how Israel’s strategy in Lebanon has evolved since 2006 – L’Express

A hotel, a seminar room, a restaurant, a football field, a paintball area, play areas for children and more than thirty huts where you can meet up for a warm moment with the family, sharing grilled meats , with a bird’s eye view of the Galilee. On the hill of the village of Maroun al-Ras, the Lebanese have been able to enjoy this atypical vacation spot for around fifteen years. His name? “The Garden of Iran”.

It owes nothing to chance: its owner is none other than Hezbollah. The Shiite militia brought out of the ground, thanks to millions of dollars provided by the Islamic Republic, this center to its glory and that of its godfather. You could also visit a replica of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, but decorated with the emblematic monogram of the Iranian flag. Several officials from Tehran have visited there since its inauguration in 2010 by former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with these words: “The world must know that the Zionists will disappear.”

It was on the ruins of one of the huts that Israeli soldiers planted their flag on October 8, a week after the launch of a large-scale ground operation in southern Lebanon against Hezbollah, called “Northern Arrow”. “. The monument paying tribute to the former leader of the Iranian Pasdaran, Qassem Souleimani (killed in an American strike in 2020), was destroyed, while bulldozers razed the “Garden of Iran” installations.

A few hundred meters from Israel, Maroun al-Ras is as much a political symbol as a strategic position. Located on a promontory, the town was one of the first to be targeted by the ground operation, eighteen years ago, by Israeli forces. But also the last one that they evacuated, after around thirty days, without ever having managed to take complete control of it. They even lost several soldiers, surprised by the degree of preparation and efficiency demonstrated by the Hezbollah fighters.

Better trained soldiers

Will Israeli troops now experience the same difficulties in Maroun al-Ras and, more generally, throughout southern Lebanon? For years the IDF has been preparing to confront Hezbollah on its territory. It was with the bitter failure of 2006 in mind that the Israeli armed forces began their penetration into this ultra-militarized region, held by the Lebanese militia. As early as 2007, the Winograd commission revealed how much the army had paid for its lack of training during its incursion into Lebanon the previous year. For the only time in their history, the Israeli forces had an aviator as chief of staff, General Dan Alutz. To avoid finding themselves bogged down, as during the first Lebanon war, priority is then given to air strikes and special forces.

Two major pitfalls arise: the lack of military targets (less than a hundred were listed), due to a lack of intelligence, and the difficulty in coordinating “air-land” combat between the air force and ground troops. . They find themselves repeatedly trapped by ambushes; the armored vehicles, starting with the Merkava tanks, were destroyed by anti-tank missiles brought out of their cache, at the last moment, by militiamen.

“This time, the soldiers have been better trained in air-land combat, and they are all considered sensors that send a tactical image to command posts, via the TORCH system, underlines a French military source. This sharing of data in real time allows you to call on the best unit, the closest helicopter, tank or drone to neutralize a target. The Israeli forces didn’t have that in 2006.”

More training and more targets

They are also part of an operational framework, the “momentum plan”. Since its announcement in 2019, the general staff has focused training more on combat in urban areas, particularly in replicas of Lebanese villages riddled with traps and tunnels. He upgraded the equipment of the infantrymen to improve their connectivity. It has also deployed new tools to locate a greater number of potential targets for military strikes, thanks to the use of artificial intelligence and databases.

The lack of intelligence in the broad sense, and not just tactical, was highlighted by the Winograd commission report. The highlights of recent weeks have revealed the spectacular progress made by the Israeli services since 2006 in this area. The explosion of thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah executives undermined its leadership structures, the main executives of which were eliminated by airstrikes, including the historic leader, Hassan Nasrallah, on September 27, in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

His successor, Hachem Safieddine, was killed a few days later, in similar circumstances, according to Israeli authorities. “The Hezbollah staff no longer exists, as soon as someone is appointed, they are killed, notes the military source. And the people recently eliminated had decades of experience. The leaders who will succeeding them will not have the same networks, nor the same aura. This modeling of the environment and the enemy is an asset that the Israeli army did not have in 2006.

This new war with Hezbollah began on October 8, when the Lebanese group, in solidarity with Hamas, fired rockets into Israeli territory. The exchange of strikes has not stopped since, causing the evacuation of more than 60,000 residents – the first objective of operation “Flèche du Nord” is their return home, eliminating the threat of direct fire. Absorbed by its intervention in Gaza, the Israeli army initially contented itself with strengthening its military presence in the North, while striking weapons caches, in particular missiles likely to be fired at Israel. In the greatest secrecy, it also carried out night raids by its special forces, behind the “blue line”, in Lebanese territory, to destroy tunnels and weapons caches, often among civilians, fearing another “7 october”.

This low-intensity campaign made it possible to neutralize part of Hezbollah’s military capabilities, before the recent elimination of its senior commanders. “It’s a totally different war than 2006, with successes so far, even as Israel has to fight on multiple fronts, with the Houthis in Yemen, Syria, the West Bank, Iran and of course Gaza”, underlines Orna Mizrahi, Hezbollah specialist at the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies.

With this advantage, the Israelis want to give themselves the means to ensure that the Shiite militias are pushed back to the Litani River, about twenty kilometers north of the blue line. They have the advantage of having maneuver brigades seasoned by several months of intervention in Gaza. The big unknown concerns Hezbollah’s capabilities. “If the connection with the head of the organization is cut, that does not prevent the different cells from continuing to fight, underlines the military source. They have their stock of weapons, food. There is a great decentralization, It’s not the Soviet army.”

The IDF has already deployed four divisions near the border – one division, numbering a thousand soldiers. “The objective is to create a critical mass, constantly on the move, to prevent defenders from carrying out deadly ambushes,” underlines David Khalfa, co-director of the North Africa and Middle East Observatory of the Jean Foundation. -Jaurès, and author of the recent, Israel Palestine, Year Zero (Editions Le Bord de l’eau). To go to the Litani River, it will be necessary to deploy more troops. Hezbollah, although weakened, is on a different operational level than Hamas. The IDF General Staff expects more casualties.”

The Israelis reject any idea of ​​occupation, but want at all costs to avoid a return to the status quo. “Between 2006 and today, Israel was striking Hezbollah outside Lebanon’s borders, notably in Syria, but this immunity was lost after October 8. The Israelis will not let the militia rearm, even if there is a ceasefire,” explains David Khalfa. The objective is therefore to find a political agreement and obtain more solid security guarantees than after the 2006 conflict, which resulted in United Nations resolution 1701 giving neither mandate nor means to disarm Hezbollah in the South of the Litani River.

“We will stay until the Lebanese army is strong enough to take over,” explains an Israeli official. “If the threat resurfaces, we will not hesitate to make occasional incursions.” It remains to be seen what position the Iranian godfather will adopt. “He could order Hezbollah to continue to harass the Israeli rear, at the risk of destroying the Shiite militia, or force the latter to cease hostilities to continue to play a role in Lebanon, believes David Khalfa. For its survival, Iran’s regime relies on this forward defense, made up of pro-Iranian armed groups, far from its borders, harassing its adversaries at low cost.” Hezbollah still constitutes its centerpiece.