How Israel Can Turn Hezbollah’s Blunder Into Lasting Defeat

By David Daoud

Monday, October 19, 2026

 

“Had I only known …” That was, in substance, Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah’s famous admission after Hezbollah’s 2006 war with Israel: Had Nasrallah anticipated that a raid to capture two Israeli soldiers would trigger a 34-day conflict that left thousands dead or wounded and displaced approximately 1 million Lebanese and 300,000 to 500,000 Israelis, he “absolutely” would not have ordered it.

 

The lesson didn’t stick. On October 8, 2023, the day after Hamas attacked southern Israel, Hezbollah committed an even greater blunder and voluntarily opened a second front in support of Gaza. Three years on, Israel has eliminated much of Hezbollah’s senior military and political leadership, severely degraded its arsenal, pushed it back from the frontier, and established a substantial security zone inside southern Lebanon.

 

Perhaps worst of all for Hezbollah, Nasrallah isn’t around to express regret, having succumbed to an Israeli airstrike nearly one year into the war.

 

Israel now has an opportunity to turn Hezbollah’s miscalculation into a lasting strategic defeat. But it could still squander that chance by withdrawing regardless of Lebanon’s compliance with its disarmament obligations under the U.S.-brokered trilateral framework agreed to in June, or by allowing the security zone to become another static occupation that Hezbollah can gradually wear down.

 

On October 6, Hezbollah’s secretary-general, Naim Qassem, demanded Israel withdraw first. “We have nothing to offer,” he insisted. Only afterward would Hezbollah discuss its arsenal—as a domestic Lebanese matter, not in an agreement with Israel.

 

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun has advanced a similar sequence. During a July visit to Washington, he said Hezbollah’s disarmament should “begin” with ending Israel’s presence in Lebanon—the “root cause” the group invokes to justify remaining armed. Aoun also insists that disarmament be negotiated with the group rather than imposed by force. His adviser Jean Aziz likewise argued in September that full Israeli withdrawal was necessary to make “decommissioning” Hezbollah “politically credible.”

 

But Hezbollah has given little reason to believe it will surrender its weapons after Israel leaves. Qassem has repeatedly rejected disarmament outright, and in June said that linking Israeli withdrawal to Hezbollah’s nationwide disarmament “crossed all red lines.” Hezbollah’s October 7 statement this year reaffirmed support for the Palestinian “resistance,” echoing the group’s 1985 Open Letter, which described Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon as a prelude to eliminating Israel and “liberating Jerusalem.”

 

History also argues against handing Hezbollah—or Lebanon, for that matter—another withdrawal on credit. In 1993, Nasrallah told journalist Robert Fisk that Hezbollah would “close the file” once Israel withdrew from south Lebanon. Asked whether that meant the Palestinians would be left to wage their own struggle, Nasrallah answered, “Correct.”

 

As Israeli withdrawal became realistic, Hezbollah began adjusting its position. In April 1998, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Cabinet accepted implementing U.N. Security Council Resolution 425—the 1978 resolution calling for Israel to withdraw from Lebanon—subject to security arrangements. That December, Hezbollah Political Council chief Mohammad Raad said the group had “numerous ways” to pursue Israel “even after they withdraw from our occupied land.”

 

In 1999, Ehud Barak won Israel’s premiership after campaigning on withdrawal. As Israel prepared to leave, Hezbollah began emphasizing Israel’s continued occupation of Shebaa Farms, a small disputed territory along the Lebanon-Syria-Israel frontier, as grounds for continuing its armed campaign. In May 2000, Hezbollah’s newspaper Al-Ahed acknowledged that the territory had only “recently” become a central political issue. On May 22, before Israel completed its withdrawal, Nasrallah declared that Hezbollah would continue fighting over the farms. Although the U.N. subsequently certified that Israel had withdrawn in compliance with Resolution 425, Hezbollah retained its arsenal and later justified it as necessary to protect Lebanon against Israel.

 

That’s not to say Israel should never withdraw from Lebanon. It should—but only under the conditions outlined in the trilateral framework. That agreement ties phased Israeli withdrawal to a “reciprocal, sequenced process” of disarming Hezbollah and dismantling its military infrastructure. Its security annex requires the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) to clear designated test areas, submit to outside verification, and establish control to prevent Hezbollah’s return. Israeli troops withdraw from those areas as those conditions are met. Complete Israeli withdrawal, however, should await Hezbollah’s nationwide disarmament.

 

Lebanon has so far fallen well short of its commitments. In September, Lebanese sources said the LAF’s expanded deployment in Nabatieh, a major southern city and regional administrative hub, was not intended to disarm Hezbollah or make the city weapons-free. At nearby Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh, Col. Raja Amer, deputy commander of LAF forces south of the Litani River, explained why troops were not forcibly confiscating Hezbollah’s weapons: Such operations risked violence against “our own people” and another civil war. Meanwhile, the framework’s outside verification committee still had not been formed, and LAF has relied heavily on coordination and negotiated handovers with Hezbollah rather than searching for and forcibly dismantling its hidden infrastructure.

