Lebanese people returning to southern Lebanon have found ways to traverse the Litani River, despite Israeli strikes on bridges over the river. The fact is that the river is not very large, and people have found a way to make temporary passages over it.
In videos online, it appears in many cases people have been able to drive over the river, which looks more like a stream, via ad hoc solutions such as putting some rocks, mud, and other items over the water.
These improvised crossings have gained attention in regional media. Arab News says that “Lebanon’s military said Sunday it had reopened a road and bridge damaged by Israeli strikes in the country’s south as a 10-day truce holds between Hezbollah and Israel.” The fact that hundreds of thousands of people are now returning to southern Lebanon may show the limits of Israel’s military force.
In Gaza and Lebanon, Israel has destroyed civilian infrastructure. This included razing many areas of Gaza that have come under IDF control, known as the Yellow Line. However, it also involved attacks on other targets during the Israel-Hamas War, such as high-rise buildings in Gaza City.
The tall buildings were largely left standing for most of the war until mid-September 2025, when Israeli officials decided that the IDF should recapture Gaza City in northern Gaza. The officials and the IDF had already claimed that Hamas was defeated in northern Gaza in late 2023 and early 2024. The IDF had carried out numerous operations in Gaza City neighborhoods.
However, the decision was made to retake these areas in September 2025. Around a million Gazans were told to evacuate. Many of these people had already been displaced one or two times during the war, first between October and January during the initial fighting in northern Gaza after the Hamas attack on October 7 and then again sometime in the fall of 2024.
A million people left northern Gaza, along with many of the Hamas members who had been there. The decision to target high-rise buildings appeared more symbolic than military necessity. If the tall buildings had indeed been a military necessity to target, then they would have been targeted earlier in the war. Instead, they had remained standing from October 2023 to September 2025 – almost two years of war.
The destruction of the high-rises in Gaza was celebrated in Jerusalem as “changing the skyline” of Gaza.
If it was about changing the skyline, it didn’t sound like it was a military necessity. Destroying high-rises has happened in the past in Gaza, in the 2021 conflict, for instance. It appears to be a symbolic way to “show” Hamas that Israel can destroy things. Hamas likely knows this after decades of war with Israel.
Similarly, in Lebanon, Hezbollah knows the IDF can destroy whatever it wants using air power and munitions. Hezbollah is under no illusions about Israel’s power. The decision to target the bridges over the Litani was taken after the IDF had called on hundreds of thousands of people in southern Lebanon to flee north.
The attacks on the bridges began in mid-March and continued through early April. For instance, on March 18, the BBC said bridges were destroyed, and subsequent reports noted that more were destroyed in early April. The IDF said on March 13 that “a short while ago, the IDF struck the Zrarieh Bridge over the Litani River in Lebanon, which served as a key crossing for terrorists from the Hezbollah terrorist organization.”
Why target bridges in Lebanon?
The IDF’s narrative was that the bridges were used by Hezbollah. However, if destroying the bridges was a military necessity to stop Hezbollah, why weren’t they struck in October 2023, when the terror group began its attacks on Israel?
Why weren’t they struck in September 2024 when Israel escalated strikes on Hezbollah? Why weren’t they struck immediately on March 2, 2026, after Hezbollah attacked Israel, an attack that resulted in the recent escalation against Hezbollah?
Instead, the bridges were targeted slowly over time, once hundreds of thousands of Lebanese had fled north. Was the attack aimed at stopping Hezbollah or making it harder for civilians to return? If it were against Hezbollah, surely the fact that civilians can cross the Litani in cars and vans seems to suggest Hezbollah could cross the Litani as well?
Hezbollah is a terror group that has operated in southern Lebanon for more than 40 years, always facing superior Israeli airpower that can monitor its movements. Wouldn’t a terror group facing this risk have found ways to move weapons that don’t involve moving them over well-known bridges?
It is not difficult with modern air power to destroy numerous bridges at a time. In fact, in 1946, the pre-state Jewish underground was able to destroy 10 of the 11 bridges linking British Mandate Palestine to neighboring countries in just one night on June 16-17. If the Palmah could do this in one night, then why doesn’t the IDF destroy all the bridges across the Litani in one night? Wouldn’t that disrupt Hezbollah – if that was the goal?
During the war with Iran, the IDF said in April that “the IDF struck eight bridge segments that were utilized by the Iranian terror regime’s armed forces for transporting weapons and military equipment in several areas across Iran, including Tehran, Karaj, Tabriz, Kashan, and Qom.” The same could have been done in Lebanon if the goal was indeed a rapid campaign against its bridges.
Examples from the Vietnam War
During the Vietnam War, the Communists were able to transport masses of men and material through jungles, often by cutting small roads such as the well-known Ho Chi Minh Trail. The Vietnamese insurgents were not only able to defeat the French at Dien Bien Phu by moving artillery and men through the hills, but they also succeeded similarly in bringing force to bear against the US and its South Vietnamese allies.
Despite overwhelming air power used by the US, the Vietnamese succeeded. If they could do that in the 1950s and 1960s, isn’t it clear that Hezbollah can do the same by crossing the small stream of the Litani?
There’s no doubt that Israel’s technology for monitoring Hezbollah is far superior to the capabilities that the US had in Vietnam. If bombing bridges were a military necessity, it clearly would have been done long ago. This appears to link the issue of the bridges to the high-rises in Gaza.
Israel has been fighting a long, slow war on both fronts. In both cases, the IDF has asked millions to evacuate, but its ground forces have then moved forward slowly, usually by just a few kilometers. The goal wasn’t rapid conquest. In 1978, for instance, the IDF conquered the area south of the Litani in a few days. In 2026, it took a month and a half, and the IDF didn’t take the whole area.
This analysis illustrates the limits of Israel’s military force today. Hamas controls half of Gaza. Hezbollah is still controlling part of Lebanon. Military force has not disarmed the terror groups, despite claims they would be disarmed “the easy way or the hard way.” Instead, symbolic targets like bridges have been a stand-in for disarmament.
Military force has been used throughout history to try to accomplish various goals. However, strategists such as Carl von Clausewitz and Colin Powell have argued that military tactics need to be paired with political goals and also with achievable military objectives.
Destroying the bridges in southern Lebanon appears more punitive than an action that helped pave the way to a military or political goal. The fact that some of the crossings were repaired in a few days illustrates that there were diminishing returns in the symbolic campaign against the bridges.