In August 2003, a teenager in the northern Israeli town of Shlomi became the first Israeli civilian to die from hostile fire along the Israel-Lebanon border since the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) unilateral withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000.
At the time, Hezbollah claimed that the fire had been directed at Israeli warplanes in Lebanese air space. Israel rejected this claim but said that periodic intelligence-gathering overflights were necessary given that the militant Lebanese group and its backer Iran had positioned some 11,000 short-range rockets in southern Lebanon.
This incident may now seem minor in comparison with everything that has followed, but it reflects the volatile nature of the Israel-Hezbollah stand-off, and, perhaps more importantly, the fundamental vulnerability that Israel feels along its northern border. This vulnerability is longstanding, even predating the emergence of Hezbollah in the 1980s, but it has expanded profoundly over the past twenty years. Now, not only do northern Israeli towns face greater risk than in the past, but much of Israel also finds itself within range of Hezbollah’s weapons. This broad range of risk, to northern Israel and also potentially to critical areas of central Israel, is what drives Israel’s military campaign in Lebanon today.
Israel’s current threat perceptions vis-à-vis Lebanon have been shaped by past experiences. The IDF’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000 was a significant milestone. While bringing an end to a costly and controversial occupation, it also left doubts as to how Israel could manage the Hezbollah threat. Some within Israel’s security establishment at the time questioned whether the danger Hezbollah posed to northern Israel could be addressed without an ongoing Israeli military presence in Lebanon – an argument similar to the one that swirled around Israel’s 2005 disengagement from the Gaza Strip. Post-withdrawal, the northern border remained tense but relatively quiet as the Israeli-Hezbollah confrontation evolved with so-called “rules of the game” whereby the Lebanese group generally limited its attacks to IDF troops in the disputed Sheba Farms region of the Golan Heights. Residents of border towns, however, could not have been reassured by Hezbollah banners fluttering mere yards from their homes.
Although this low-level conflict may have appeared to be contained in the initial years following Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon, the security environment in the north, in fact, remained extremely volatile. As the 2003 Shlomi incident demonstrated, miscalculation, error, or even the technical malfunction of a weapon, risked civilian casualties on both sides of the border and raised the likelihood of a major, rapid escalation. Making this volatile situation ever more fraught was Hezbollah’s expanding stockpile of rockets, and eventually missiles, of increasing range. This arsenal posed an ever-growing latent threat to Israel.
Hezbollah’s July 2006 abduction of two Israeli soldiers from the border area shattered any notion that Hezbollah was deterred from unilateral, offensive operations on the Israeli side of the Blue Line border. During the month-long conflict that followed, Hezbollah’s ability to fire thousands of rockets into Israel, killing 43 civilians and reaching far beyond the border region, made clear the changing nature of the threat. In the end, and despite many internal criticisms of its conduct of the war, the Israeli security establishment viewed the conflict as having restored deterrence with Hezbollah, albeit at a very high price for Lebanese civilians and Lebanese infrastructure.
The 2006 war resulted in a new UN Security Council resolution (1701) calling for Hezbollah’s withdrawal from the border area and for the disarmament of all non-state actors in Lebanon. However, Hezbollah did not withdraw and did not abandon its pursuit of greater military capabilities. By 2013, Israel had begun air strikes against targets in Syria reportedly involved in the transfer of sophisticated weapons to Hezbollah from Iran. According to Israeli government sources, Hezbollah nevertheless succeeded in increasing its rocket and missile arsenal tenfold between 2006 and 2015.
This history provides the backdrop for Israel’s current offensive. From an Israeli perspective, since 2006 Hezbollah has managed to reinsert itself along the border and to build a state-like arsenal of rockets, missiles and drones, some of which can reach far into Israel and even target sensitive sites such as Ben Gurion airport.
The shock of the Oct. 7 2023 Hamas attack on southern Israel, Hezbollah’s decision to begin its own strikes against northern Israel the following day, and the IDF’s assertion that Hezbollah had planned and positioned forces for its own Oct. 7 style ground incursion into Israel may have combined to shatter any faith in deterrence as a viable strategy. Israel’s war aims this time, consequently, extend beyond simply restoring deterrence, instead focussing on materially degrading Hezbollah’s capabilities so that it cannot, at least for the near future, pose such a significant threat.
The IDF has already stated that its objectives include clearing Hezbollah infrastructure from the border region and preventing Hezbollah forces from reinserting themselves into Lebanese villages in the same area. Understandably, Israel wants to allow for the more than 60,000 displaced northern residents to return home and does not believe that this is possible if Hezbollah fighters can easily infiltrate back to the immediate border area.
Israeli actions since the exploding pager attack of mid-September reflect its broader objectives beyond the border. The pager operation, the successful decapitation strikes on Hezbollah’s most senior leadership, and the geographic scope of Israeli attacks are all indicative of an intelligence-led effort to degrade Hezbollah as a military organization. This implies not just more operations in the south of Lebanon, but further attacks on supply lines, logistic hubs, weapons storage facilities, and command and control nodes throughout Lebanon. Although it is difficult to judge the effectiveness of this campaign in reducing Hezbollah’s arsenal of longer-range and precision weapons, there can be little doubt that these systems are being targeted.
Israel likely judges that Hezbollah cannot be destroyed as an organization. Israeli decision-makers can perhaps live with that, as long as northern residents can return to their homes without risk of immediate attack and Hezbollah is no longer able to threaten all of Israel with long-range weapons. Degrading the group so that it no longer resembles a formidable, regional military power will likely require an extensive campaign. As has been the case throughout the tortured history of Israeli-Lebanese relations, many innocent civilians will unfortunately suffer as a result.
Mike Elliott is a distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center. He retired from the Canadian federal government in 2023 after more than 31 years of service, mostly in the Foreign Service, serving in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the U.S. A specialist in international security, defense and intelligence issues, he was Canadian Ambassador to Mali in 2019 and chargé d’affaires in Libya in 2014. He served in NATO headquarters, with the International Security Assistance Force in Kandahar, Afghanistan and the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, Iraq, and at Canadian embassies in Tel Aviv, Israel and Washington, DC.