 

LAF’s claims of achieving “operational control” are difficult to square with that record. On September 9, the army declared that it had achieved such control in three framework test areas: Froun, Srifa, and Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh. It reported establishing checkpoints, observation posts, patrols, and seizing 1,818 weapons and munitions. But 1,560 were undefined “light ammunition” (in other words, bullets), the tally included unexploded ordnance, and it identified no Hezbollah fighter disarmed or arrested, tunnel destroyed, or depot or command center dismantled. LAF had made an identical declaration before: On January 8, the Lebanese army had also claimed “operational control” south of the Litani. Less than two months later, Hezbollah was fighting Israel there again. Israeli forces subsequently reported finding three new Hezbollah tunnel entrances near Khiam at a site the IDF said it had cleared in December 2024.

 

Until Lebanon verifiably meets the framework’s standards in a given area—standards to which it agreed—Israel has little reason to surrender the leverage its positions there provide. But however long Israel must remain in Lebanon, its military presence can become strategically self-defeating if defending the zone displaces sustained offensive operations against Hezbollah.

 

That is largely what happened after Israel withdrew from most of Lebanon in 1985. Hezbollah’s emergence made full withdrawal risky. But Israel’s 1982 invasion, which reached Beirut, had soured Israeli public opinion on additional Lebanese campaigns and made incurring the casualties necessary to dismantle this new threat politically costly. Israel split the difference by retaining a security zone along the frontier, and initially expected its Lebanese ally, the South Lebanon Army (SLA), to shoulder much of the burden of countering Hezbollah. Instead, the SLA’s weakness forced Israeli troops to protect their ally’s positions as well as their own, leaving the IDF increasingly occupied with defending the security zone it had established to protect northern Israel—guarding fortified outposts and resupplying them along roads Hezbollah could mine and ambush.

 

Maj. Gen. Amiram Levin, commander of Israel’s Northern Command, sought to counter Hezbollah’s attacks in kind, helping establish the Egoz commando unit in 1995 to hunt and ambush Hezbollah fighters. A later IDF study found that Egoz engaged and inflicted casualties on Hezbollah more frequently than conventional Israeli units. Its raids also disrupted Hezbollah’s ability to attack nearby Israeli and South Lebanon Army positions.

 

But Egoz’s successes were not accompanied by a shift from static defense to sustained offensive operations. Hezbollah therefore continued attacking Israeli outposts and convoys, and the IDF’s overall losses did not significantly decline.

 

Levin had envisioned Egoz operating as precisely part of a broader strategic shift: fewer exposed outposts and convoys, coupled with sustained offensive operations against Hezbollah. But Israel’s military leadership restricted his offensive initiative, concerned that expanded raids could provoke rocket fire into northern Israel without reducing Hezbollah’s attacks on Israeli forces in Lebanon. Meanwhile, continued casualties increased public demands for unilateral withdrawal, particularly after a February 1997 incident in which two Israeli transport helicopters collided and killed 73 soldiers en route to Lebanon. By early 1999, 55 percent of Israeli Jews supported unilateral withdrawal, up from 41 percent in 1997. Israel eventually withdrew in May 2000—and Hezbollah claimed a militarily unearned victory that helped it grow stronger.

 

Israel’s current deployment is different. There is no SLA to protect. The IDF has also adopted a “forward and offensive defense” posture: Troops occupy commanding terrain inside Lebanon, using those positions to monitor and strike Hezbollah targets farther inland. Regular IDF brigades—not just commandos—now attack Hezbollah fighters and infrastructure.

 

The IDF’s operation at Ali al-Taher Ridge in south Lebanon demonstrates this approach. After Hezbollah refused Lebanese efforts to hand the position to the LAF, Egoz and other Israeli forces spent three months isolating a Hezbollah underground command complex and cutting its supply routes. Israeli forces then destroyed more than two kilometers of tunnels, along with weapons stores and the command center. Rather than establish a permanent garrison on the ridge, Israeli troops redeployed as planned to nearby commanding positions, from which they could monitor the area and strike Hezbollah fighters attempting to return.

 

Northern Command is considering extending that approach across the security zone. Under a proposed deployment called the “Gray Line,” Israel would reduce its presence from five brigade combat teams to four, concentrating them on commanding terrain while using surveillance and firepower to control the spaces between their positions. The plan, still awaiting approval in September, could leave Hezbollah with fewer fixed positions to attack without reducing Israel’s ability to operate across the zone. Those remaining positions, however, could still face infiltration and attack.

 

Yet even this offensive posture could inadvertently calcify into static defense. Israeli troops were already fortifying observation and firing positions and compounds inside Lebanese villages for winter. Commanders reportedly feared routine guard duty would displace offensive operations, exposing their positions to renewed Hezbollah attacks. Hezbollah is already attempting to infiltrate the zone, and on September 7, the IDF reported two explosive-drone attacks on its troops at Ali al-Taher and gunfire near Beaufort that wounded two soldiers.

 

In its October 7 anniversary statement, Hezbollah argued that Israel may have achieved “tactical successes,” but had failed to eliminate the “resistance” or turn its battlefield gains into a lasting victory. Three years after Hezbollah opened what may prove to be the most disastrous war in its history, Israel’s victory will be secure only when Hezbollah can no longer rebuild its military power—and Israeli troops can leave Lebanon without ever having to return.