If Israel begins a long-brewing ground war on its northern front, it goes up against a unique opponent. Hezbollah, designated as a terror group by the United States, is the strongest force in Lebanon and operates a shadow state there.
But it is not Lebanon that has fired more than 9,300 missiles at Israel in the past year. That would be Hezbollah, which went to war on Oct. 8, 2023, in support of Hamas’s invasion and massacre of Israelis the previous day.
And it’s not average Lebanese civilians that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has gone after in its air, rocket, and artillery attacks, which it generally describes as “precise.”
It is Hezbollah commanders, operatives, and sympathizers, some of whom had cruise missiles stashed in their homes.
It was the Hezbollah leaders and officers that Israel had been blamed for going after last week when thousands of Hezbollah pagers simultaneously exploded.
The IDF has neither confirmed nor denied involvement in the attacks.
Hezbollah operates like a state within the Lebanese state. Its military is paramilitary in some ways but like a conventional army in others, according to the CIA.
While Israel’s widespread attacks may have some Lebanese turning against Hezbollah, those don’t include its base, Muslim Shiites, Israeli military analyst Sarit Zahavi told The Epoch Times.
She is a former IDF military intelligence officer whose Alma Security Institute specializes in the northern border.
Hezbollah controls parts of the nation where Shiites predominate, including the Bekaa Valley to the northeast, parts of the Beirut metropolitan area, and south Lebanon along Israel’s frontier.
Many of the Shiites there are relatively recent arrivals, brought in by Hezbollah to replace the Christians, Israeli allies, whom Hezbollah drove out.
In those areas, she said, Hezbollah’s grip remains firm.
It has delivered civilian services such as food, health care, and education there for years, she said.
“They are the government in the parts of Lebanon they control, not officially, of course,” she said. People have become dependent upon them over the years, she said.
What they get in return is manpower, she said: recruiting people, indoctrinating the young, and finding people willing to hide rockets in their homes.
That phenomenon became visible in recent days with Israel’s devastating attacks targeting such homes. Videos of the attacks show secondary explosions at many as the weapons stored inside overheated and exploded.
Hezbollah is well-represented in Lebanon’s parliament and federal bureaucracy.
The minister of public works, for one, is aligned with Hezbollah, she said. His ministry controls Lebanon’s airports and border with Syria and thus controls who goes in and out.
The Syrian border, she said, is not sealed against arms smuggling. “To the contrary, he’s doing everything to continue it.”
Firm devotees of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, they now follow his successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and have close ties to the Assad regime in Syria.
They initially sought to end Israel’s occupation of south Lebanon, which ended in 2000, and now seek to destroy the Jewish state.
The State Department designated them a terrorist group in 2014.
Their fighters have become very experienced while fighting in Syria, Zahavi said. That will make them formidable opponents for the IDF, more so than Hamas has been in Gaza.
They are better armed and equipped, better trained, and more experienced than Hamas, she said.
Lebanon’s hilly terrain will challenge Israel as well.
Estimates of Hezbollah’s strength vary, from as many as 100,000 fighters to as few, according to the CIA, as 7,000 to 12,000.
“This is not a walk in the park and Israelis know that,” she said.
One improvement for the IDF over the Gaza war is Lebanon’s larger area and greater amount of open space, she said.
That makes it easier for Lebanese civilians to evacuate.
In crowded Gaza, civilians had to move time and time again after Israel warned of coming attacks.
Lebanon’s roads were crowded with northbound traffic last week after the pager attacks, as civilians cleared out, she said.
Zahavi noted during a video interview with The Epoch Times that sirens had been going off and rockets being fired all day into her area on Sept. 26.
Clouds of smoke and faded contrails were visible behind her as she sat on her balcony. She was asked if this was scary.
“What’s scary is the position of the international community,” she said, referring to the letter calling for a ceasefire.
“That’s what’s scary. We are under fire the past year but once we defend ourselves, they want a ceasefire without promising anything for our security. They don’t mention Hezbollah.”
Hezbollah has widened its air attacks in recent weeks.
After Oct. 7, 60,000 Israelis had been ordered to evacuate border communities, in part because Hezbollah had planned similar attacks on Israeli civilians and also fear of its rocket fire.
It had an estimated 150,000 projectiles, although Israel has destroyed tens of thousands of those.
Thousands more people in neighboring areas fled, too.
But its recent use of longer-range rockets now puts about 1.5 million Israelis at risk.
In a March interview, she told The Epoch Times how the previous day, while driving her daughter to an after-school activity, air raid sirens had forced them to pull over and lie down on the roadside.
She had covered her daughter’s body with her own.
Countless Israelis endure the same fear every day.
Zahavi, used to looking at the border situation pragmatically and who previously called for caution on the question of invading Lebanon to fight Hezbollah, acknowledged her own views have hardened and become more hawkish.
“I was in a different place,” she said.
Now, she said, she is encouraged by Israel’s success in recent weeks—the attacks on pagers and radios, the elimination of Hezbollah leaders like Fuad Shukr and Ibrahim Aqil, the air strikes on homes where weapons were stored, and the like.
The time for Israel to strike Hezbollah is now, not to delay 21 days with a ceasefire.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the ceasefire proposal immediately.
If Israel accepted the ceasefire, it would give Hezbollah three weeks to regroup and regain its strength. It would be less likely to make concessions, she said.
“If we agree to the ceasefire [just] offered, the truce, we will not end up in any realistic arrangement.
“That will mean more IDF soldiers getting killed because of the truce.”
After hearing about the letter, she said, “I felt abandoned by the international community. It’s our soldiers, our sons, our fathers, our husbands. Going to sacrifice their lives for a truce of 21 days? It doesn’t make sense.”
Israel needs to press its advantage against Hezbollah, forcing it to the negotiation table. Israel will get better terms that way, she said.
Hamas’s access to humanitarian aid in Gaza, she said, weakened Israel’s position in seeking the return of its hostages.
The international community’s offers ring hollow, she said.
It calls for enforcement of UN Resolution 1701, a 2006 measure requiring Hezbollah to withdraw forces beyond the Litani River, roughly 10 miles north of the Israeli frontier.
The resolution has never been enforced. Hezbollah has ignored it.
“We don’t want another fiction like 1701,” she said. “It was a lie.”
For an attack, she said, “now is the time.”
