Israel Should Beware of Hubris
Israelis have been riding a roller-coaster. After emerging from the ravages of COVID-19 and five rapid-fire elections, 2023 was slated to be a year of national recovery. Those hopes turned improbable in January when Justice Minister Yariv Levin unveiled his plans to overhaul Israel’s judicial system, igniting massive protests and plunging the country into profound political crisis. Hope was then obliterated on October 7, the day that more than 1,100 people were murdered—and another 252 abducted to Gaza—by a Hamas-led throng during its invasion of southern Israel.
The wholesale destruction inflicted by the October raid extended to the shattered confidence of Israelis in once-venerated public institutions—the civilian government, the military, and the intelligence services—as the magnitude of their colossal dysfunction became increasingly apparent. In its darkest hour, Israel was adrift, abandoned seemingly by its leadership.
One year later, those sentiments continue to linger. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s promises of “total victory” over Hamas ring hollow. Israelis are either disappointed that his pledge remains unfulfilled or, alternatively, disbelieving that such a feat is even plausible. Casualties mount, and negotiations to repatriate the hostages are dishearteningly stalemated. Meanwhile, Hamas is regrouping inside areas from which the IDF has withdrawn. And international pressure grows for Israel to accept a ceasefire that would stop short of fully dismantling the terrorist infrastructure of Gaza.
Sunken Israeli spirits were buoyed appreciably on September 17, however, when foremost attention was diverted suddenly toward Lebanon, where thousands of Hezbollah members—sworn enemies of Israel—were the unexpecting victims of European-manufactured AR-924 pagers that detonated almost simultaneously. One Hezbollah spokesman pegged the incident, in which Iran’s ambassador to Beirut was also wounded, as the organization’s “biggest security breach” since the beginning of the conflict. Those explosions were followed, on the next day, by a secondary round of explosions involving hundreds of IC-V82 transceivers used similarly by Hezbollah operatives.
Although Israel denied formal responsibility for the twin blasts, the IDF was not bashful about taking credit for the subsequent targeted assassinations of Hezbollah commanders, including Ibrahim Aqil, the head of its elite Radwan unit, and Ibrahim Qabisi, chief of its missiles and rockets division. Confirmation on September 28 that a precision strike by Israeli air force F-15Is had killed Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s nefarious secretary-general and Israel’s nemesis, propelled the country into veritable ecstasy. Operation Northern Arrows—the label assigned by the IDF to its Lebanon campaign—has boosted Netanyahu’s approval ratings among Israelis, who are encouraged that their government pivoted to seize the initiative and rebuild waning deterrence opposite its formidable adversary to the north and, they hope, the region at large. It is now Hezbollah that appears to be rudderless.
By all indications, Israel was far better prepared to confront Hezbollah than it was to meet the challenge posed by Hamas. October 7 managed to take Israeli strategists by surprise owing, at least partially, to systemic underestimation of Hamas’ capabilities and resulting neglect to maintain alert in the face of genuine threats emanating from Gaza. In contrast, deep intelligence penetration of Hezbollah has enabled the IDF to swiftly eliminate the vast majority of that group’s senior echelon and, according to Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, a considerable portion of its arsenals. Its command-and-control process has been decimated. Hezbollah has “probably been taken 20 years backwards,” an unnamed U.S. official told CNN.
But this surge in Israel’s morale and battlefront prospects could—depending on what unfolds—prove to be only temporary. As of this writing, tens of thousands of Israelis remain displaced from their homes, which lie within Hezbollah’s line of direct fire. Those numbers could increase as Hezbollah broadens the geographic reach of its attacks. September 25 witnessed an unprecedented Hezbollah missile launch on Tel Aviv. Conventional wisdom holds that the militants continue to reserve significant munitions, which could be unleashed as the IDF’s ground incursion proceeds. More ominously, Iran, Hezbollah’s sponsor, has finished licking its wounds, coming off the sidelines on October 1 to send a barrage of nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel.
The looming question is whether the Netanyahu government’s future plans for maneuvers in Lebanon (and vis-à-vis Iran) will resemble the IDF’s methodical opening gambits against Hezbollah or, rather, the incoherent approach that Israel has employed toward Gaza. Reports that Gallant and the IDF brass were tenaciously advocating a preemptive assault on Hezbollah—as a more dangerous foe than Hamas—in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 massacre imply that Israel recognizes the stakes. Tactical gains in that theater can become addictive but are no replacement for strategic discipline and a transformative outcome.
