ceasefire on the Lebanese front, separating it from the developments of the war in the Gaza Strip, and the implementation of Resolution 1701 that requires Hezbollah’s withdrawal to north of the Litani and the deployment of the Lebanese army along the border strip.
However, despite reports that Hezbollah’s Secretary-General had agreed to the general contours of the American-French proposal before his assassination, the United States abandoned its efforts to reach an agreement regarding the Lebanese front as soon as Israeli ground operations commenced across the border; the American envoy did not visit Beirut until October 21, and with an offer that reports indicate renders Lebanon lacking sovereignty in the face of Israeli military actions.
It is clear that the Biden administration does not oppose Israel’s attempts to undermine Hezbollah’s strength and military capabilities while diminishing its political role and marginalizing it in internal Lebanese calculations, but Washington does not want Israel to adopt a path of destruction and extermination in Lebanon as it has in the Gaza Strip. Ultimately, Lebanon is bigger than Hezbollah, and it is a home to many sects and groups, some closely connected to the West, and it is essential to work towards returning it to the Western periphery rather than destroying it. This does not necessarily mean that Israel will always take American opposition into consideration in the long term, especially if it fails to break the Lebanese resistance in the south.
Although there is a lack of certain information regarding the U.S. political maneuvering in the Lebanese arena, it is certain that the American administration continues making efforts to attract the Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister and the Lebanese Parliament Speaker toward its perspective on Lebanon’s future and its relations with Israel. Washington also supports, and perhaps encourages, the forces opposing Hezbollah (led by Samir Geagea) to unite and make every possible effort to elect a new Lebanese president who is acceptable to the West, with a potential commitment from the president-elect to implement Resolutions 1559 and 1701.
The United States also agrees to direct Israel to deliver a deterrent blow to Iran, provided that this blow avoids strategic Iranian targets, such as oil infrastructure and nuclear facilities. However, it remains unclear whether Washington is willing to provide actual support to the attacking Israeli air force. What has been emphasized repeatedly by American officials is that the U.S. will effectively assist in defending Israel if it comes under anticipated Iranian retaliatory attack, which is what deploying the American THAAD missile defense system within Israel and the deployment of U.S. forces to operate it imply.
The American administration, or perhaps some factions within it, perceives increasing indicators of weakness for both Hezbollah and Iran, and that further calculated military pressure could enforce significant retreats from both in Lebanon and the region.
A Prolonged War with Different Manifestations Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the United Nations Secretary-General in a brief speech on the morning of October 13, 2024, asking him to withdraw UNIFIL (the international forces monitoring the Lebanese-Israeli border since 2006). Netanyahu stated that the presence of this international force obstructs the operations of the Israeli army in the south and endangers its personnel. Clearly, Netanyahu, who knows that the presence of UNIFIL forces is subject to a UN Security Council decision rather than the UN Secretary-General, intended his words as a direct threat to the contributing countries of the international force.
Shortly after the broadcast of Netanyahu’s address, Defense Minister Yoav Galant appeared to state plainly and unequivocally that the Israeli army would destroy all Lebanese villages and towns along the border strip, claiming that these villages and towns are nothing more than sites for Hezbollah. In the hours following Galant’s statement, the Israeli army issued a notice asking residents of Nabatiyeh, one of the largest cities in southern Lebanon, along with 25 other towns along the border strip, to evacuate their homes and move north of the Awali River, that is, north of Sidon.
By that evening, Hezbollah executed a complicated bombing operation against a training camp for the Golani Brigade, one of the oldest and most prominent infantry brigades in the Israeli army, near the town of Binyamina, south of Haifa. The attack launched by a drone resulted in about 70 injuries and four soldier fatalities.
This sequence of events indicates that:
First—Netanyahu’s government still insists on continuing the war in Lebanon, despite the inability of the Israeli army—half a month after trying to advance across various fronts in southern Lebanon—to make significant progress beyond the border strip. Perhaps due to this failure, Israel seems to be moving quickly to adopt a pattern of widespread destruction in southern Lebanon, similar to that previously adopted in the Gaza Strip. Alongside precise aerial bombardment at times and imprecise targeting at others, which has affected all Lebanese territories, the assertion that the war on Lebanon would be a limited military operation has become mere history. The Israeli war on the Lebanese front is rapidly shifting into a comprehensive war aimed at achieving Israel’s unannounced objectives, yet the Israeli army has still not managed to attain tangible and meaningful progress in the area south of the Litani.
Second—Hezbollah, which suffered painful strikes in September, has already regained its balance, demonstrating significant military coherence since the beginning of October with resilient resistance in the exposed Israeli breach areas in the south, and the ability to launch daily attacks with dozens of rockets and drones targeting especially military and strategic sites from the far northern area of Israel down to Haifa and Tel Aviv.
However, war on the Lebanese front continues in a frantic race between a path of continuous escalation and a path of disassociated settlement from Gaza and a ceasefire. Despite the apparent abandonment by the Biden administration of settlement efforts in Lebanon, or striving for political gains from the Israeli military campaign, and the expectation that Israel will aim to military destroy and politically marginalize Hezbollah, Washington has begun to realize that the Israeli assessments regarding what it has accomplished in the war against the party may have been exaggerated and that Israel does not seem close to achieving its goals in Lebanon. This encourages the Lebanese caretaker government—which maintains open channels of communication with the Americans and the French—to continue its efforts to reach a ceasefire based on the implementation of Resolution 1701. The question that remains unanswered is the practical feasibility of implementing 1701 from the Israeli perspective, especially since there are significant challenges surrounding the implementation of this resolution that relate not only to Hezbollah but also to Israel itself.
The war on the Lebanese front is also entering another critical race, awaiting developments in the Israeli-Iranian confrontation, and what the exchanges of responses between the two countries may lead to—not only in the upcoming weeks but also over the months ahead. Regardless of the nature and extent of the attack being planned by the Israelis against Iran, it is not unlikely that Israeli leadership will wait until after the American elections to deliver a significant blow to the Iranian nuclear project.
Conversely, it appears that Iran has yet to solidify its decision regarding the direction it must take in the confrontation with Israel: pushing Hezbollah toward a rapid settlement apart from the war in Gaza, encouraging the party and its other allies in the Arab Mashreq to intensify attacks against Israel, or attempting to open another front for warfare, particularly in Syria, which is geographically and strategically linked to the Lebanese front.
