Israel and Lebanon Won’t End Up at War

On the Lebanese side of the border with Israel, only a few villages remain intact, and vast neighborhoods in the towns that remain standing, like Marwaheen, are entirely destroyed. When night falls and darkness envelops the area, the only distant light visible is from nearly 30 kilometers away—the glowing Bahai Gardens in Haifa, Israel’s largest northern city, home to around 280,000 people.

What’s between Marwaheen and Haifa are Israeli communities and military positions that come daily under Hezbollah’s fire. Over the past eight months, more than 150,000 people on both sides of the border have deserted their towns and villages due to the continuing war of attrition that has left around 400 people killed on the Lebanese side and around 30 on the Israeli.

For eight months, the border area has been a hot spot of mutual attritional violence between Hezbollah and Israel—violence that has recently intensified and prompted calls in Israel for an expanded war. But, contrary to appearances, there’s little reason to think Israel’s confrontation with Lebanon will escalate into outright war.

Hezbollah entered the conflict with Israel following Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks. Although Hezbollah’s leaders have stated they were unaware of the attacks in advance, this does not imply disapproval. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has consistently expressed strong support for the actions of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades and Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, whom he described as a “great, courageous leader.”

But the broader conflict between Hezbollah and Israel did not start after Oct. 7. It has taken various forms since groups of Shiite fighters in southern Lebanon formed the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon in 1982, following an Israeli invasion that summer. The most significant confrontation occurred in 2006, when Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers from the border area, aiming to exchange them for its prisoners in Israeli jails. Israel responded with a destructive war in July and August of that year, aiming to eliminate Hezbollah—an objective similar to Israel’s goals in its current war against Hamas.

One of the ways that today’s confrontation differs from earlier iterations is that it suggests Hezbollah has accumulated enough capabilities over the past decade to now pose a strategic threat to Israel. An official in Iran’s Quds Force overseeing Hezbollah and other Iranian-linked factions in the Middle East told FP that Hezbollah now possesses more than 1 million rockets of various types, including precision-guided missiles and modified Katyusha rockets for increased accuracy, as well as anti-tank missiles.

Hezbollah’s arsenal, as revealed during the long attrition warfare, also includes suicide drones and other UAVs equipped with Russian-made missiles that enable air-launched attacks from inside Israeli territory, along with a type of Iranian missile called “Almas” equipped with a camera, inspired by the Israeli “Spike” missile, which is a “fire and forget” type. This gear changes the game because it makes fighters less vulnerable to Israeli attacks on launch sites.

Israel has a far larger arsenal of air-to-ground missiles launched from various warplanes and armed drones. The exchange of fire has displaced more than 150,000 people on both sides of the border, turning Lebanese border towns into mini-Gaza-like areas. The destruction is gradually spreading to northern Israeli towns, whose residents are increasingly demanding that the Israeli state take practical steps to return them to their homes. Last month, I toured the devastated villages and towns of southern Lebanon, including Naqoura, where the local U.N. peacekeeping headquarters is located, and whose center was destroyed by Israeli airstrikes; Marwaheen, which is almost entirely destroyed; and Aita al-Shaab, which could be described as south Lebanon’s ground zero. These and other villages and towns now host only a few residents who prefer to die in their homes rather than flee to schools and other shelters in safer cities.

Notably, both sides are largely confining their warfare to military targets, as evidenced by the precise daily announcements of military activities. Israel’s attacks have been mainly in border areas to a depth of 15 kilometers. There are exceptions, though, such as when the Israeli Air Force has targeted deeper regions in Lebanon’s Beqaa and, on one occasion, in Beirut’s southern suburbs. In contrast, Hezbollah has expanded its strikes horizontally, not vertically, to include the Golan Heights, Syrian territory occupied and later effectively annexed by Israel. Few attacks were recorded in recent months targeting military bases in Safed, near Nahariya, and Haifa, mostly carried out by suicide drones. After the assassinations of deputy Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri and senior Hezbollah commander Wissam al-Tawil, Hezbollah targeted the strategic Meron base, which is described as an air traffic control base.

So far, Hezbollah and Israel are trying to avoid civilian casualties as much as possible, exchanging messages through the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon whenever civilians are affected and explaining the reasons. They are engaging in a different kind of war, focusing more on strategic targets than territorial control. For Israel, the goal is to pressure Hezbollah to reveal its strategic installations or retreat to less fortified positions. The 2006 war had adverse results for Israel, because it allowed Hezbollah not only to increase its arsenal in the aftermath but also to draw lessons from the fighting to update its tactics to match the capabilities of the Israeli army.

After almost eight months of regular battles, it is now clear that both Hezbollah and Israel understand that any full-scale war between them would be devastating. Hezbollah knows that Lebanon would be destroyed, with thousands of casualties. But Israel is also aware that what it faced in Gaza over these past months, without achieving its full objectives, would be nothing compared to a war with Hezbollah.

Israel has a large list of targets in Lebanon and has targeted many of Hezbollah’s launch and storage points in recent months. At the same time, Hezbollah has targeted Israeli reconnaissance, surveillance, and communication equipment at border outposts and has also struck military installations to push Israeli soldiers into less fortified new positions in open areas or border towns. The organization has appeared more focused on studying Israel’s air defenses, including the Iron Dome system, with Hezbollah releasing footage it claims shows direct targeting of the system. Hezbollah may have also learned from Iran’s attack on Israel in April about how to intensify its rocket launches. Given the proximity between Israel and Lebanon compared to Iran and Israel, the potential for Hezbollah to significantly destroy Israeli cities is high.

So far, both sides, especially amid the war in Gaza, prefer to keep the conflict within the current framework. Hezbollah, despite being an Islamic organization that mobilizes its fighters through martyrdom rhetoric, has never shown suicidal tendencies. It is likely to take the rational escalation approach Iran adopted following the assassination of Quds Force commander Qassem Suleimani, keeping actions below the level of full-scale war.

The escalation might increase or decrease, with broader operational and targeting scopes, but without crossing the threshold that expands the fighting beyond military targets. Anything beyond this could ignite a war with widespread consequences beyond Lebanon and Israel, potentially leading to more interventions by combat forces like the Houthis in Yemen; Iraqi militias; and a larger role for forces linked to the Iran-led axis in Syria, such as the Imam Hussein Brigade, comprising Iranians, Iraqis, Pakistanis, Afghans, Lebanese, Syrians, and Palestinians. Neither Israel nor Lebanon (nor their sponsors, the United States and Iran) is likely to desire for the situation to spiral out of control in that way across the region.

Under the current circumstances, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might wish to prolong the Gaza conflict, at least through the U.S. elections, it does not necessarily indicate an intent to initiate an all-out war in Lebanon. Netanyahu may push the situation to the brink to increase pressure on Hezbollah both domestically and internationally. However, Hezbollah has been countering Israeli escalation with reciprocal measures, aiming to establish its deterrence. It is clear that, for now, the threat of war remains a strategic maneuver rather than an imminent reality.