Without a strategy, a quagmire awaits in Lebanon

LEBANON IS IN my bones. I commanded the northern sector of the security zone, the Galilee Division, and served as general of the Israel Defence Forces’ Northern Command. I fought there. I was wounded there. I have seen up close what the Lebanese mud does to soldiers, to families, and to a nation that convinces itself that enough firepower is the same thing as a strategy. It is not. And as Israel considers a move deeper into Lebanese territory, I feel obligated to say so plainly—before it repeats a mistake it has already paid for in blood and treasure.

A deep military manoeuvre inside Lebanon, without a clear political objective, will drag Israel back into that quagmire. It will not bring real security to its northern border. Occupying Lebanese territory must be tactical, time-bound: a means to strike Hizbullah, protect northern communities and to create leverage for a negotiated outcome. The moment it becomes an end in itself, Israel has already lost strategically, whatever the operational gains.

To understand why, it helps to remember who the Israeli people are, and what has actually kept them safe. For decades, the principles of Israel’s national security were taught to every officer who passed through its military colleges: short, decisive wars that end with diplomatic agreements—agreements based on military successes to anchor Israel’s security for the long term, postponing war deep into the future. This doctrine served the nation well. Despite relentless security pressure, its people have built a thriving democratic miracle in the Middle East.

The War of Independence ended in 1948 with armistice agreements that gave the young Israel the time it needed to build a state, absorb immigration and divert resources from weapons to schools and roads. The Suez war of 1956 ended with a demilitarised Sinai and a UN force to keep the peace. In the quiet decade that followed, the miracle of Israeli statehood was consolidated in every dimension. The 1973 Yom Kippur war ended with separation-of-forces agreements and ultimately a peace treaty with Egypt—Israel’s most important strategic asset to this day, and the source of its quietest border for five decades.

And the counter-example. Israel did not know how to anchor the victory of the Six Day War of 1967 in a political agreement. The result was less security, not more. Without agreements, we stumbled into a war of attrition in the south, relentless terror from the east and an unresolved conflict with the Palestinians, including from the Lebanese border. The lesson writes itself: end wars with an agreement. Convert battlefield gains into long-term stability. That is not weakness. That is statesmanship.

Which brings me back to Lebanon, and to what is being squandered right now. The IDF has struck Hizbullah with unprecedented force over the past two years. The military achievements are immense, the product of the courage and sacrifice of Israeli soldiers backed with the resolve of the home front. But the government is selling the public a dangerous illusion: that military force alone can dismantle Hizbullah and guarantee security for the north. Exercising force without a strategy is not victory. It is political failure.

What makes this so painful is that a genuine window of opportunity is open. Hizbullah is at a deep low—militarily, politically and economically. Within Lebanon, opposition to the organisation that brought the country destruction is growing. The Lebanese government today sees Israel as a potential partner and Hizbullah as an illegitimate force. Israel shares, for this moment, a common interest with the Lebanese state: to weaken and isolate Hizbullah, to cut the Iranian pipelines that sustain it and to permanently separate the organisation from the institutions of Lebanese sovereignty. That means working with America, with European partners and with every Lebanese faction that understands what the Iranian project has done to their country.

This opportunity will not wait. If Israel does not act to strengthen the Lebanese government and its fight against Hizbullah—if it squanders this moment on military action without a political horizon—we will be back in exactly the same position in a matter of months. We will hear the same empty promises about crushing and dismantling Hizbullah, and then there will be another round. And another. We tried this before. We stayed for 18 years, and what most Israelis remember of that period is not the tactical successes. It is the blood and mud.

What every commander and soldier learns on the ground—and what the leaders of the current Israeli government appear never to have absorbed—is that wars are not won looking only through the sight of a rifle. Israel has proven, in its finest hours, that it knows how to fight and how to make peace. It is time to do both again. A good army wins wars. A good government takes that military achievement and translates it into a better, more certain security reality—one that allows it to invest less in rifles and more in the future its citizens deserve. ■