A new ceasefire in Lebanon and talk of Israel withdrawing from some areas have raised questions about the current Israeli warfighting doctrine. Israel has now been fighting a war for 989 days since October 7, 2023.
While the war was imposed on Israel by attacks by Hamas and Hezbollah, Israel has had a duty to change the situation and fight the war on Israel’s terms.
In the first months of the war, after October 7, the IDF had to respond and regroup. With 1,000 Israelis killed, 250 taken hostage, and the IDF scrambling to call up and train some 500,000 reservists, there were unprecedented strains on Israel.
However, by the time the IDF began to take the offensive against Hezbollah in September 2024, the situation had changed. Israel was now dictating the tempo on various fronts. Israel has been making its own decisions since then.
However, a recent ceasefire in Lebanon and pressure on Israel to halt its offensive operations have left many questions about what comes next. Hezbollah is still in Lebanon. It is not only present in the Beka’a and Dahiyeh, but it is also present near Israel’s border.
The Alma Research and Education Center recently put out a report about the IDF fighting Hezbollah at a key site in southern Lebanon.
“The IDF is currently conducting ground operations on the Ali al-Taher ridge against the Badr Unit’s primary underground infrastructure, located approximately 10 kilometers from the Israeli border near Metula. This facility serves as the main headquarters of the Badr Unit and, in all likelihood, can be used to launch weapons and conduct attacks into Israeli territory. The infrastructure includes several underground sub-complexes, the largest of which extends for more than one kilometer,” the report said.
Other reports have painted a concerning picture of this ridgeline. It also raises questions about why Israel waited some 900 days to take the Beaufort and then strike at this area. The IDF took the Beaufort within two days of launching operations in 1982.
Why did it take years this time?
The reason is because of a new IDF doctrine of tactics that emerged in Gaza in response to the Hamas attack. Rather than fighting the war of maneuver and combining firepower the way the Momentum plan the IDF had trained for, called for, the IDF has preferred very slow incremental advances. These advances move at a pace similar to that of a World War I battlefield, except without the high casualties.
Some may argue that it is this concern for casualties that guides the 988-day war. However, the evidence from Lebanon shows that even a slow pace carries risks.
Hezbollah will innovate, and the IDF is suffering casualties. There is no way to run a war in which there are no losses. As such, it’s not clear why it would be preferable to fight for 900 days, rather than six days, as in the Six-Day War, if in the end the casualties will be the same.
In terms of the country's interests, short wars are generally better. Israeli leaders knew this in the early decades of the state. They preferred rapid advance. They also knew that a long war would be a race against time.
The international community and other factors mean that one can’t fight a war forever. Israeli officials have boasted that the IDF will remain in southern Lebanon and that 200,000 Lebanese forced to evacuate will not return. However, there is pressure on Israel to begin some type of withdrawal.
What to make of the current situation?
Israel’s prime minister told the JNS International Policy Summit on June 22 that “we decimated Hezbollah's military machine. We prevented the Radwan force from invading the Galilee. We destroyed over 90% of the 150,000 rockets and missiles Hezbollah amassed against us.”
He claimed Israel has established security zones in Gaza, Syria, and Lebanon. This is the new doctrine: carving out buffer zones, razing the homes in those zones, and then staying. This puts a long-term burden on the IDF to stay in static positions in these zones and patrol them.
While the war in Lebanon is presented as a success, it raises questions. Hezbollah is a terrorist group. It should never have become so strong as to possess 150,000 rockets and have a conventional force capable of invading Israel. In fact, in all of Israel’s history, there was never a force in Lebanon capable of invading Israel.
Not since 1948 has Israel been invaded. Israel’s great leaders of the past prided themselves on preventing Israel from being invaded, and they took the fight to the enemy in rapid wars such as 1956, 1967, and even 1973 and 1982.
Although 1973 was initially a setback, the IDF quickly took the fight to the enemy, crossing the Suez Canal in two weeks of fighting. Not 900 days, but two weeks. That was the doctrine of fighters such as Moshe Dayan, Ariel Sharon, Yizhak Rabin and others.
Even in 1982, although the war became a quagmire, the initial advance covered more ground in two days than the entire 988-day war in Lebanon at that time. In fact, the negative aspects of the war all began when Israel decided to stay for 18 years, which is the policy Israel has adopted again. Will the result be the same?
In 1978, the Litani offensive also covered more ground in Lebanon in a few days than the entire war at that time. One argument for why this takes so long is that Hezbollah is so strong. However, this goes back to the fact that Hezbollah was allowed to get so strong.
Why was it allowed to build a mountain base six miles from the border? And why is that Hezbollah bunker and tunnel system still there, with the IDF apparently being told it needs to cease fire?
The slow war in Lebanon, based on a doctrine from Gaza, has resulted in leaving Hezbollah in the field just miles from the border. This raises questions about why the IDF adopted a slow war concept from Gaza and tried to apply it to Lebanon.
One reason for the slow pace of the war is the creation of new buffer zones along the border. Israel now wants buffer zones. This means patrolling them. Of interest, this means a return to the Bar-Lev line concepts of an earlier era.
However, those static forts were seen as problematic in 1973.
The question is, why is Israel returning to concepts from the 1990s and before that appear to have failed? Israel’s technological superiority generally means it can choose the time and place to carry out precision attacks. With all this superiority, it’s unclear why the policy has led back to WWI-style methods.
Israeli technology is better suited to fast wars where the enemy is never allowed to regroup and the enemy is always kept off balance.
Now, Hezbollah apparently can regroup under the ceasefire. The fact that it is still so close to the border will mean that, as with Hamas, the terrorist group may remain, leading to more wars in the future.