Despite optimism around chances for Lebanon deal, immense obstacles remain
US and Israeli officials laud progress toward ending fighting between Hezbollah and IDF, but the Iran-backed group is unlikely to accept Netanyahu’s core demands
An air of optimism has emerged around the chances for a negotiated end to the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon in the coming weeks.
On Tuesday, US special envoy for Lebanon Amos Hochstein told reporters at the White House that “there is a shot” to secure a ceasefire soon and that he is “hopeful” about the deal’s prospects.
Israeli officials have sounded similar notes.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said there has been “certain progress” on a ceasefire in Lebanon.
Another official told The Times of Israel that progress had been made, and now Israel was speaking to the US about letters “to anchor our ability and legitimacy to operate against any threat from Lebanon.”
“If there are any attempts to fire at us, to build up their military, to bring in weapons through Syria, we will act,” promised the official.
The fact that the US Joe Biden administration and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government see eye-to-eye on the parameters of a ceasefire in Lebanon is undoubtedly a positive development.
Yet there will be no deal if a central player in the fight doesn’t accept the terms — Hezbollah.
Any arrangement will officially be signed between Israel and Lebanon. At the same time, everyone knows that Beirut will not agree to anything that Hezbollah does not consent to.
And it is hard to imagine the Shi’ite terror group accepting one of Israel’s core demands — that same freedom of action to operate in Lebanon to counter threats and stop the rebuilding of Hezbollah’s military.
Israel isn’t about to relent on this point either. It wants the Lebanese Armed Forces to move into southern Lebanon in force and for countries like the UK and France to train the rather lackluster LAF. A massive deployment of Lebanese soldiers along Israel’s border is part of a solution, but they are not about to take on Hezbollah militarily when it decides the time is right to start moving assets toward Israel again.
UNIFIL, which has unequivocally failed in its raison d’être of keeping Hezbollah from moving thousands of fighters and massive weapons caches to the border with Israel, would still be part of a settlement, in Israel’s eyes. The force would have to be overhauled, with more capable and assertive militaries making up a larger proportion of UNIFIL.
France, which currently contributes 665 troops to the peacekeeping effort, is sure to become an even more central country to UNIFIL. Its forces have taken peacekeeping efforts in Africa seriously, and Paris understands that the situation on the Lebanon-Israel border cannot return to the pre-October 7 reality.
Still, that wouldn’t be enough for Israel. It will not rely entirely on the weak military of an enemy state or international peacekeepers who have already let Hezbollah build up a formidable force on Israel’s borders once before.
Nor would it likely satisfy the tens of thousands of displaced Israelis who would look with understandable suspicion at yet another negotiated document that is supposed to convince them that no Hezbollah anti-tank missile will strike their homes after they move back.
Further, deeper
It may be that Hezbollah is eager to end the fighting, after losing its leadership, military positions, and thousands of operatives, and will ultimately accept the deal that Israel and the US put on the table.
If it isn’t, however, then Israel has no other cards left to play other than expanding its ground operation in Lebanon.
An Israeli official told The Times of Israel that if Lebanon turns down the latest US-Israeli offer, the IDF is ready to drive further into the country.
As negotiators — including Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer — continue their work this week in Washington, the IDF is already pushing ahead. The military announced that the 91st Division has reached “new targets” belonging to Hezbollah, as commandos raided several new areas.
Yesterday, the IDF said that the 36th Division has also expanded ground operations in southern Lebanon.
Though senior officials, including novice Defense Minister Israel Katz, are calling for Israel to keep attacking Hezbollah until it achieves all of its goals, that option comes with considerable problems.
Israel’s ground operation in Lebanon was conceived as primarily an engineering effort — a war on Hezbollah infrastructure in the border area. The IDF said that the “limited, localized, and targeted ground raids” would be focused on border villages that posed an immediate threat to Israeli towns.
IDF forces have completed that task, but northern residents still aren’t in their homes.
