The slaughter of a dozen child footballers on Sunday came as a startling sign that the situation in northern Israel cannot continue. Since October 7, thousands of Hezbollah rockets have rained down on the Jewish state, claiming many lives and causing 70,000 people to flee their homes.
There comes a point where the only option is war. According to UN Resolution 1701, issued in 2006, Hezbollah forces must not stray south of the Litani river, about 18 miles from the Israeli border. They have violated that ruling for years, with no real punishment from the UN or anybody else. On a trip to the region before October 7, I saw them moving through the territory with my own eyes, carrying out surveillance. After October 7, families on the Israeli side of the fence can no longer be expected to live like that.
Yet the international response to the latest unprovoked atrocity was drearily predictable. The US secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, offered the nicety that Israel had the right to defend itself, then warned: ‘We don’t want to see the conflict escalate. We don’t want to see it spread.’ A similar message came from the British government – currently poised to block sales of armaments and military equipment to the Jewish state – and France’s president Emmanuel Macron, who instructed Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu over the telephone to do ‘everything to avoid a new escalation in the region’. Yet the Israelis have been appealing for diplomatic help for months. For months they have been ignored.
The Washington Post published a harrowing picture of mourning Druze families, accompanied by the headline: ‘Israel hits targets in Lebanon’. It appeared that Israel was to blame for the suffering in the photograph. The standfirst – ‘Strikes against Hezbollah installations muted amid international calls for restraint’ – did nothing to dispel this misperception. Some commentators went one step further, writing of how the Lebanese government and Hezbollah were ‘urging restraint’ in the face of Israel’s ‘lust for revenge’. Have these people not heard of victim-blaming?
I’m not agitating for war. God forbid. Hezbollah is at least an order of magnitude better equipped and trained than Hamas, not to mention more numerous in men and with battle experience in Syria. Their arsenal of rockets alone, which comprise precision missiles rather than the rudimentary Qassams of Hamas, is thought to number 150,000 – larger than many countries – with a range spanning the entire Jewish state. A full-on onslaught would overwhelm Israel’s iron dome defences, causing tens of thousands of casualties. Iran may also enter the conflict, building on its attack of last April. In Israeli military circles, the shorthand for the comparative devastation of war with Hezbollah set against the Hamas pogroms of October 7 is ’10X’. Needless to say, the losses suffered in Lebanon would be far graver. Only a madman would look upon the prospect of such human suffering with anything other than horror.
But it is becoming increasingly clearer that the forces of darkness are rolling the pitch for Israel’s destruction. Hezbollah launches salvo after salvo from the north. Hamas drains the Jewish state’s resources in the south. Meanwhile, the world turns against the Jewish state. When the Israeli anthem was played at the Olympics in France, a group of fans chanted ‘heil Hitler’, and some allegedly performed the Nazi salute. Painting Israel as the genocidal regime that must be restrained in its appetite for war crimes is part of the strategy. The goal is to pressure the international community into preventing Israel from responding with full force, allowing the incremental demolition of the Jewish state to advance. In the meantime, Tehran advances at pace towards nuclearisation.
A full-on onslaught would overwhelm Israel’s iron dome defences, causing tens of thousands of casualties
With every week that goes by, Israel’s international position weakens. Its economy is placed under greater strain. Its social fabric pulls further apart under the stress of the war, the suffering of the hostages and their families and the country’s dysfunctional politics. Foreseeing such a scenario as early as October 7, Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defence minister, advocated a surprise attack on Hezbollah. He was overruled under pressure from the Americans, who once again decried ‘escalation’. But forever avoiding escalation means that it will be forced upon you on the enemy’s terms.
The strike on the football pitch was probably an accident. Prior to firing the rocket, Hezbollah let it be known on social media that it was targeting an IDF facility. And the deaths of Druze children can only have been an unwelcome complication. The Druze, followers of an esoteric, Abrahamic faith founded in the 11th century, can be found across the Levant. Those living in Israel’s heartlands tend to be patriotic, routinely serving in the armed forces. But their villages in the north only fell into Israeli hands in the Six Day War of 1967, and for years retained more loyalty to Syria than Israel, perhaps in anticipation that the territory would one day be returned and ‘collaborators’ not treated with kindness. Since the Syrian civil war, those allegiances have become diluted; but still they never dreamt that Hezbollah’s rockets would fall on them. With their leaders demanding retribution, nobody can predict the social and political effects of this atrocity.
Most observers believe that Hezbollah does not want to provoke war right now. Its chances of victory only increase with time, as Israel weakens. But is it best to wait until the enemy has crafted a moment that suits his advantage? On Sunday night, Israel’s war cabinet held a four-hour meeting attended by both the prime minister and the head of Mossad, both of whom had cut foreign trips short. They considered the risk that an attack on Hezbollah would derail the hostage negotiations with Hamas. Despite American pressure to ‘de-escalate’, they discussed a major retaliation; the strength of Hezbollah’s response would determine whether war was afoot, they concluded. But the vast majority of those present did not want all-out war in the north with Israel in such a weakened state. The cabinet voted to authorise Netanyahu and Gallant to determine the timing and scale of the operation. The far-right ministers, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Betzalel Smotrich, abstained.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Lebanese militia has already won a proud victory. Journey towards the north of Israel these days and before you get anywhere close to the border, you will be stopped at a military checkpoint. If you have been granted the required permissions, you will be allocated an army escort and permitted to enter the closed zone. What you will find will bear little resemblance to the northern Israel you may have visited in peacetime. The sun-drenched villages and beaches, vineyards, glimmering lakes and rugged hills are largely deserted, with many of the towns pockmarked by rocket damage, and some areas destroyed almost completely. This place of life has become a place of death.
What nation would accept the forced evacuation of an entire region of its territory? Displaced people are living in cramped conditions in taxpayer-funded hotels. Children have been told that they will be unable to return to school for a second year running, even though Gallant said just weeks ago that things would be back to normal for the beginning of the coming term.
What nation would accept the forced evacuation of an entire region of its territory?
In the context of Israel’s pioneering story, which valorises the defence of the peripheries at all costs, this hurts. Take the national legend of Joseph Trupeldor, a Russian Jewish war hero who, after losing his left arm in combat, became an early Zionist activist who helped set up the Zionist Mule Corps and brought Jews to Palestine. In 1920, he was killed defending Tel Hai, a village on the very border with modern-day Lebanon, in a battle with Shiite Arabs. This was a courageous and almost hopeless stand on the dangerous edge of the Jewish homeland. His bravery and defiance made him a lasting symbol of self-defence and resilience, and his last words, ‘never mind, it is good to die for our country,’ became a popular slogan. To this day, his death is commemorated annually.
Trumpeldor was the inspiration for Betar, the rightwing youth movement founded in 1923 that later inspired Israel’s governing Likud party. To this day, Betar uses the salute ‘Tel Hai’. Benjamin Netanyahu, the custodian of this cultural weight, must now decide whether the people of Israel have strong enough shoulders to bear it.
But what would an Israeli victory look like? Lebanon is almost 30 times bigger than Gaza and Hezbollah cannot be crushed like Hamas. At best, the terror group can be significantly degraded and pushed away from the Israeli border, perhaps beyond the Litani river. Deterrent would be restored, but the cost to the Israeli and Lebanese people would be appalling. The threat would not be permanently stifled unless the Iranian regime, the life-force of jihadism in the region, was uprooted. On the other hand, the current situation is unbearable; adapting to it only prepares the ground for the next hostile advance. This is the Israeli dilemma, the Israeli curse.