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Jonathan Spyer


WHY HEZBOLLAH MISCALCULATED – AND ISRAEL ATTACKED

 * 1 October 2024, 12:41pm


Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah (photo: Getty)
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In the early hours of Tuesday morning, the IDF spokesman’s office issued a
laconic statement, according to which Israeli forces have commenced ‘raids…
based on precise intelligence against Hezbollah terrorist targets and
infrastructure in southern Lebanon. These targets are located in villages close
to the border and pose an immediate threat to Israeli communities in northern
Israel.’

With this terse announcement, Israel signalled that its 18-year policy of
restraint and reaction on its northern border was definitively over, and that
the door has been opened to something new. 

> Hezbollah takes a particular pride in its claimed deep knowledge of and
> understanding of Israeli society

How did we reach this point? The last war between Israel and the Iran-supported
Shia Islamist Hezbollah organisation came to an official end on August 14, 2006.
UN Resolution 1701, which ended the war, forbade Hezbollah from any armed
presence south of the Litani river. 

For most of the intervening years, Israel pursued a cautious, even hesitant
policy on the border. It made no serious attempt to intervene as Hezbollah
rapidly brushed aside the terms of 1701 and the UN force detailed with
implementing it, and began to construct a fearsome, open military capacity
extending down to the Blue Line of withdrawal and the border fence. 

Without the 7 October attacks from Gaza, and Hezbollah’s decision to join
Hamas’s war effort on October 8, it is likely that this situation would have
been maintained. It has taken a year of fighting to destroy Hamas’s conventional
military capacity in Gaza. Even now, the organisation is still able to launch
sporadic attacks on Israeli forces. If the northern border had been quiet, it
may be assumed that any calls in Israel for opening a ‘second front’ would have
been quickly dismissed. 


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It is likely that Hezbollah assumed that difficulties in Gaza and/or the fear of
casualties would prevent a determined Israeli response to their daily missile
and drone attacks. Hezbollah takes a particular pride in its claimed deep
knowledge of and understanding of Israeli society. In reality, however, this
supposed knowledge mainly consisted of the conceit that Israeli society’s
(undoubted) sensitivity to casualties would prevent it from launching a
determined response. 

This perspective is based on a long-standing Arab nationalist and Islamist view
of Israel. It may have its roots in a traditional Islamic disdain for the Jews
as a defeated and for a long period non-martial people. In the case of
Hezbollah, the theory that Israeli sensitivity to casualties could lead to
military results was applied in the insurgency of the 1985-2000 period and
produced the desired result – the unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Israel’s
‘security zone’ in south Lebanon, in May 2000. 



This success has led to subsequent miscalculation. In 2006, a Hezbollah raid led
to a three-week war and large-scale destruction in Lebanon. Subsequent to that
war, Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah said that had he known in
advance of the Israeli response, he would never have ordered the initial attack.
This did not, however, prevent him from ordering the ‘support front’ on October
8, a decision which cost him his life, led to the severe degradation of his
movement, and may now have triggered a renewed Israeli land invasion. 

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant is the main driving force behind the
current government’s uncompromising stance toward Hezbollah. Gallant’s own
involvement with Lebanon goes back to his own experiences as a naval commando in
operations in the country in the early 1980s.

A couple of years before he became defence minister, I participated with Gallant
in a delegation from Israel to meet with officials in France. I still remember
the suddenly electric atmosphere in the meeting room on a sleepy Paris
afternoon, as the future defence minister began to lay out his views and plans
for the destruction of Hezbollah in Lebanon, in the bluntest and starkest terms.
Gallant has been the most determined voice for a wide-ranging operation into
Lebanon since October 8. He was blocked from ordering such an operation, by
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in the very first days of the war. Now,
largely thanks to the miscalculations of the deceased Nasrallah, he has the
chance to apply his plans. 

What has happened so far? There are currently two regular IDF divisions poised
for action on the northern border. These two divisions have different
capabilities and job descriptions and it is worth paying close attention to who
is doing what, in order to keep a sense of the unfolding operation. The two
divisions are the 98th airborne, and the 36th armoured. The 98th brings together
Israel’s airborne, reconnaissance and commando units, including the regular
35th (Paratroopers) Brigade. As its name suggests, its specialties include
rapid, pinpointed actions. It has been a central force in Gaza in recent months,
engaged in the clearing out of remaining Hamas resistance. 

The 98th appears to have been the force responsible for what the IDF describes
as the ‘limited, localised, and targeted ground raids’ against Hezbollah
positions along the border which have so far taken place. 

The stated purpose of the IDF’s mission is to create the conditions which will
enable the return of the over 60,000 Israeli internal refugees displaced from
their homes along the northern border since 8 October. The dimensions and extent
of the unfolding Israeli action have not been revealed and are not currently
clear. It is doubtful, however, that Israel will suffice with clearing Hezbollah
positions from the immediate border area. 

The 36th Armored Division, whose components include the First (Golani) infantry
brigade and the 188 Armoured Brigade, was one of two regular divisions which
took part in Israel’s initial, rapid thrust into Gaza. It has been in the
northern border area since early 2024, training for operations into Lebanon. Its
presence implies that a broader and deeper push into Lebanon is a distinct
possibility. 

It remains to be seen what arrangement might follow the Israeli manoeuvre –
whether it will mean the establishment of an Israeli controlled buffer zone in
the area south of the Litani or (as currently appears more likely) some new
power dispensation involving the return of the Lebanese Armed Forces and perhaps
a new international force. What is clear is that we are witnessing the opening
of a new chapter in the year-long war between Israel and the Iran-supported
Islamist militias deployed around it, and in the long and tortuous saga of
Israel’s relations with its northern neighbour. 


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WRITTEN BY

Jonathan Spyer

Jonathan Spyer is a journalist and Middle East analyst. He is director of
research at the Middle East Forum and the author of The Transforming Fire: The
Rise of the Israel-Islamist Conflict.

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