There has been much reporting and speculation in recent weeks regarding the direct talks between representatives of the Israeli and Lebanese governments. The meeting between Ambassadors Yechiel Leiter and Nada Hamadeh Moawad of Israel and Lebanon respectively in Washington a week ago has been hailed as potentially representing a diplomatic breakthrough between the two countries.
From the ground, however, the situation looks rather different. The real power in Lebanon is located not in the presidential palace in Baabda, or the prime minister’s headquarters at Beirut’s Grand Serail. Rather, it lies with the leaders of Iran’s proxy Hezbollah. The terror group is represented in the current government, holding two ministerial portfolios including the ministry of health. Its Shia Amal allies control an additional three portfolios, including the ministry of finance.
But Hezbollah’s power isn’t located in cabinet votes. Thanks to its Iranian master, the movement possesses a military force stronger than the official state armed forces. This capacity enables it to pursue its own foreign policy. It launches wars at a time of its own choosing (against Israel in 2006, 2023 and 2026). It intervenes militarily and decisively on behalf of its allies, as in Syria in the decade between 2013 and 2023. It also brushes aside any attempt by the official authorities to assert sovereignty over it, as when Amal and Hezbollah-associated forces took over west Beirut in the June events of 2008.
Hezbollah’s power is also based on the sectarian realities of Lebanon. Approximately 50 per cent of the rank and file and 30 per cent of the officer corps of the official Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) are reckoned to be Shia. These are the brothers, cousins and kinsmen of Hezbollah’s own (better paid) fighters. This means, quite simply, that the Lebanese president and prime minister do not possess an instrument for curtailing Hezbollah’s activities, still less of disarming the organisation, even if they wished to do so. Which they evidently do not.
This week, I was able to join a group of Israeli military correspondents on a tour to the IDF’s new and emergent buffer zone in south Lebanon to take a close look at Israel’s response to this situation.
Hezbollah chose to join the current round of fighting after Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed. Israel, in its response, has expanded its area of control north of the border. After withdrawing to the international border in 2000, Israel established five outposts along the borderline after Hezbollah chose to join in Hamas’s war on Israel on October 8, 2023.
In the course of the last two months, with world attention focused on Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, Israel has deepened and expanded its de facto buffer zone stretching along the entirety of the border. Hezbollah in the initial stages rushed forces south of the Litani River, in an attempt to stall the Israeli advance. In the first days, the troops of the IDF’s 162nd Division told us that they faced anti-tank missiles, drones, and a stream of mortar fire. But despite its once vaunted (and self-proclaimed) image as the most powerful non-state military force on the planet, Hezbollah’s efforts were in vain. The movement has paid a high cost. In the area of the 162nd Division's operations, Hezbollah lost 251 identified fighters. The Israeli side lost four soldiers killed in action.
As of now, the 162nd is involved in what one of its officers called the “root canal work” of clearing out remaining Hezballah fighters in the area 10 km deep that the division has carved out north. A ten-day ceasefire is under way (which enabled the press visit). No one on either side particularly expects it to last.
But given the obvious inadequacies of the Lebanese government, and the demonstrated continued willingness and capacity of Hezbollah to continue aggression against Israel, is the buffer zone likely to acquire a look of permanence?
We met with commanders of the 162nd Division in the ruins of the town of Ait a Shaab, once a famous Hezbollah stronghold. All those we spoke to were clear that their mission’s goal was to place a physical barrier between residents of Israel’s border communities and the fighters of Hezbollah. The intention was to put the anti-tank missiles that Hezbollah likes to use against civilian targets along the borderline out of range.
What will stop this new buffer zone from sharing the fate of Israel’s last “Security Zone” in Lebanon (which Israel withdrew from after a Hezbollah insurgency kept up a steady toll of soldiers’ lives in the zone).
Israel proposes to answer this question in two ways. Firstly, by depopulating villages and towns known to be supportive of Hezbollah. Secondly, by avoiding the construction of large, static outposts and using technological means to neutralise any threat seeking to enter the zone from the north.
This won’t solve the problem of Hezbollah zones and missiles, of course, which can be launched from further north. It will, however, render impossible a repeat of the October 7 massacres in this area.
The emergent shape of Israel’s security doctrine and perhaps of the next strategic chapter in the Middle East is better viewed from the ruins of Ait a Shaab than from the diplomatic halls of Washington. At present, the Iranian regime has not been broken, and Islamist forces of various kinds remain the main holders of power on the ground across large swathes of the region. In Lebanon, in Gaza and on the border with Syria, Israel’s response to this reality is to seek to establish physical barriers between its own population and potential threats emerging from the poorly or non-governed areas.
For as long as movements of political Islam are stronger than governments (or form the de facto government themselves) this practice is likely to hold. The 162nd will be holding the ruins of Ait a Shaab for a while.
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