Israel’s new doctrine in the north: from containment to coercion

Israel’s pre-October 7 obsession with “tranquillity above all” combined with Hezbollah’s threats conveyed a dangerous message of Israeli vulnerability to radical enemies. The Israeli Air Force all but ceased flying manned aircraft over Lebanon. Israel did not respond to a Hezbollah claymore mine attack deep inside its territory, nor to the erection of two tents on Israeli soil. It destroyed attack tunnels only in the sections that penetrated Israeli territory. At one point, Israel even fabricated reports about casualties in a Hezbollah attack, merely to satisfy Nasrallah’s appetite for revenge.

This perception of Hezbollah’s power heavily influenced Israel’s strategic caution regarding an attack on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. While Israel tried – with limited success – to interdict weapons transfers from Iran to Lebanon via Syria, it was forced to accept Hezbollah’s rapid and unchecked growth in three critical areas: its ability to invade and occupy parts of northern Israel; its capacity to inflict heavy damage on national infrastructure; and the likelihood of causing prolonged disruption to civilian life in major population centres.

The war fundamentally altered these assumptions. A massive build-up of Israeli forces in the north and the evacuation of Israeli civilians from the border region after October 8 effectively neutralised any realistic threat of invasion. A year-long defensive campaign eroded Hezbollah’s short- and medium-range capabilities in southern Lebanon.

A limited Israeli incursion into southern Lebanon, carried out when the IDF was able to divert substantial forces from the Gaza campaign, devastated Hezbollah’s offensive infrastructure embedded in Lebanese villages and towns. This led to a northward evacuation of much of the Shia civilian population that might otherwise have supported Hezbollah.

The booby-trapped beeper and walkie-talkie campaign disabled key Hezbollah operators and shattered morale. An extensive campaign of targeted assassinations against Hezbollah commanders and military experts sowed confusion and disorientation. Massive pinpoint bombardments in the heart of Beirut decapitated the organisation and destroyed large segments of its strategic arsenal.

Almost as significant as the military successes was the political context. Israel achieved this strategic victory over Hezbollah despite the adamant, consistent opposition of the United States. From early 2024, the Biden administration sought to force Israel to halt the war – at a time when Hamas could have easily regrouped in Gaza, when Hezbollah dictated the pace in Lebanon, and when Iran, unscathed, retained full control over its regional proxy network.

Israel urgently needed strategic resolution. Iran sought perpetual attrition. President Biden remained fixated on ceasefires and humanitarian aid. Had Israel bowed to American pressure by avoiding escalation in Lebanon (and halting the war in Gaza), the result would have been strategic defeat and a decisive victory for the radical enemies of the West and its Arab allies.

To his credit, Biden later made good use of Israel’s battlefield achievements, despite the fact they came in defiance of his policy, by helping to broker a ceasefire that institutionalised Israel’s new strategic advantages. Since early 2025, the Trump administration has gone further, giving Israel greater freedom of action to enforce a radically different set of “rules of engagement” than those that prevailed before 2023. The key term is now “coercive maintenance”, reflecting a fundamental shift in Israeli strategy.

For decades, Israel tolerated cycles of war, accepting the arming of its enemies while counting on its superior capabilities to widen the strategic gap between conflicts. But October 7 convinced Israel that this logic cannot apply to jihadist terror entities. These must be proactively dismantled as they emerge.

That conclusion and its broader implications warrant separate analysis. What matters in the present context is Israel’s determination to maintain an open-ended coercive campaign in Lebanon to prevent Hezbollah from re-establishing its infrastructure – even after the cessation of major hostilities.

What now reflects the new balance of power on Israel’s northern front is its unilateral interpretation of the ceasefire. Israel continues to strike Hezbollah targets, Palestinian militants, and military installations across Lebanon – killing roughly one operative per day since the November 2024 truce, more than 200 to date. Hezbollah and Hamas have largely refrained from responding. The Lebanese government offers muted protests, thinly veiling its approval. The United States, particularly under the Trump administration, recognises Israeli actions as stabilising. Others, such as France, are now largely irrelevant.

The collapse of the Assad regime in Damascus was a direct consequence of Hezbollah’s defeat and the weakening of the Iranian axis. While the medium- and long-term risk of Turkish domination of Syria remains, for now Israel has reaped three major strategic gains:

The ejection of Iranian forces and the disruption of their land corridor from Tehran to Lebanon and the Mediterranean; the destruction of much of Syria’s remaining military hardware; and the establishment of a de facto strategic cordon sanitaire between Damascus and Israel’s northern border.

A new phase in Israeli-Syrian relations began in May 2025, when President Trump met with Ahmed al-Sharaa and lifted US sanctions on Damascus. The nature of Syria’s new regime – rooted in its jihadist background, sponsored by Erdoğan, and seeking aid from both the West and the Gulf – is still to be determined. At this early stage, al-Sharaa appears keen to avoid confrontation with Israel and to accept Israel’s self-declared zone of influence in southern Syria.

Whether Syria can reconstitute itself in the foreseeable future as a functioning state remains unclear. But Israel is now in a position to defend itself proactively and pre-emptively within Syrian territory against jihadist and Palestinian threats, as well as against Turkish entrenchment –particularly in the southern section. The cost of this forward policy may be significant, but the security benefits, in this period of instability, are essential.

The strategic reality Israel has created on its northern front may not endure, but it is a potent bargaining asset for future negotiations and preferable to any alternative so long as the situation in Syria remains volatile. Paradoxically, Israel’s aggressive campaign against radical Arab and Iranian forces may be the essential precondition for responsible regimes in Syria and Lebanon to reassert control and begin relieving their peoples’ suffering. In Lebanon, that process has already begun.

Dr Dan Schueftan is head of the International Graduate Programme in National Securities Studies at Haifa University, who has published extensively on Mid-East history and politics