Israel is again at a crossroads. It has ratcheted up the intensity of IDF bombardments in Lebanon as part of a professed attempt to promote “de-escalation through escalation,” which might spread theoretically to other adjacent hotspots. That formula will be supremely difficult to calibrate and highly fraught to Israel, especially since Iran has come out of the shadows to enter the fray unambiguously. Random miscalculations—by either Israel or Hezbollah—of perception or of ordnance trajectory could spark a full-scale war on the multiple fronts that Netanyahu has repeatedly enumerated. This would spell a potential catastrophe not only for Israel’s citizenry and infrastructure but also for its already hobbled economy and global standing. On September 27, Moody’s downgraded Israel’s ratings for the second time this year and pronounced that its “outlook remains negative.” Standard and Poor’s followed suit on October 1.
The September 25 call issued by a U.S.-backed consortium of countries for a twenty-one-day truce across the Lebanon-Israel border that would kickstart negotiations to deliver a cessation of hostilities proposed a different path forward. Israelis were understandably tentative toward this avenue as well. A protracted hiatus would grant precious time for Hezbollah to convalesce and re-stock its depleted stores. Additionally, deals grounded in international guarantees—such as U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which mandated “the establishment between the Blue Line and the Litani river of an area free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those of the Government of Lebanon and of UNIFIL,” but has been violated flagrantly by Hezbollah—are no substitute in the Israeli imagination for the independent agency of Israel’s own enforcers.
With no perfect options, the Netanyahu government—still exceedingly unpopular among the electorate—is but a few critical decisions away from either extracting Israelis from their prolonged nightmare or making a bad situation immeasurably worse. “Returning the residents of the north securely to their homes,” the objective that Israel’s security cabinet appended to its war objectives on September 17, could easily become the least of its problems.
The prime minister’s inauspicious handling of recent discussions pertaining to the possible three-week pause suggests that he may be moving in the wrong direction. Reprising his classic two-step, Netanyahu evidently gave his thumbs up to the effort, only to then succumb to the loud objections of his coalition partners—who vowed to topple him if he acquiesced—and retract his commitment. Legitimate Israeli reservations about the deal deserve to be taken into account, but alienating sympathetic interlocutors will emphatically not enhance Israel’s predicament. Obvious frictions with the United States over the contours of its anticipated retaliation for the latest Iranian fusillade will likewise compromise Israel, which lacks the capacity to tackle the entirety of Iran’s menace on its own.
Hubris is not an ally. And the fighting will end eventually. A more effective course of action for Netanyahu would be to join hands with the Biden administration and begin working constructively to craft the parameters of a sustainable endgame that locks in his country’s hard-won battlefield triumphs over its now-degraded antagonists, ends its wars of attrition in Gaza and Lebanon, and truly facilitates the return home of its captive and evacuee citizens. Cooperation with the United States will be no less essential in the context of Iran, where Israel could find itself trading mortal blows with the Islamic Republic.
President Joe Biden—who saluted Nasrallah’s death as “a measure of justice for his many victims, including thousands of Americans, Israelis, and Lebanese civilians”—has demonstrated repeatedly that he is under no illusions about the dangers facing Israel. His defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, has acknowledged the imperative of “dismantling attack infrastructure along the border to ensure that Lebanese Hizballah cannot conduct October 7-style attacks on Israel’s northern communities.” On October 4, Biden himself reiterated that “the Israelis have every right to respond to the vicious attacks on them not just from the Iranians but from…everyone from Hezbollah to the Houthis.” Netanyahu should take advantage of the last months of Biden’s presidency to secure Israel’s “day after” by concluding ceasefires with its neighbors on favorable terms for Israel, leveraging that goodwill to resume Israel’s integration into its region, and focusing those positive energies to roll back all aspects of Iran’s malign influence.
Washington and Paris, among other capitals, were quick to dispatch assistance when Iran hurled more than 300 missiles and drones at Israel on April 13. That support—on top of the materiel and diplomatic aid being supplied by Israel’s benefactor in the White House—will be no less invaluable if circumstances deteriorate and Israel should soon find itself embroiled in wider and even more brutal combat. If Netanyahu marches Israel into that dark scenario, having burned all his bridges with his country’s friends, Israelis will be singing the blues for a long time to come.
Shalom Lipner is a nonresident senior fellow at the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative of the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs. From 1990 to 2016, he served seven consecutive premiers at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem. Follow him on X: @ShalomLipner.
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