Expanding the operation could mean that Israel will destroy Hezbollah weapons caches and fighting positions in villages further away from the border. That is unlikely to push Hezbollah into a ceasefire, nor will it make Israelis more comfortable about returning home. The minute the IDF leaves, Hezbollah can infiltrate the area with missile teams and fire at Israeli towns if it so chooses.
If the operation starts focusing on defeating more of Hezbollah’s fighting units, then the way it is being carried out violates basic military principles. Instead of taking advantage of the IDF’s mobility to rapidly confuse and encircle enemy units, Israeli forces are moving slowly from a predictable direction, presenting Hezbollah with few dilemmas on the field.
In the meantime, Hezbollah seems to have found its footing again. It was knocked off balance in September, when Israel detonated thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies in the hands of terrorists, assassinated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and took out most of the elite Radwan force leadership.
But the terror group is recovering. It maintains consistent rocket fire on northern Israel, and Hezbollah attacks have killed 36 IDF soldiers in the month-and-a-half since Israel began its ground operation. It has also managed to carry out high-profile drone attacks, including on the Golani Brigade’s training base and Netanyahu’s house in Caesarea.
It seems prepared for a war of attrition against IDF forces if they stay in Lebanon, a form of conflict that offers advantages to the guerrilla force. Though Hezbollah will lose many times more men than the IDF, Israel is far more sensitive to casualties, and as the death toll slowly ticks up, domestic pressure is likely to do so as well. That strategy worked for Hezbollah in the 1990s, when an Israeli protest movement successfully pushed political and military leaders to accept the need for a withdrawal from the security zone in southern Lebanon.
For all that, there remains a quick way out of the fighting in Lebanon. Hezbollah has repeatedly said it would stand down if the war in Gaza came to an end.
Though Netanyahu would like to see a successful end to that campaign as well, Hamas has no incentive to accept anything less than victory in a deal that sees the hostages released from captivity. That would mean that the group remains in Gaza, and is in a position to slowly recover its governing and military capabilities.
Israel is not about to accept that, and the fighting will go on.
The Trump factor
Still, there is an upcoming event that could change the dynamics in Lebanon.
US President-elect Donald Trump will take office on January 20, and is expected to be much more aggressive against Iran and its axis than Biden was. He selected Iran hawks to his cabinet, and employed a maximum pressure sanctions campaign against the Islamic Republic in his first term.
Iran is sure to be nervous about Trump’s return, and will be looking to dial down tensions with the US until it gets a read on the direction of Trump’s policy in the region.
Threats from Trump to Iran about the price it will pay if its proxy Hezbollah refuses to accept a ceasefire could well make the cost of continued combat too high for Tehran.
But that message has yet to be issued. In the meantime, Biden’s top aides are throwing their full weight behind the effort to help Israel wrap up the fighting before Trump returns to the White House.
While the heart of The Times of Israel’s work takes place in Israel, so many of Jerusalem’s actions are influenced by those in Washington’s halls of power.
As ToI’s US bureau chief, I work to gain access to decision-makers in the United States government so our readers can understand the US-Israel relationship beyond the platitudes evident in public statements.
I'm proud of our ability to inform without sensationalizing, our dedication to be fast while ensuring accuracy, and our determination to present Israel's entire, complex story.
Your support through The Times of Israel Community helps us continue to keep readers around the world properly informed about the critical Israel-US relationship. Do you appreciate our news coverage? If so, please join the ToI Community today.
- Jacob Magid, The Times of Israel's US bureau chief
We’re really pleased that you’ve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month.
That’s why we started the Times of Israel eleven years ago - to provide discerning readers like you with must-read coverage of Israel and the Jewish world.
So now we have a request. Unlike other news outlets, we haven’t put up a paywall. But as the journalism we do is costly, we invite readers for whom The Times of Israel has become important to help support our work by joining The Times of Israel Community.
For as little as $6 a month you can help support our quality journalism while enjoying The Times of Israel AD-FREE, as well as accessing exclusive content available only to Times of Israel Community members.
Thank you,
David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel