The Coming War With Hezbollah: 'Will Lead To A Multi-Arena Escalation'

The 3rd Lebanon war

Yoav Limor

Last Sunday, in the wake of Operation Guardian of the Walls, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi agreed to set up 14 research teams on various issues that came up during the military campaign in the Gaza Strip. The teams will review almost every conceivable topic: intelligence, targets, inventory of armaments and interceptors, the efforts against the rockets, the home front, public image, and more. In about a month and a half, the General Staff will convene for a workshop over a few days, to review insights and lessons from the operation.

The reviews will deal with what happened in Gaza, but each of them will also have a dedicated chapter to the northern arena. Despite the built-in differences between the fronts, the IDF seeks to find out for itself what lessons can be learned from what happened with Hamas as to what will happen on the much more challenging front, against Hezbollah.

The Gaza campaign pushed back until later in the year the "month of war" planned by the IDF, the broad exercise focused on dealing with a campaign in the north. The lessons of the operation in Gaza enable the IDF to come to this exercise sharper.

"Gaza was an exercise on a model, which worked very well in the connection between the division, the command, the General Staff, the Air Force and intelligence," says Maj. Gen. (Res.) Giora Eiland, former head of the Planning Division and head of the National Security Council. "It was a demonstration of how this system works together, and there is a clear improvement in capabilities when compared to the past."

But Lebanon is not Gaza, and the challenge it poses is several times more complex, in almost every parameter. Hezbollah has about ten times more missiles and rockets than Hamas. It does not matter if the exact figure is 80,000 or 140,000 (as the IDF estimates) – the bottom line is the same: the organization intends to fire thousands of rockets on Israel every day, capable of hitting any point in the country.

"Hezbollah sees the Iron Dome standing up well to the challenge from Gaza, and it will try to learn from it. It is looking for bottlenecks on our side. We are likely to see it increase firing, and of course, continue to work on improving accuracy, this is its flagship project.

"Obviously, we also see it trying to hit Iron Dome systems themselves, to put them out of use, at least temporarily. We all saw the barrages on Ashkelon. Now think what would have happened if dozens of rockets that were not intercepted had fallen on it. That's what Hamas tried to do, and that's what Hezbollah will try to do.

"In any case, given the amount of rockets that Hezbollah has, Iron Dome will have a hard time getting the same results. The number of casualties will be significant, and the damage will be massive, all over the country. The public will be shocked. This is a dramatic issue, because the resilience of the home front is a critical component in the fighting."

The border with Lebanon is dramatically different from the border with the Strip. Topographically, Hezbollah has an advantage over Israel. During the campaign in Gaza, Metula was attacked twice: for the first time, Lebanese crossed the border at a point where there is no real barrier, near the Ayun stream; they set a fire and were scared away by IDF gunfire. Contrary to the claim that these were Lebanese Palestinians showing solidarity with Gaza, it turned out that the victim was a Hezbollah operative.

The second incident was more disturbing. Under cover of darkness, a squad infiltrated Metula. It cut openings in the new fence erected in the area, and began to move towards the houses of the town. A Givati brigade force, deployed in the area in advance, opened fire and scared it back into Lebanese territory. It was later revealed that it had left behind some explosive devices.

These two events were not even the promo for what is expected in the next campaign in the North. Hezbollah intends to use its elite forces, the "Radwan" battalions, for ground raids into Israeli territory in order to occupy settlements or outposts, kidnap and kill, and most importantly – to transfer the fighting to Israeli territory. This is exactly what Hassan Nasrallah meant when he promised a decade or more ago to "conquer the Galilee".

The IDF believes that the campaign in the north will lead to a multi-arena escalation. Although Gaza also led to a heating up in other sectors, it is expected to be much more widespread against Hezbollah. Gaza will certainly ignite, and most likely Judea and Samaria will as well. Missiles and rockets will also fly from Syria, as part of the "First Northern War", and possibly even from Iraq and Yemen, and maybe Iran itself. This will be an unprecedented defensive challenge for air defense systems, and an offensive challenge for fighter jets, which will be required to operate in parallel even in more distant and lesser-known arenas.

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