Would Israel need its own Lebanese proxies to keep Hezbollah at bay?

The official objective of the fourth Israeli military incursion into Lebanon is to disarm Hezbollah by use of force and establish a safe environment for its citizens in Israel’s northern region of Galilee.

Yet, this time, the IDF wants to avoid potential operational pitfalls like in Gaza and Lebanon in 2006 — two interventions with dismal results, both from a military and diplomatic point of view.

“I don’t think Israel wants to annex part of South Lebanon to become a part of its territory,” Agnes Helou, Lebanese defence analyst at Breaking Defense,* told Euronews.

“Of course, it needs to protect the north of Israel (from the Hezbollah’s missiles strikes) and bring the inhabitants of Galilee back to their houses. This is what it is working on”.  

History has it that without cooperation from the Lebanese side, Israel is bound to suffer deep security concerns.

In the past, Israel had proxies that helped police the environment: the Phalangists in 1982 and the South Lebanon Army (SLA), made up of mostly Catholic Maronites, until 2000. Both factions were staunch enemies of the Palestinian militants and the pro-Iranian Hezbollah.

The two rose in prominence during the bloody sectarian struggles of the civil war and the instability of post-civil war times. Both the Phalangists and, later, the SLA had their political interests converge with Israel’s, as they had the same enemies.

In the end, the SLA was dissolved by the Israeli Labour Party PM Ehud Barak in 2000.  

Are those times over for good?   

What’s different about IDF’s approach today?

Cautiously, IDF, or Tsahal, so far seems to be engaging its units only for commando operations and reconnaissance missions to search and destroy the Hezbollah outposts and tunnel.

Boots on the ground remain crucial, even though, at the moment, the combined use of drones, air force and remote AI recognition systems seem to make the difference.  

“So far, we have seen that Israel have had tactical success in the battlefield. We’re speaking about, let’s say, the last three weeks, the pagers explosions, then the assassination of the secretary general of Hezbollah (Hassan Nasrallah),” Helou said.

“So, it is trying maybe to prove or to tell the Lebanese people to just forget about Hezbollah and get together,“ he added.

“However, when we look at the battlefield, although there has been tactical success for the Israeli army, this is not a full success.“ 

Despite using the most sophisticated AI systems, southern Lebanon is not a Gaza-like urban war theatre. It is an open-field hilly landscape with bushes, small woods, and hamlets—perhaps a less claustrophobic terrain than Khan Yunis.

Yet it is the perfect pitch for the most traditional guerrilla warfare with IEDs (like in Iraq and Afghanistan and hit-and-run guerilla attacks.  

“The IDF have problems at settling there and to keep their positions. They have the problems of the day after (victory) to maintain the safety of their troops on the ground, 2006 has been a very severe war for the Israeli armed forces,“ warned Helou.   

So, Israel may win the war against one Lebanese faction as it has the military power to do it, but what about the “day after”?

Moreover, the perspective of going through a second Gaza experience — a prolonged and thoroughly destructive conflict — could be hardly the most ambitious goal even for “Mr Security”, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, and his ultra-nationalist government coalition allies.  

This is why Israel is looking for last-chance cooperation by persuading some Lebanese political forces by force that it is in their interest to deal with a lasting ceasefire and keep Iran at bay.

Or, as Netanyahu said, addressing the Lebanese people: “Free your country from Hezbollah” and avoid “destruction and suffering like in Gaza”.  

Is this the end of Hezbollah?

In the past, the proxies of Israel were regarded as para-fascist militias by international observers and embarrassed the traditional Western partners of Israel.

The Phalangists were held responsible for the massacres of thousands of Palestinian refugees in the camps of Sabra and Chatila carried out under Tsahal’s high-rank officers’ watch in the context of a civil war marked by mutual violence.  

Since then, Lebanese society has evolved despite the financial crisis and typically troubling regional environment.

At the moment, on the Lebanese front, Israel seems to be using a sort of selective strategy to conquer, if not the hearts, at least the minds of the Lebanese people, exhausted and afraid that their land could become the playground of a war between Iran and Israel, like Syria.

All the sides that want to reach a ceasefire agree that the solution is to disarm Hezbollah, at least within a buffer zone going from the Blue Line — the old demarcation line stretching along the Southern Lebanese international border — all along the Litani river.  

This is the main subject of the ongoing informal talks to reach a ceasefire.

Apart from the Christians, the majority of the Sunni parties — some of them Saudi proxies — are in favour of a ceasefire and ready to yield to some of the conditions imposed by Israel, like the caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati.

Moreover, against all the Western odds, there is an increasing number of Shias who seem to be suffering from bombing fatigue and social distress.

Nabih Berri, the speaker of the parliament and head of the Shia Amal movement, openly advocates for the truce. 

“First of all, the Shias are split into two parties, the Hezbollah and the Amal, and the second party doesn’t abide by the laws and by the decisions coming from Iran,” Hadi Murad, a physician from the Beka Valley and a Shia activist, told Euronews.

“Second, even Hezbollah now say that it wants a ceasefire and to put aside any links between Lebanon and Gaza.”

“Amal wants the resolution 1701 to be fully implemented saying directly that we should disarm Hezbollah.”

The UNSC resolution 1701 of 2006 was adopted, given Tsahal’s pull-out. It assigned the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) the mission to disarm Hezbollah under the supervision of the Blue Helmets of the UNIFIL. It never happened.

Is it time for Israel to establish a security cooperation with the Lebanese authorities?    

“From 2006 till now, Hezbollah has had a major share in the government. That’s why the Lebanese army could not disarm them,” said Murad.

“Right now, the Hezbollah political arm in the government wants to rally with the decision-making line resting upon the Lebanese Armed Forces because they have been abandoned by the Iranian regime.”

If this is the case, there is a window of opportunity for the LAF in the current circumstances to become the last-resort political balance of power in Lebanon’s precarious sectarian institutional order.   

“We need a transitional period for the government and for the Regular Army to prepare the second phase of Lebanon after the Hezbollah era. The current chief of staff, Joseph Aoun, is a respected general by all the parts. He is vigorous and he will be able to abide by the commitments with the international organisations,” said Murad.

When it comes to the LAF’s deployment in southern Lebanon, Israel has its specific requests in the ongoing informal talks on the ceasefire.

“Does Israel want to keep its army in the south? Or does Israel want to get a third party to help? So far it is clear that, given lessons learned from 2006, Hezbollah is still present in the south and it is still a threat to Israel. This Israeli government won’t let this happen again,” Murad explained.

For Israel, it is a puzzle: it can either choose to trust the new role of the LAF or risk a new long-term asymmetric warfare in Lebanon.  

Apart from the political will of the national institutions, the Lebanese army would need to increase the number of its soldiers in the South from 4,000 to 15,000 and receive new weapons systems from international donors to be effective.   

All will depend on the real popularity of Hezbollah. Have they been completely discredited?  

“The international community and the Arab communities should know that in the last elections in 2022, Hezbollah has taken approximately 39% of the votes of the Shias,” Murad said.  

“This means that there is a silent majority, which is more than 55%. That said, nowadays from 70 to 80% of Shias want a ceasefire,” he concluded.