Hezbollah has suffered crushing setbacks in Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon and cross-border incursion.
The Israeli operation has succeeded beyond U.S. officials’ expectations: Israel has severely diminished Hezbollah’s ability to strike deep into the country and significantly weakened its political and military leadership.
But Israel has failed to eliminate the short-range rockets that the Lebanese militia fires into the northern half of the country, according to U.S. officials. As long as the rocket fire continues, Israel’s campaign is unable to fulfill one of its main goals — securing northern Israel so that tens of thousands of residents can return home there.
Hezbollah began rocket strikes on northern Israel in support of its ally Hamas in Gaza after Hamas attacked Israel last October. Israel launched its offensive against Hezbollah, at least in part, because of political pressure from Israelis who were evacuated.
Now, Israel’s failure to tamp down the short-range rocket threat has put pressure on its government to embrace a cease-fire and at least a temporary halt to hostilities.
While the Biden administration has struggled to reach a cease-fire deal between Hamas and Israel in Gaza, officials familiar with the negotiations with Hezbollah say there is a realistic chance for a deal covering Lebanon. Amos Hochstein, a White House envoy, arrived in Beirut on Tuesday to try to finalize some of the details and said this was “a moment of decision-making.”
With Hezbollah badly weakened, U.S. officials are working to reach an agreement before President Biden leaves office. President-elect Donald J. Trump has pledged to end the wars in the Middle East, but he has not said how he would do that.
Hezbollah retains the ability to fire 100 missiles or rockets a day into northern Israel. The short-range munitions are easy to hide and hard to locate. Eliminating them would require Israel to greatly expand its military operation and to more extensively mobilize its already-stretched reserve forces.
Moreover, American officials said, Hezbollah has not yet fully deployed some 20,000 to 40,000 fighters, raising concerns that the militia is preparing to wage a longer-term guerrilla campaign against Israeli troops, particularly in southern Lebanon.
“Israeli military actions have significantly degraded Hezbollah’s military capabilities,” Brett Holmgren, the acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said in a speech last week. “But the ground forces in the south remain somewhat intact.”
Given that reality, U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that a cease-fire agreement remains the best chance of returning Israelis to their homes near Lebanon’s border, officials said.
Israeli civilians were evacuated from a two-mile zone abutting the border with Lebanon in October 2023, initially because of fears of cross-border infiltrations by Hezbollah’s forces and the threat of antitank missiles. The antitank missiles have about a six-mile range, allowing no time for incoming fire warnings and, unlike short-range rockets, they cannot be intercepted by Israel’s air defenses.
The roughly 60,000 Israeli evacuees will not feel safe to return, Israeli officials and residents of northern Israel say, until they are assured that any cease-fire deal will keep Hezbollah’s fighters north of the Litani River. That would put the Israeli communities out of range of the antitank missiles, reduce the likelihood of an infiltration and stop the constant rocket fire.
Tens of thousands of Lebanese civilians also fled towns and villages under Israeli fire in southern Lebanon, and American officials have emphasized that a cease-fire deal is necessary to allow civilians to return home on both sides of the border.
Hezbollah, with help from Iran, built up most of its military stockpile over three decades. It was estimated to contain 120,000 to 200,000 projectiles. When Israel first began its assault on Hezbollah in September, Hassan Nasrallah, the group’s leader, asked Iran and Syria to replenish the arsenal, Israeli officials and an American official said. That contributed to Israel’s decision to kill Mr. Nasrallah in late September.
American and Israeli officials emphasize that Israel’s campaign has crippled Hezbollah’s top ranks. Pager explosions and other attacks killed and injured top and midlevel leaders in September.
The senior leaders of Hezbollah’s special operations command, known as the Radwan Force, were wiped out in a Sept. 20 airstrike that killed Ibrahim Aqeel, effectively Hezbollah’s chief of military operations, in a southern suburb of Beirut, U.S. officials say.
The potential agreement on a cease-fire for Lebanon is based on an upgraded version of the U.N. Security Council resolution, 1701, that ended Israel’s last war with Hezbollah in 2006, according to officials familiar with the matter.
This version of 1701 would include a side memorandum of understanding with an American guarantee allowing Israel to take action if Hezbollah is found to have violated the terms, according to an Israeli official familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy. But there is no guarantee that the Lebanese government, or Hezbollah, would accept such a condition.
Israel’s new foreign minister, Gideon Saar, said last week that progress had been made in the cease-fire efforts, adding, “We are working with the Americans on the issue.”
For now, the Israeli military has been ramping up its operations in Lebanon in what Israeli officials and analysts describe as a strategy of negotiations under fire.
Israel believes it is close to achieving the goal of taking out Hezbollah’s military infrastructure in the two-and-a-half-mile strip along the border and has significantly degraded Hezbollah’s arsenal, according to a senior Israeli military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity under army rules.
U.S. officials say eliminating enough short-range rockets to stop the attacks into northern Israel is not possible.
And a large swath of northern Israel, most of which has not been evacuated, remains under constant threat.
While Israel’s Iron Dome system intercepts most of the rockets headed for populated areas, attack drones have proved harder to intercept and able to zone in on sensitive targets. One hit the dining hall on an army base more than 40 miles south of the border last month, killing four soldiers. Another damaged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s private seaside residence a similar distance from the border.
While Hezbollah retains significant capabilities, according to Israeli officials and experts, Israel has deprived the organization of the ability to fire thousands of rockets or missiles a day. Israel’s airstrikes have destroyed 60 to 70 percent of Hezbollah’s drone capabilities, the senior military official said, adding that the group has been launching small swarms of three or four drones at a time, rather than 40 or 50 as it had planned.
An Israeli military spokesman, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, said last week that Israeli forces had killed more than 2,250 Hezbollah operatives in the six weeks since the ground operation began. More than 40 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Lebanon during the same period.
Israeli officers in southern Lebanon say they have encountered much less close combat than they had expected in the open areas, though the soldiers remain exposed to rocket and antitank missile fire.
Residents of the Lebanese border villages had fled, and most fighters had left, long before the Israeli Army arrived, the officers said.
But some small Hezbollah squads have managed to ambush Israeli troops in the built-up areas. Six soldiers were killed in one such ambush last Wednesday.
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