On September 23, the IDF launched Operation Northern Arrows to take on Hezbollah and enable Israelis to return to northern Israel. In general, the IDF had spent a year on the defensive against Hezbollah’s attacks. Hezbollah had begun attacking Israel on October 7, 2023, following the Hamas attack the previous day.
Hezbollah has long been viewed by Israel as the main threat against the Jewish state. Now, the IDF is engaged in a difficult war against the group. Despite initial gains and surprises in which Hezbollah suffered major setbacks in September, the war is now slowing down into a routine in which the IDF is pushing forward slowly in southern Lebanon.
How did Hezbollah become so strong, and did the IDF wait too long to confront it? The Iranian-backed terrorist group has always been a competent and deadly terrorist group since its founding and development in the 1980s. The group not only threatened Israel but also threatened other groups in Lebanon and has targeted Western countries. Hezbollah has also grown tentacles around the world, which link it to financial operations that span Africa, South America, and other countries.
In many ways, Hezbollah grew much stronger than the state it was in. Hezbollah draws its recruits from Shi’ites in Lebanon. The Shi’ite population in Lebanon is historically a group that is poorer than the Christians and Sunnis and it is a group that suffered discrimination. It was not just poor but marginalized. Hezbollah feeds off this marginalization. It was able to catapult this group from the periphery to the center in the last decades.
If one looks at Hezbollah’s growth back in the 1980s, it was a disciplined terrorist group that was linked to the wave of Islamic awakening in the region, particularly the Islamic Revolution in Iran. However, this occurred against a backdrop of other groups embracing the Muslim Brotherhood. Hezbollah also gained allies as it came to confront and attack Israeli forces in Lebanon. Hassan Nasrallah rose to run Hezbollah in 1992. He was credited with helping the organization become so powerful that it was able to get Israel to leave Lebanon in 2000.
Once Israel left Lebanon, the group spread its wings even more. It had benefited from the end of the Lebanese Civil War in 1989. The war ended in a Saudi-backed deal that gave Sunnis more power in Lebanon. However, the real beneficiary was Hezbollah. It backfilled the power vacuum left by Druze, Sunni, and Christian groups laying down arms. The only militia that remained was Hezbollah. It kept its arms by claiming to fight Israel. When Israel left, Hezbollah began to conduct its own foreign and military policy.
It increased its arsenal to around 13,000 rockets in 2006. In 2006, it decided it could attack Israel, and it felt that Israel would accept this as just another “day of battle” in the north. Hezbollah saw that Hamas had taken over most of Gaza in the wake of the IDF withdrawal in 2005. Hamas was riding high and had kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Schalit in June 2006. Israel launched an operation Gaza in response to the attack that led to Schalit’s kidnapping. Hezbollah saw Israel’s operation and judged Israel to be weak. Hezbollah attacked on July 12, 2006, and kidnapped the bodies of two soldiers, resulting in the Second Lebanon War.
Israel’s response to the Hezbollah attack was to begin a massive air campaign against Hezbollah. Weeks later, the IDF advanced on the ground into southern Lebanon and secured UN Resolution 1701, which was supposed to keep Hezbollah away from the border. Hezbollah had lost hundreds of fighters. Its rocket arsenal was depleted. However, it came out of 2006 stronger than before. It boasted of victory, even though privately, Nasrallah thought he had erred in assuming Israel would not respond.
Nasrallah then spent time securing Hezbollah’s control of Lebanon. They built up parallel state institutions, including a communications network. Back in 2005, Hezbollah had killed former Lebanon Prime Minister Rafic Hariri. They went on to assassinate journalists, intellectuals, and political opponents. They murdered the intellectual and publisher Lokman Slim in 2001, for instance. There was no one that was untouchable. Hezbollah, even though it had only a handful of seats in parliament, was able to take over the political process. It divided the Christian politicians in Lebanon into pro and anti-Hezbollah camps, securing Michel Aoun and some Christian allies. This helped Hezbollah secure him as Lebanon’s president from 2016-2022. Hezbollah made it clear that if they didn’t control politics in Beirut, no one would. Saad Hariri and other opposition opponents were weakened by Hezbollah’s growth.
