A few days after the military-political establishment of Israel announced the reorientation of its actions from the southern to the northern front, that is, from the one against Hamas in the Gaza Strip to the Lebanon-based "Hezbollah", several key elements are clearly outlined in the Israeli offensive actions.
The first is the degradation of the cadre and chain of command of "Hezbollah". This happened in two stages. Once, through Operation Pager, in which mid- to high-level fighters of the Shiite group were at least temporarily neutralized. The second time, through the elimination of a number of key commanders of "Hezbollah" - either of the elite Radwan Guard (headed by its leader Ibrahim Akil), or of separate formations located on the front in southern Lebanon, or of the organization's rocket unit (Ibrahim Kubaisi). It was the murdered Akil who was pointed out as a likely successor to the previously eliminated top military leader of "Hezbollah" Fuad Shukr, which happened at the end of July. These "point attempts" actually decapitate the top military elite of the Shiite organization and compromise its ability to strategically plan and tactically respond to Israeli strikes. What's more, by creating this personnel deficit, Israel is actually increasing the volume of weightless silence from a military perspective surrounding the leader of the Shia group, Hassan Nasrallah. In fact, the latter has never been so alone.
The second key element of Israeli militarism against "Hezbollah" are the concentrated waves of strikes directed against the military infrastructure (missile launchers) and arsenal (unmanned aerial vehicles, short-, medium- and long-range missiles, including precision-guided ones) of the Shiite group. Dubbed Operation Northern Arrows, the purpose of the Israel Defense Forces' activity is twofold: to degrade the military hardware of Hezbollah; and her "pushing out" into Lebanon, possibly beyond the Litani River, located about 29 km from the border with Israel. Another issue is that even this would be a half-hearted solution, as far as "Hezbollah" possesses missiles with a long enough range to compensate for such a distance. If nothing else, at least Tel Aviv's response time will increase.
While the conflict between the group and the Israel Defense Forces is fought from a distance, ie. by strikes from a distance, such as released by "Hezbollah" however, space in southern Lebanon is hard to come by. Military aerial bombardment and artillery fire will not be enough to neutralize the entrenched "Hezbollah". Despite the material and moral damage that this organization has been suffering particularly intensively for several days, it continues to demonstrate its fighting ability. For example, since there is no confirmation from a second source, it is not clear whether the Israeli Air Force Base Ramat David (20 km from Haifa), the Megiddo Military Airport (next to the town of Afula) and the logistic base "Amos" were indeed hit, but they were certainly targeted by Hezbollah missiles. At the same time, there is confirmation that the naval base "Atlit" was also within range of explosive-laden drones (with at least one hitting its target). All this is indicative of the limits of success that Israel's pre-emptive strikes have. Despite being put under intense and devastating pressure, "Hezbollah" is also expanding the perimeter of its targets, launching projectiles already into the West Bank and into central Israel (suburbs of Tel Aviv were targeted with the first-ever Qadr-1 ballistic missile, an Iranian modification with a warhead in the range of 700- 1000 kg.). Along with this, the group's missile activity, although degraded by Tel Aviv's preemptive strikes, keeps northern parts of Israel under the cloak of constant warning sirens. That is, Hezbollah continues to have sufficient resources to not only prevent the return of Israeli citizens to their homes in the northern border areas of the country (and this was indicated by Tel Aviv as the main argument for Israel's military intervention against Lebanon), but also to increase this panic space on the territory of the Jewish state.
The third element of Israel's military planning activity is the additional deployment of military power to the northern front. The media reported two divisions redeployed to the Lebanese border from the southern Gaza front, but due to the sensitivity of this type of data they are not made available for public consumption, so we have no real idea of how much manpower Tel Aviv has concentrated in the northern parts of the country. But we know that the trend is clear: an increasing transfer of people and equipment from the south to the north.
If we summarize these three elements of Israel's military planning activity in the last one week - the degradation of the personnel asset and command structure of "Hezbollah", the destruction of the military infrastructure and hardware of the organization and the concentration of additional contingents of the Israel Defense Forces along the border with Lebanon - in fact, we will see that it is a matter of sabotage-sabotage activity on enemy territory, derogation of the enemy's defense capacity and accumulation of ground forces. Hence, it would not be surprising if Israel moves to the next stage of its military planning activity against "Hezbollah", organizing a ground invasion.
Israel has favorable conditions for the implementation of such: in the south, Hamas leads a borrowed life, concentrating its efforts on its survival (at the same time, against the background of the unclear fate of its leader Yahya Sinwar), "Hezbollah" it is already bleeding and profusely, Iran has no desire for war, and Washington's resistance forces - as has become clear repeatedly since the beginning of the conflict in October last year - are easily overcome by Tel Aviv. The involvement of Israel in military conflicts also gains political time for Benjamin Netanyahu himself - the more and intense external enemies, the less internal ones (following the example of Vladimir Putin).
Although as a state Israel has the resources and the initiative to shape the development of a possible full-scale conflict at least in the short term, the disadvantage for Tel Aviv is that there is not a single Western ally or Middle Eastern country that would want this clash to happen. expanded. The other discomfort for Tel Aviv is that Lebanese society is much more diverse than that in the Gaza Strip, and the collateral civilian casualties of a conventional war will be more difficult to assimilate by Israel's Western partners (and indeed by the international community as a whole). And further: "Hezbollah" was established as a means of combating the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon decades ago, and it would be an utter mockery of history to think that a new Israeli ground intervention would destroy the Shiite organization that has woven itself into the Lebanese state.
That would be like putting out a fire with gasoline.
Yet, amid the devastation in Gaza, a new generation of terrorists is growing.