Why Israel’s Lebanon invasion is so different from the war in Gaza | Opinion

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Photo: Satelite images taken on October 24 show the tiny southern Lebanese village of Ramyah has almost been wiped off the map. In a neighboring village, satellite photos show a similar scene: a hill once covered with houses, now reduced to a gray smear of rubble.

By: Uriel Heilman

As Israel pulls its troops out of Lebanon two months after invading the country, the contrast between how the war in Lebanon ended and how the war in Gaza is dragging on couldn’t be more stark.

In Lebanon, Israel’s military successes devastated its enemy and upended assumptions about the strength of Hezbollah, the Iranian-sponsored militant group that had been attacking Israel incessantly since the day after Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7, 2023, from Gaza.

When, after a year, the Israeli government finally decided to address the Hezbollah problem, Israel struck with stunning precision. On Sept. 17, an unprecedented attack straight out of the movies detonated explosives hidden inside beepers in the hands of Hezbollah members, instantly rendering thousands of them unable to fight. The next day it happened again, when Hezbollah’s walkie-talkies exploded.

The attacks attributed to Israel took at least 1,500 fighters out of commission, according to a Hezbollah official, and possibly as many as 3,000.

Then Israel went after Hezbollah’s senior leadership, killing the group’s longtime head, Hassan Nasrallah, in a massive bombardment on the Dahiyeh just south of Beirut, followed by additional attacks that killed Nasrallah’s would-be successor and other top leaders.

Lebanon is hostage to Iran-backed Shiite terrorists

On Oct. 1, Israeli tanks rolled into southern Lebanon, and Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) troops set out to destroy Hezbollah’s weapons stockpiles and positions in villages within sight of the Israeli border and all the way to Beirut.

Here, too, the Israeli military struck with remarkable precision and, it should be noted, moral restraint. Aiming to destroy Hezbollah’s caches of rockets, drones, cash, anti-tank weapons and other ammunition, the IDF routinely issued evacuation warnings to occupants of buildings it intended to bomb (to destroy Hezbollah targets therein) so that civilians could vacate the area.

Israeli leaders have made clear, repeatedly, that Israel’s enemy was not the people of Lebanon, but rather the Iran-backed Shiite terrorist group that over decades had taken Lebanon hostage and subverted so many tools of the state for its own nefarious purposes.

During Israel’s bombing campaign, it was not unheard of to find ordinary Lebanese cheering Israel’s attacks against Hezbollah. So confident were the Lebanese in the meticulous way Israel targeted Hezbollah sites that Beirut’s international airport kept civilian passenger flights landing and taking off even as Israel dropped bombs within view of the runways.

The war did not come without costs. More than 3,700 people in Lebanon have been killed since October 2023, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry as of last week. But about two-thirds of those killed were Hezbollah, according to the IDF.

By contrast, Israel has lost about 50 soldiers since it invaded Lebanon and more than 110 soldiers and civilians overall to Hezbollah fire over the course of the past year.

The dire predictions by Israeli security analysts that a no-holds-barred battle with Hezbollah would wreak havoc on Israeli cities, leave power plants and other critical infrastructure destroyed, and possibly result in thousands of Israeli deaths never came to pass.

Two months after the invasion, the mission to dramatically degrade Hezbollah’s fighting capabilities was accomplished, and Israel implemented a cease-fire agreement last Wednesday, including new U.S. security guarantees that enable Israel to respond to emerging Hezbollah threats to the residents of northern Israel.

Hezbollah, which under Nasrallah had vowed to keep up a united front with Hamas and maintain its fight so long as Israeli troops remained in Gaza, gave up that demand.

The cease-fire arrangement is far from perfect, and it remains to be seen whether Hezbollah will be able to reconstitute and rearm in the coming years, as it did after the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war.

Even so, Israel understands that a perfect resolution is impossible and that a long-term occupation of Lebanon ultimately isn’t in its best interests. What Israel achieved in Lebanon in the space of roughly 10 weeks was good enough.

In Gaza, Israel’s goal of destroying Hamas is unrealistic

In Gaza, the situation is very different. While Israel has done drastic damage to Hamas in responding to its brutal surprise attack on Oct. 7, 2023 ‒ which left about 1,200 Israelis dead and more than 250 captive ‒ after 14 months of fighting Israel is mired in a quagmire with no resolution on the horizon.

Israel’s goal of destroying Hamas is unrealistic. Even if Israel killed every last Hamas member, the next day new recruits would join the cause dedicated to Israel’s destruction.

Israel has killed more than 44,000 Gazans, most of them apparently noncombatants: About 24,000 of the dead have been identified as women, children or the elderly, according to United Nations data based on figures from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.

Rather than precision attacks, Israel has leveled much of the Gaza Strip, and is clearing land and constructing infrastructure in Gaza that suggest it’s preparing for a long-term occupation.

While world leaders largely abided by Israel’s campaign in Lebanon or even applauded it, Israel’s actions in Gaza have drawn international condemnation, including arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

Critically for Israel, the war has failed to free the 101 hostages thought to be remaining in Gaza or eradicate Hamas. IDF soldiers are finding themselves going back into areas they cleared months ago to fight Hamas units that have returned and reassembled, and several hundred Israeli soldiers have died in the fighting.

Meanwhile, the war against the Palestinians has unleashed Israel’s worst impulses.

Members of the country’s far-right government are agitating to build Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip (the Jewish settlements there were dismantled in 2005 when Israel unilaterally ended its four-decade occupation of Gaza), have been turning a blind eye to vigilante Israeli violence against Palestinians in the West Bank and are ignoring recommendations by the military’s leaders to wrap up the war.

Israel could have declared victory in Gaza months ago and ended the war in exchange for a deal to release its hostages.

Instead, Israeli troops have stayed in Gaza in pursuit of an impossible mission ‒ jeopardizing their victory, the hostages’ lives and Israel’s international reputation.

Yahoo/ USA Today

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