Israel faces a major problem in how far it should go in Lebanon: experts

• Israel launched ground incursions into Lebanon on Tuesday, opening a new war front.
• The IDF said there were “limited, localized and targeted” ground raids against Hezbollah targets.
• Deeper offensives could embroil his army in a new and protracted war, military experts told BI.

Israel faces a security dilemma in deciding how far it should go in its operations in Lebanon, according to security experts.

Early on Tuesday, the Israel Defense Forces said they had launched “limited, localized and targeted ground raids” against Hezbollah targets and infrastructure in southern Lebanon, opening a new front in the escalating conflict between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group.

The ground offensive comes after months of cross-border exchange of projectiles and a series of Israeli airstrikes on September 27 that killed the longtime head of Hezbollah. Hassan Nasrallah.

The IDF said its ground operation would follow a “methodical” plan, adding that it would continue fighting until it achieved all its war objectives.

But security experts told BI that the IDF risks a protracted conflict and increasingly bloody fighting in Lebanon if it decides to push further into the country.

“A full-scale Israeli ground offensive in southern Lebanon would be no easy task,” Clionadh Raleigh said. executive director of the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, and Ameneh Mehvar, a Middle East regional specialist from ACLED, said in a joint statement.

They told BI that Hezbollah had been preparing for this scenario “for years” and that the IDF “will likely face more intense fighting than in Gaza, which could result in higher Israeli casualties.”

Farzan Sabet, senior research associate at the Center for Global Governance and the Center for Sanctions and Sustainable Peace at the Geneva Graduate Institute, went further in his assessment.

“One of the major risks involved in such operations is that Israel will squander the major strategic and tactical victories achieved against Hezbollah and become trapped in a military quagmire in Lebanon,” he said.

A more dangerous terrain than Gaza

Israel’s ground operations in Lebanon resemble those it conducted in Gaza about a year ago.

In October 2023, the IDF conducted limited ground incursions into Gaza and asked Palestinians to evacuate to the south of the enclave before launching a wider offensive.

While the early stages of the IDF’s ground operations in Lebanon are similar to its early operations in Gaza, Hezbollah’s military capabilities, Lebanon’s political circumstances and its topography make the country a very different reality, security analysts told BI .

Sabet of the Geneva Graduate Institute said an Israeli offensive in Lebanon would be “distinct” from the one in Gaza in that the IDF would be operating over “much larger” territory against a “bigger and more sophisticated” adversary.

While the Gaza Strip is about 140 square miles in size, Lebanon is about 4,036 square miles.

Hezbollah is also estimated to have stockpiles of up to 200,000 missiles.

Burcu Ozcelik, a senior fellow on Middle East Security at Britain’s Royal United Services Institute, said limited IDF ground raids across the border with Lebanon would expose its troops to fighting Hezbollah fighters on ground that is “home territory ” of Hezbollah. and where they control military infrastructure and local communities.

“This is not an area dotted with densely populated urban centers like the Gaza Strip is,” she told BI.

Meanwhile, ACLED’s Raleigh and Mehvar said the nature of the operation in Lebanon differs from that in Gaza. Israel is not fighting the government of Lebanon – unlike the de facto government in Gaza, they said.

As such, they do not expect “extensive carpet bombing” and “ferocity” like that seen in Gaza.

“Israel’s goal is to ‘decline’ Hezbollah’s military capabilities and drive it away from the border,” they said.

How far should it go

Israel has spent months conducting airstrikes and raids in southern Lebanon to degrade Hezbollah’s capabilities.

However, it remains unclear how deep Israel’s ground incursions could go, according to Raleigh and Mehvar.

They said the IDF was unlikely to expand beyond southern Lebanon because of the risk of becoming “increasingly” involved in a new “protracted” conflict in southern Lebanon.

They added that “Hezbollah still retains much of its capability, including the stockpiles of rockets it has accumulated since 2006, which could be used against Israeli military and civilian targets.”

Sabet, meanwhile, said history is “littered” with examples of countries whose militaries entered another country’s territory for limited military operations but ended up engaging in costly and damaging long-term wars.

He mentioned Israel’s “costly” experiences invading Lebanon, including Israel’s second invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the Second Lebanon War in 2006.

Since the October 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas on Israel last year, Israel’s economy has suffered, with its GDP contracting by 20.7% in the last quarter of 2023.

In the long run, the war in Gaza alone could cost Israel 10 percent of its annual GDP, Yannay Spitzer, assistant professor of economic history and applied microeconomics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told The Media Line last month.

However, these numbers and Israel’s overall military calculations could change quickly if Iran gets involved on Hezbollah’s side in Lebanon.

A senior US administration official told the media on Tuesday that Iran was preparing to launch a ballistic missile attack on Israel.

“We are actively supporting defensive preparations to defend Israel against this attack,” the official said.

During a speech last week at the UN, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a warning to the “tyrants of Tehran”, saying: “If you hit us, we will hit you.”

He added: “There is no place in Iran that the long arm of Israel cannot reach.”