Hezbollah involved Lebanon in Syrian Civil War beginning in 2012. They sent forces to Syria and worked with Russia and Iranians in Syria, as well as backing the Assad regime. This gained them unprecedented real-world experience on a conventional battlefield. They secured masses of arms from Iran, including precision-guided munitions and long-range missiles and drones.
The IDF tried to interdict this arms flow with the Campaign Between the Wars of airstrikes on convoys destined for Hezbollah. A 2021 article in the New York Times said Israel had carried out thousands of strikes. This began with just a handful between 2012 and 2017. But the campaign didn’t prevent Hezbollah from becoming a colossus. It suffered some setbacks. Imad Mughniyeh, a key Hezbollah leader, was killed in 2008. Another key Hezbollah figure, Mustafa Badreddine, was also killed in 2016. Quds Force head Qasem Soleimani, a close confidant of Nasrallah, was killed by a US airstrike in 2020 in Baghdad.
Despite small setbacks, Hezbollah now controlled most of Lebanon either openly or de facto and had shown it dictated Lebanese foreign, domestic, and military policy. By 2022, Hezbollah was threatening Israel with war if Israel didn’t agree to a maritime deal backed by the US and US envoy Amos Hochstein. Israel’s then leadership of Benny Gantz, Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett agreed to the deal with Lebanon. This was a deal pushed on Israel, and it showed that saber-rattling by Hezbollah could bring results.
Hezbollah's new equation
It wasn’t the only saber that Hezbollah had. Hezbollah also created a new equation with Israel at the end of the Syrian civil war in 2018. Hezbollah sent men to the Syrian side of the Golan to backfill the vacuum left by Syrian rebels who surrendered to the regime. In August 2019, Hezbollah plotted to launch drones at Israel from Syria. The IDF struck the “killer drone” team. Hezbollah claimed it had a right to respond after accusing Israel of crashing a drone in Beirut. Hezbollah attacked Israel on September 1 with anti-tank missiles in “response.” This became a new norm of how Hezbollah now believed it could deter Israel.
What began as Israel fighting a war in 2006 and getting the UN to say Hezbollah would not be near the border had shifted from 2019 to 2022 of Hezbollah dictating things to Israel. By 2023, Hezbollah was pushing Israel even more. It set up tents on Mount Dov in a disputed area. It began to demand Israel leave the border village of Ghajar that had recently been opened to tourism. Hezbollah allowed a terrorist to infiltrate Israel in March 2023. It also conspired with Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Iran to begin preparations for a multi-front war on Israel. On Passover 2023, rockets were fired from Lebanon at Shlomi in Israel.
Hezbollah frequently hosted Iranian, Hamas, PIJ, and others in 2022 and 2023. It was clearly up to something. However, Israel was lulled into a false sense of accepting the Hezbollah threats. At each instance, Israel was told that everything was fine. Even as the IDF practiced for a multi-front war between 2019 and 2023, and the IDF Home Front warned that any future war would see thousands of Hezbollah missiles rain down on Israel, Israelis were told to accept this fate.
When it came time to confront Hezbollah in October 2023, it appeared Israel was not ready for a two-front war against Hezbollah and Hamas. A US aircraft carrier deployed to the area to deter Hezbollah. Israel was now relying on the US to deter the enemy, unlike in 1967 or 1973 when Israel defeated multiple armies on multiple fronts. Hezbollah became far too large of a threat between 2006 and 2024, and the more confrontations were pushed off, the worse the threat became. Now Israel is at war with Hezbollah, and it may be able to reduce Hezbollah’s arsenal back to 2005 levels. However, Hezbollah was already too much of a threat back in 2005.