Despite the newly mounted Israel-Lebanon ceasefire, the IDF will continue to attack Hezbollah terrorists in the southern part of the country unless they surrender, the military said on Friday.
This statement was illustrated by action on Saturday, when the IDF targeted several sites in southern Lebanon where Hezbollah men were stationed, arguing that their presence violated the ceasefire agreement.
The IDF’s Friday statement was the first aggressive interpretation by a senior Israeli official of the truce’s limits.
Additionally, according to IDF sources, the military has been officially and unequivocally committed to remaining in southern Lebanon indefinitely, regarding the Litani River as the new security line with Hezbollah – unless the terror group agrees to disarm.
Although Israeli political officials shouldered this stance in recent weeks, the IDF was slower to adopt it with such a consequential long-term plan, given that it could mean getting stuck in a new Lebanese quagmire for years.
In spite of the pessimistic scenario, the IDF expressed hope about the current Israeli-Lebanese negotiations, since Hezbollah is considered even weaker than it was after the ceasefire of the fall of 2024.
This is because Hezbollah has lost another 1,700 fighters and 5,800 rocket launchers. With a further decrease of 10% to 20% from its pre-2023 power, it lost another around 60% of its post-fall 2024 strength. It may have much less capacity to rebuild if Iran’s economy, its main source of funding, is as shattered as reports indicate.
Separately on Friday, the IDF revealed explicitly for the first time that the security cabinet and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held them back in multiple instances when they had wished to initiate an earlier major operation against Hezbollah.
At least one of these instances occurred in January, as the Iranian protests began to escalate. The IDF understood the cabinet’s wide diplomatic considerations, but part of the military’s frustration with being held back against Hezbollah was palpable.
IDF surprised by weak performance of Iran's proxies
Next, the IDF disclosed that it had been surprised by the weak performance, in general, of Iran’s proxies. It had expected Hezbollah to intervene on the first day of the war, not wait until the third day, and then deliver a relatively light performance.
Moreover, the IDF had expected the Houthis in Yemen to jump into the war from the start and much more heavily. Yet, they kept out of the war for weeks, eventually intervening so moderately that they were barely a factor.
Finally, addressing criticism from some Israelis for failing to stop Hezbollah’s rocket fire entirely, the IDF responded quite directly that it had not been given mission parameters that could have possibly achieved such a result.
IDF sources went on to say that it was common knowledge that Hezbollah was firing nearly all of its rockets from the north of the Litani River, some from as far away as 100 kilometers, or more, in the Bekaa Valley, and that only if the prime minister and the cabinet had endorsed invading all of Lebanon, might the rocket fire have stopped.
In actuality, almost no top Israeli official had entertained invading Lebanon beyond the Litani River because when Israel did so in 1982, the final outcome was a disastrous quagmire, resulting in heavy Israeli casualties over a long period of time. Moreover, that maneuver did not result in stamping out anti-Israel forces.