The 60-day ceasefire in Lebanon will end on January 26, six days after President Trump takes office. While Hizbullah suffered heavy losses during the two months of fighting from late September to late November, it has been slowly, stealthily rebuilding in the Shi’ite villages of southern Lebanon. Meanwhile, Lebanon’s government has new leadership with friends in the West and the Sunni Arab countries. With the ceasefire ticking down, Israel faces the following dilemma: continue withdrawal of forces in southern Lebanon, with the risk of ceding ground to a rebuilding terror organization that doesn’t honor ceasefires; or stay and renew its offensive against that terror organization, with the risk of alienating Israel’s allies in the West.
The 2024 Lebanon ground campaign of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) began on October 1. It focused on uprooting terrorist infrastructure in several dozen villages near the border. These villages are mostly on the tops of several lines of hills that extend north of the border several miles into Lebanon. In contrast, the IDF dashed north to the Litani River in 1976 and to Beirut in 1982. In 2006, 34 days of fighting saw the IDF struggle to grasp the best way to deal with Hizbullah in southern Lebanon. The 2024 campaign lacked previous campaigns’ rapid ground maneuvers.
The 2024 campaign did involve a large number of airstrikes on Hizbullah weapons. It may have prevented Hizbullah from carrying out a simultaneous firing of thousands of rockets, potentially overwhelming Israel’s air defenses. However, Hizbullah’s ability to simultaneously fire so many rockets may have been overestimated, in the same way the IDF military intelligence had underestimated Hamas’ capabilities in Gaza.
What is clear is that Hizbullah continues to threaten Israel. On January 12, the IDF carried out a number of airstrikes on Hizbullah terror targets in Lebanon – a rocket launcher site, a military site, and routes along the Syria-Lebanon border used to smuggle weapons to Hizbullah, the IDF said.
These aren’t the only threats from Lebanon that the IDF identified in mid-January. It also identified threats to Mount Dov (also known as the Sheba’a Farms) and photographed several terrorists loading a truck with weapons. On the ground in southern Lebanon, the IDF continues to uproot Hizbollah weapons, including “multi-barrel rocket launchers, hundreds of mortar shells, explosive devices, and RPG rifles inside a structure. Anti-tank fire positions and hidden weapons were located nearby,” the IDF said on January 10.
The incoming Lebanese government has a new president and a new prime minister who could prod Lebanon in the right direction. Neither one is a fan of Israel. However, they may be inclined to try to show countries in the region and the West that the Lebanese government is willing to fulfil some of its international obligations under UN Security Council Resolution 1701, in southern Lebanon. That would mean deploying the Lebanese army and keeping Hizbullah away from the Israeli border. However, President Joseph Aoun didn’t do any of these things when he served as commander of the Lebanese Armed Forces. Will he feel empowered to wield the army in a confrontational way with Hizbullah now?
Nawaf Salam is the newly designated Lebanese prime minister. He previously served as Beirut’s envoy to the UN and most recently as head of the International Court of Justice. He has been harshly critical of Israel. While he and Aoun are both being portrayed as opponents of Hizbullah, their track records do not provide evidence of them being willing to stand up to the terrorist group, quite the opposite. They served in key positions in Lebanon as Hizbullah slowly took over more and more of the country over the last two decades.
This is the dilemma Israel now faces in Lebanon. Hizbollah has been quiet since the 60-day ceasefire came into effect on November 27. It has refrained from large displays that might provoke Israel. It has also seen its supply route to Iran severed in Syria when Bashar al-Assad fell from power on December 8. In fact the fall of Assad seems to have coincided with the ceasefire in Lebanon, because Hayat Tahrir al-Sham launched its surprise attack on Aleppo as the ceasefire began, taking Aleppo from Assad in late November and setting up the fall of the Syrian regime.
Nevertheless, Hibullah retains an arsenal and networks of fighters. It has not disappeared. It knows how to melt away into the Shi’ite villages of southern Lebanon. It knows how to disguise itself as civilians and not openly carry arms. It has successfully navigated the UN mandate that was supposed to see it leave southern Lebanon after 2006 and it has avoided confrontation with UNIFIL and the Lebanese Armed Forces in the past. It continues to raise money in international drug smuggling networks and other criminal activities. In short, Hizbollah has not spent forty years slowly taking over Lebanon, only to see itself dismantled overnight.
Furthermore, Iran knows how to slowly invest in proxies over a period of years and weather setbacks. In 2005, when Hizbullah killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, it suffered a momentary setback because the Syrian regime withdrew from Lebanon. However, the next year Lebanon attacked Israel. At the time Hizbollah had only around 13,000 rockets. Even if Hizbullah lost 80 percent of its rockets in the recent campaign, it began the war with 150,000 rockets. Therefore it likely still has a similar arsenal to what it had in 2006.
The new Lebanese government has friends in the West. France and other countries will be keen to trust the new Aoun government and want to give it time to carry out its duties. Israel’s dilemma stems from its need to retain freedom of action in Lebanon in order to prevent Hizbullah’s stealthy recovery. This could lead to disagreements with countries in the West, including the incoming Trump administration, who may want to see stability in Lebanon, rather than more Israeli airstrikes.
