The IAF, in a pre-dawn preemptive raid in southern Lebanon on Sunday, struck at thousands of rocket launchers that were poised and timed to fire at Israel at 5:00 a.m., preventing a major Hezbollah attack and its “revenge” for last month’s killing of its chief of staff, Fuad Shukr.
It’s about time.
Nearly 11 months after Hezbollah – completely unprovoked – started firing on Israel, forcing dozens of communities in the North to evacuate, and upending life for hundreds of thousands of people, this was the first significant Israeli offensive against Hezbollah inside Lebanon.
No, this wasn’t Israel’s preemptive attack against Egypt’s air force on the first day of the Six-Day War in 1967 that determined the fate of that war and altered history, but it was definitely more than Israel has done against Hezbollah since this war began.
Granted, Israel has taken out several senior Hezbollah terrorists, and it has engaged in an effective tit-for-tat response with the Iranian-backed Shia terrorist organization, extracting a heavy toll in men and material since they started firing on Israel on October 8. But this is the most significant military act that Israel initiated to change the rules of the game in play since the war started and to signal to Hezbollah that what was, and what has become a crazy new normal, will not last.
It cannot last. It is unsustainable.
No country can tolerate a situation where a wide swath of its territory is rendered uninhabitable because of rockets fired at it from its neighbor’s territory. That is a clear violation of sovereignty. Sunday morning’s attack was a sign – the first significant one – that Israel has what it takes to regain its full sovereignty.
A massive attack like this one – hitting so many targets across southern Lebanon simultaneously – is not cobbled together overnight. This attack necessitated precision planning, precise intelligence, and pinpoint operational capabilities.
Coming on the heels of the ongoing demolition of Hamas’s capabilities in Gaza, the assassination of Hamas head Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, Shukr in Beirut, and Hamas arch-terrorist Mohammad Deif in Gaza, the attack on Hodeidah port in Yemen in July in retaliation for a Houthi strike on Tel Aviv, and the penetration of Iran’s most sophisticated air defense system in April; Sunday’s operation helps to rebuild the deterrence eroded by Hamas’s brazen October 7 attack, and projects power.
It projects Israel’s power toward its enemies and – perhaps more importantly– inward to its own citizens. The projection of power is critical for this country’s morale.
Ever since Hezbollah and Iran vowed vengeance for the back-to-back assassinations of Shukr and Haniyeh, Israel has largely been in a defensive crouch that is corrosive to morale. It feeds a sense of powerlessness, even helplessness.
But this country is neither powerless nor helpless, nor dependent on the grace of our enemies not to strike us. It can effectively forestall those attacks. Sunday’s preemptive action reminded everyone of that.
We hope that this is not a one-off but that Israel will now take a more offensive and aggressive posture against Hezbollah and not wait for it to fire and then retaliate in a minor key. The situation in southern Lebanon needs to change fundamentally to make it possible for northern border residents to return home. We hope that Sunday’s decisive action is the beginning of that change.
A potential turn of the tide
This attack could also have a positive impact on the hostage negotiations taking place in Cairo with Hamas because if Hamas’s chief Yahya Sinwar sees that his organization’s salvation is not going to come from the North, and that Israel can act with full force in Lebanon even as it is still dismantling Hamas’s capabilities in Gaza, then the terrorist organization might become more pliable.
But “might” is the operative word. No one can predict Sinwar’s thinking. Nevertheless, his negotiating position is definitely weaker if it becomes clear that Israel is willing to fully take on Hezbollah in the North, even while it continues to degrade Hamas’ capabilities in the South.
With the intensity of the fighting in Gaza much reduced compared with a few months ago, Israel now has greater bandwidth to deal with Hezbollah. As such, it needs to keep its foot just above the gas pedal in Lebanon, ready to press down and strike Hezbollah with overwhelming force at a minute’s notice – just as it did on Sunday.