Israel’s and Hezbollah’s Default Option: Keep Fighting

On Thursday, the United States, European Union, and ten other countries called for an immediate twenty-one-day ceasefire “to provide space for diplomacy” to end the ongoing violence between Israel and Hezbollah. The fact that the signatories have gone this far toward putting together a joint diplomatic initiative is significant, but it will not bring even a temporary halt to hostilities without a sustained effort backed by meaningful political leverage. Until then, political calculations on both sides dictate that neither Israel nor Hezbollah will cease fire.

That Hezbollah is on the back foot militarily is evident. No less evident is Iran’s unwillingness to step in to relieve the military pressure on Hezbollah: It may have invested in building up the party’s military capabilities over the past four decades in order to reinforce Iranian strategic deterrence against Israel, but Tehran appears resigned to the necessity of absorbing its losses rather than risking a wider war with Israel.

These facts doubtless encourage the Israeli government to press its advantage. But this is not the foremost reason why it is unlikely to accept a ceasefire. For nearly a whole year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has used the threat of launching a full-scale offensive against Hezbollah and triggering a regional war with Iran to reassert his personal dominance in domestic politics and to gain leverage in relation to the U.S. administration. Being on the brink of a larger war has served Netanyahu’s purposes, whereas actually waging a larger war is a major gamble entailing risks that he has seen no need to take.

So although U.S. President Joe Biden’s warnings of “all-out war” are welcome, they miss the point. For the time being, at least, Netanyahu can stop short of launching what the U.S. administration and other international parties regard as full-scale war while maintaining a high level of violence that degrades Hezbollah’s military capabilities and gravely weakens its political standing inside Lebanon. The Biden administration’s track record of failing to uphold its own red lines regarding Israeli offensive action in Gaza suggests that it will not exercise real leverage over Israeli actions in Lebanon so long as these remain within a certain threshold.

Much the same logic applies to the Biden administration’s reported opposition to any Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon. The commonly held assumption that Israel either wants or needs to invade in order to achieve a decisive outcome against Hezbollah is a fallacy. This is a case of fighting the last war—a trap that Hezbollah appears to have fallen into, prompting it to prepare for a repeat of its 2006 war with Israel that focused primarily on the southern border zone. Publicized comments by the Israel Defense Forces Chief of General Staff Herzi Halevi about preparing for a ground offensive and the call-up of two reservist brigades in the past twenty-four hours appear intended for political leverage as diplomatic pressures mount, rather than reflecting actual intentions.

A related fallacy is the assumption that a full-scale war would look fundamentally different than the supposedly limited war currently being waged by Israel against Hezbollah. Israel’s ability to deploy superior military firepower and technology—amplified by the integration of artificial intelligence into its weapons platforms—and to inflict extensive damage without a single Israeli soldier setting foot inside Lebanon shows that the conventional distinction between “full-scale” and “limited” war in this particular conflict has become moot. Unless it faces forceful international diplomacy, Israel will remain in control of calibrating and pacing combat operations, and it will retain escalation dominance.

But these conditions do not assure Israel of achieving its objectives, even ones that fall significantly short of Netanyahu’s rhetoric of total victory against Hezbollah. This clearly is mere bluster, but Hezbollah may have too much at stake to submit to terms for a ceasefire that the Biden administration would actively push for and that Israel would accept. For all the pain being inflicted on Hezbollah, the real threat to the group lies within Lebanon’s domestic politics, where the blows to its credibility as a potent and professional military force will inevitably generate challenges to its position within the country’s sectarian power structure. Considerably more is at stake for Hezbollah than simply surviving the military confrontation with Israel, making it even less likely to concede. Over time, it will replenish and rebuild, with renewed Iranian support.

There appears to be only one feasible way of ending the current wars that Israel is waging on its northern and southern fronts: a diplomatic settlement consistent with the UN Security Council resolution that brought a ceasefire to the 2006 war, followed by the implementation of the resolution regarding a ceasefire in Gaza, as called for in the U.S.-led statement. But the domestic political considerations that shape the behaviors of Israel and Hezbollah make continuing combat a preferred default option—indeed, the Israeli government has already rejected talk of a ceasefire. Without robust political follow-through by the United States and its partners, there is little prospect of de-escalation, let alone a complete end to the violence.