Israel’s impressive military achievements against Hezbollah aren’t reflected in the ceasefire arrangements, which restore the previous status quo.
The ceasefire concluded between Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah this week brings a close to 14 months of fighting on Israel’s northern border. The cessation of hostilities in the north doesn’t end the war currently under way in the Middle East, which is already Israel’s longest. (It has surpassed the Jewish state’s war of independence in length. The latter ran from May 1948 to March 1949.) But it does remove from the table the most powerful and consequential of Iran’s militia proxies. The ceasefire is a terminal blow to the hopes of the Palestinian Hamas leadership that their October 7 massacre of Israelis last year would trigger an all-out attack by Iran and its various proxies against Israel.
The ceasefire is a terminal blow to the hopes of the Palestinian Hamas leadership that their October 7 massacre of Israelis last year would trigger an all-out attack by Iran.
For a while, this dream seemed close to realisation. Hezbollah’s entry into the conflict on October 8 last year was the first indication of a more general mobilisation. The start of attacks by the Yemeni Houthis on the Israeli port of Eilat and on shipping in the Gulf of Aden-Red Sea route in November last year opened an additional front. Attacks by Iraqi Shia militias on Israeli and US targets constituted a third. Then, from April this year, the direct targeting of Israel by Iran brought the region close to the brink of all-out conflict. In the past few months, however, this dynamic has largely reversed itself.
Most important, Israel’s determined response on October 28 to Iran’s direct targeting appears to have convinced the mullahs that continued support of proxies rather than direct confrontation may be the more prudent course to follow in its ongoing effort to secure Israel’s destruction. Iran’s air defences were destroyed during the Israeli raid, the largest mounted against Iran by any adversary since the conclusion of the Iran-Iraq war. The Tehran regime’s subsequent furious threats of retaliation have failed to materialise.
Efforts by the Iraqi Shia militias and the Houthis to target Israel, never especially consequential, have largely dwindled. From a high point of 41 claimed attacks in the week of October 29-November 4, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed just six attacks (all intercepted) in the week of November 18-25.
The decision by Lebanese Hezbollah to unilaterally quit the field this week is the latest and most terminal event in this trend. Hamas in Gaza now remains to all intents and purposes alone.
How, then, should the 14-month war between Israel and Hezbollah be assessed? Who gained, who lost, and what may follow?
The results are not clear-cut. In essence, Hezbollah suffered a defeat. Israel, however, cannot really claim to have secured a victory.
Hezbollah suffered defeat in the clearest and most obvious sense; namely, that it entered the fight on October 8 last year with clearly stated aims, then agreed to a ceasefire in plain abandonment of those aims.
Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah, in his first speech following his movement’s start of hostilities against Israel, said: “We say to the enemy’s government, to the enemy’s army and to the enemy’s society, the Lebanon front will not stop until the aggression on Gaza stops. The resistance in Lebanon will not stop standing by the people of Gaza.”
The Hezbollah leader made clear at that time that Hamas’s effort in Gaza was the main front of the war (in retrospect, an early indication of the less than total support to be offered to the Palestinian Islamists by their fellow clients of Iran).
But as the above quote makes clear, Hezbollah’s “support front” was intended to maintain pressure on Israel until such time as the Gaza conflict would be concluded in Hamas’s favour. The ceasefire agreement represents Hezbollah’s abandonment of Hamas and of its stated war aim.
In the interim period between October 8 last year and November 27 this year, Hezbollah has suffered damage of hitherto unwitnessed dimensions. A Reuters report on the state of the movement quotes a source close to it as estimating that Hezbollah has suffered about 4000 dead in the course of the war. The article notes a World Bank estimate that Lebanon sustained $US8.5bn ($13bn) worth of damage.
Hezbollah’s top leadership echelon has been wiped out. The movement’s decision to enter the war provided Israel with an opportunity to remove Hezbollah’s historic leader, Nasrallah, under whose direction the organisation had risen to be widely considered the most powerful non-state military force in the world. Israel’s targeting of thousands of mid-level Hezbollah operatives via the placing of explosives in pagers and communications devices maintained by the movement demonstrated the extent to which the organisation had been thoroughly penetrated by Israeli intelligence.
The ground entry of several Israel Defence Forces divisions into southern Lebanon from October 1 this year has resulted in the destruction of Hezbollah’s infrastructure along the extent of the border.
Finally, the ground entry of several Israel Defence Forces divisions into southern Lebanon from October 1 this year has resulted in the destruction of Hezbollah’s infrastructure along the extent of the border. IDF troops suffered relatively minor losses in the course of the fighting in the border area (46 soldiers killed). The damage inflicted will take Hezbollah years to rebuild.
So, a unilateral decision by the Iran-supported Shia Islamists to quit the battlefield after suffering enormous damage. Why, then, should this not be counted a clear victory for Israel?
The answer is that victory does not consist of military feats alone. These must be accompanied by a clear change in the long-term strategic picture in the victor’s favour. But the current ceasefire agreement does not include any such change.
The arrangements now to be put in place consist in their key details of a restoration of the status quo ante bellum. According to UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which was the basis for prewar arrangements south of the Litani River and which remains in effect, Hezbollah is to remain north of the river. The agencies tasked with ensuring this were, and are to remain, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon and the Lebanese Armed Forces, the official Lebanese state army.
The monitoring mechanism for the implementation of Resoluion 1701 is to be beefed up, with the US to lead it. A letter of guarantee sent separately from the US to Israel recognises Israel’s right to respond to threats coming from Lebanese territory.
But the bottom line is that the LAF, the key force tasked with implementing Resolution 1701, failed to do so in the past, and there is no reason to think anything has changed regarding the reasons for its failure. UNIFIL, also, was and will remain without a mandate to confront Hezbollah.
Though pummelled by Israel, Hezbollah remains the strongest military force in Lebanon and its most powerful single political actor. The LAF is heavily infiltrated by the movement, according to Lebanese sources.
The considerable achievement of Israeli arms that induced Hezbollah to abandon its ally and its commitments looks likely to produce a next chapter in which, with Iranian assistance, the group slowly rebuilds itself.
Its rank and file are roughly one-third Shia, making it incapable of any confrontation with the Shia Islamist force. Hezbollah maintains de facto control of the LAF’s military intelligence, via Shia officers deployed in it. So the main instrument tasked with ensuring Hezbollah’s disarmament south of the Litani is itself under partial Hezbollah control.
Regarding the new committee and the letter of guarantee, it is likely that Israel will make use of these to act periodically from the air and via intelligence to interfere with the process of Hezbollah reconstruction and rearmament now set to begin. But the experience of Israel’s bombing campaign against Hezbollah and Iran in Syria before the current war suggests that success in this endeavour is likely to be partial in the extreme, absent a partner on the ground.
Consequently, the considerable achievement of Israeli arms that induced Hezbollah to abandon its ally and its commitments looks likely to produce a next chapter in which, with Iranian assistance, the group slowly rebuilds itself. The 2006 war led to a subsequent 17 years of quiet on the border and Hezbollah reconstruction, which ended on October 8 last year. The countdown to the next round now appears set to begin.
Published originally under the title “Israel’s Ceasefire Is a Terminal Blow to the Hopes of Hamas.”
