As Israel moves closer to a ceasefire, the key question will be what was accomplished in two months of fighting in Lebanon.
Israel launched Operation Northern Arrows on September 23. The ground forces crossed the border on October 1. Fighting has mostly occurred near the border. The goal of the operation was stated to include returning 60,000 evacuated Israelis to the border. However, there were likely other goals.
One goal was to force Hezbollah to cut its connection to Hamas in Gaza. Hezbollah joined the war on October 8, 2023, at the behest of Iran.
Iran sees Hezbollah and Hamas as pawns. It empowered and armed these groups over the last decades. Once they were powerful enough, it tried to push them into an existential war with Israel. October 7 was the first shot in a longer Iranian war on Israel that moved Iran from a cold war on Israel to a hot war. It moved the Houthis and militias in Iraq and Syria into position to attack Israel.
Defeating Hezbollah in Lebanon, or at least weakening it, can mean forcing it to stop attacking Israel. This cuts it off from Hamas temporarily. However, Hezbollah has said that a new equation exists after October 7 in which it assumed a “right” to attack Israel. Hezbollah will want to rekindle that equation.
Another thing Hezbollah wants to do is be a deterrent to any Israeli strike on Iran. Weakening the Hezbollah arsenal may reduce its ability to be a counter-weight.
Hezbollah’s growing strength
However, it’s important to understand that Hezbollah's ties to Hamas, as a second front, and its ability to dictate terms regarding strikes on Iran are new aspects of Hezbollah’s growing strength.
In essence, Israel was trying to get back to square one with Hezbollah by attacking the group more intensely in September rather than waging a war of attrition that was in Hezbollah’s interests.
The story regarding Hezbollah and Hamas now looks increasingly like the proverb about a poor man living in the shtetl and the rabbi and the goat. This story, which is repeated in various forms, includes a poor man who lives with his kids and wife in a small house.
It’s so small that he is miserable and goes to the local rabbi for advice. The rabbi suggests he bring a goat into the house. The man brings in a goat and now the house is even more crowded with the goat and his kids and wife. He goes back to the rabbi to complain. The rabbi suggests removing the goat. Now the house feels larger. Nothing has changed for the man, but removing the goat seems to help.
Israel has removed the “goat” by removing Hezbollah threats directly along the border and perhaps keeping Hezbollah from tying the northern front to Gaza. However, this merely gets Israel back to October 6, 2023.
It doesn’t bring the clock back to 2006 or other times when Hezbollah had ten percent of the rockets it had on October 6, 2023. Hezbollah became far too strong. Hezbollah made itself into a monster that could dictate strategy to Israel.
Weakening Hezbollah is good. But victory does not mean resetting things to square one. Victory means going further. Therefore, removing the Hezbollah goat is only one part of the process.