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Israel's Attacks on Lebanon Could Sow the Seeds of Its Next Threat

Israel's attacks on Lebanon could sow the seeds of its next threat, creating conditions for future hostilities and potentially emboldening new adversaries.

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Israel's Attacks on Lebanon

Israel's Attacks on Lebanon Could Sow the Seeds of Its Next Threat | Israel soldiers patrol in southern Lebanon in 1984. Tel Aviv has tried and failed numerous times to secure a border zone in southern Lebanon. | Dan Hadani collection, National Library of Israel | Credits CC BY 4.0

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Israel's attacks on Lebanon are justified, according to Israeli officials, as part of its broader war against Hezbollah, Hamas, and Iran's "axis of resistance."

Yet the strikes weaken Benjamin Netanyahu's control over the conflict and may sow the seeds of future wars.

The September 23 airstrikes that killed at least 558 people and displaced thousands is yet another gamble to see how far Netanyahu can push his parliamentary coalition, his allies in Washington and most of all his enemies, primarily Iran.

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Why Are Israel's Attacks on Lebanon Intensifying?

On the anniversary of the October 7 Hamas attacks against Israeli communities which left 1,200 dead and another 250 hostage, Israel has neither defeated Hamas or negotiated an end to the conflict. The price of war has been the levelling of Gaza, more than 40,000 Gazans killed, and more than 700 IDF forces dead in combat.

At the same time, Israel has continued a war of attrition against Hezbollah in the north, a Lebanese Shi'a paramilitary force and a member of the "Axis of Resistance" led by Iran.

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The resistance, which includes the Houthi rebels in Yemen, Hamas in the occupied Palestinian territories and other groups in Iraq and Syria, claim to be waging a legitimate struggle against Israeli occupation.

When the current conflict began, Hezbollah opened a "pressure front" in solidarity with Hamas on the Lebanese border with the declared intention of continuing to attack Israel with rockets until a ceasefire was reached in Gaza.

Over the past year, reciprocal military strikes by Israel and Hezbollah against border communities has resulted in the displacement of more than 94,000 Lebanese and around 60,000 Israelis, along with extensive destruction in Lebanon, leaving the border zone poisoned with white phosphorous and uninhabitable for years.

Last week's stunning pager and walkie-talkie attacks on Hezbollah members, widely attributed to Israel but not officially acknowledged by the Israeli government, and assassinations of key Hezbollah leaders, heralded the long anticipated escalation of Israeli military actions against Hezbollah in South Lebanon.

Netanyahu has declared that Israelis have the right to live in peace and has pledged to force Hezbollah back from the border to allow the communities to return to live a normal life.

Will Netanyahu Learn from History?

Yet the idea that the border can be secured by military action is an illusion.

Israel has sought to defeat and deter its paramilitary enemies, first the PLO and then Hezbollah, through the use of assassinations, military strikes and invasions dating back to the Lebanese Civil War .

In 1978, 1982 and 2006 it invaded Lebanon with the aim of securing a border zone at the Litani River without any permanent resolution.

In 1982, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin went all the way to Beirut to pursue a permanent solution for Israel's border security problem by evicting Arafat and the PLO and installing a friendly Christian-led government in Lebanon.

Instead the threat of the PLO was replaced by the threat of Hezbollah which was born as a Shia militia to resist the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. The IDF partnered with the South Lebanese Army, a local militia force it created, to establish a security zone.

Israel finally withdrew from Lebanon in 2000 to avoid further IDF casualties from Hezbollah attacks and the failure to negotiate a peace agreement with the Lebanese government.

Israel's preference would be for the Lebanese Army to establish and effectively control the border, but this is wishful thinking. The Lebanese state is in deep political and economic crisis and has limited sovereignty.

Hezbollah has long operated outside the control of the state and, at the same time, has been able to veto cabinet decision making through its elected members of parliament.

When the Special Tribunal on Lebanon investigating the assassination of former PM Rafiq Hariri in 2005 issued an indictment agains

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