What is happening in South Lebanon?

19 comments

1. Inadequately prepared? Unserious analysis.

   If you’ve told anyone on this forum that Israel taking on Hezbollah head on will “Cost” only tens of soldiers you would be downvoted to hell and back for this unrealistic expectation. Yet here we are.

   The IDF has announced before the invasion began that it is a very limited operation. They have conquered dozens of heavily armed villages already, and while saying the operation MIGHT be ending soon, they also expanded the operations for over 20 more villages just the other day.

   The operation so far, from beginning to it’s current state, has been a huge and very impressive success.

2. For how much you can prepare yourself war is bloody and people will die, especially when you are walking into a territory which Hezbollah has set up for asymmetrical warfare against a ground invasion.

3. They are down there as a lightning rod, Any Hezbollah that are still able to are going to be encouraged to attack them there because they aren’t safe. They will use first strike tactics where they fire launchers and run away. Even if the Israelis are there less than a fortnight, they will have brought so many of these fighters out of hiding and killed them that it will likely be a success. The losses on the Israeli side are caluculated, there’s only company sized forces out there, they know what they signed up for

4. Air Superiority, intelligence gathering. Proximity and Familiarity.. Southern Lebanon is geographically close to Israel, allowing for quick response times and easier logistics for Israeli forces. Due to past conflicts, Israel has extensive knowledge of the terrain and potential threat areas within southern Lebanon.

5. First and foremost we should acknowledge that Twitter and many other social media sites have a distrinctly anti Israeli stance. If Twitter was to be believed the strikes deep inside Iran this week would have been impossible.

   Background, I haven’t been following Lebanon all that closely. But taking a big picture view, they probably are looking at diminishing returns. Most of their gains were made without boots on the ground and at reduced cost. War isn’t about who had the better plan on day one, it’s about who can adjust on the fly

6. The problem is diplomatic and political more than military, one suspects.

   By the standards of Israel, Lebanon is not a small country. Unlike, say Gaza, Israel has no means to control the borders and prevent incursions or retreat. Operationally this is difficult as the opponents have far more options and the ability to regroup and resupply. Containment is impossible.

   Israel does not benefit from utter chaos in Lebanon – in fact Israel would likely prefer a prosperous and orderly Lebanon if not for the fact that Hezbollah exists. This largely complicates what “winning” even means. Thus far, the stated goal is to remove or at least severely mitigate Hezbollah’s operations in Southern Lebanon. This is basically an unprovable goal, both sides can use propaganda to say they’ve “won” no matter what happens.

   As you mention, every day of intense action costs both sides lives and materiel. Permanent occupation is also rather expensive – anything fairly static will probably be attacked both militarily and diplomatically. In the end, it is likely that Israel retreats back to their borders. Without support from the Lebanese army and government, it will be what it is, there is little hope that the Southern Lebanon becomes a de facto DMZ.

7. It seems like the other way around though, isn’t it?
   The warnings against trying to dismantle Hezbulla, the warning against an enormous amount of casualties, the belief that Hezbulla was so prepared for the invasion, that it would make it all but a bloodbath for the Israeli forces seems to be, mildly speaking, largely exaggerated.
   It looks like Hezbulla has practically gave up on organised face to face attrition war in the south and mainly relies on drone attacks and rockets.

8. I am an IDF reservist in an artillery unit. I wasn’t called for this operation. However, we were always told by our commanders that the a 3rd Lebanon war would bring total distraction and many will die. In practice, In most parts of Israel life is usual and although we do morne each soldier that dies, it is much much much much less than what everyone feared. Hezbollah and its 20 years of arming is decimated, face it.

9. I don’t understand this view at all. Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah has been a clear, enormous success. They’ve destroyed the group’s operational ability, at least temporarily, and prevented any pending attack. The excursion into Southern Lebanon is clearly a small operation, one element of a much larger campaign, intended to deal with infrastructure that could not be addressed from the air. It’s obviously never been intended to be a full-scale invasion or occupation.

   There’s no way to read it other than a complete, u mitigated success.

   A better question is how was Hezbollah so unprepared for retaliation after a year of provocation? What did they even hope to gain with their missile-launching campaign?

10. > ‘successfully completed’ in a fortnight and the (ground-) troops withdrawn, which sounds to me like a face-saving euphemism for withdrawal.

    Withdrawn doesn’t need to be a euphemism for withdrawal. It’s the same word.

    >There are also increasing reports of morale abyss among Israeli troops.

    Post one, I’m curious to read what you are reading.

    The IDF, including 300,000 reserves, has been fighting for over a year in dense urban settings. They are probably tired, but I seriously doubt there are significant morale issues.

    Reasons: The cause is clear. 7 Oct was Israel’s 9/11. The West kept up the GWOT for over two decades for far more ambiguous reasons.

    Location: South Lebanon is close enough that the IDF could take a taxi home from the front. They can see the Israeli villages they are fighting Hezbollah for.

    Support: morale lasts a long time if soldiers are not neglected. Food and contact with family wouldn’t be too challenging. Less than a month in, though, those drags to morale are probably not even an issue yet.

    Combat support: air and armour goes a long way to keeping the infantry happy. From what I see, the IDF is very good at this type of coordinated support.

    Withdrawal: can be completed for numerous tactical reasons, but the apparent operational reason would be that the objectives are met or at least met enough that further operations are not advantageous enough. In this case, degrading Hezbollah’s combat power enough to reduce the immediate threats of a northern front in the Gaza war is likely sufficient.

    Strategically, Israel never indicated the aim was to occupy south Lebanon, which is the only logical alternative to withdrawing. Such an occupation is what Hezbollah wants as it draws formations away from Gaza and gives them someone to fight on their home turf. Not doing what the enemy wants is always a worthwhile effort.

    Israel won’t have any desire to be north of The Blue Line on sovereign Lebanese territory longer than necessary. There are opportunities here to improve LAF/UNIFIL effectiveness, but diplomacy won’t work at all with an occupying power in somewhere like Tyre.

    My guess is the IDF have planned for this since about 2007 and it is likely tracking pretty close to plan.

11. Same thing happened in Vietnam. The French pulled out saying that trying to take control was pointless but the US tried anyways for around 10 years. Hundreds of leaders and thousands of Vietnamese casualties later, the government believed they were making progress but the situation on the ground remained largely the same. Most of their infrastructure is hidden under ground, and they did not have much help from the locals, so prior preparation and intelligence could only do so much. Having a strong air force is not the end all be all in this type of warfare. Hamas was underestimated in the same fashion. I think they were well aware the killing of leaders wasn’t going to end things but it boosted morale and support to keep going.

    If they penetrate deeper into Lebanon they will have to worry about higher concentrations of underground infrastructure and enemies popping up in their back field, trapping them like in the previous war. If they keep up limited operations as they are, they will simply have no idea whether or not they are making real progress and morale will drop over time. Politically they had to at least show they did something.

12. I’ve seen Al Jazeera footage and Hezbollah is fighting a war of the rats, which involves them sniping and popping up with anti tank weapons, firing a shot and running away.

    Frankly would be better off destroying every building in the vicinity but on the world stage they would be accused of ethnic cleansing or genocide.

    While Israel could flatten much and create crators en masses, they would come off as bullies even Hezbollah requested to die by their hand, and to have the IDF exterminate them in my opinion. Israel has to walk a rope that certain western powers can live by. Hopefully we get an American president this time so Israel doesn’t not have to fight with both hands tied behind it’s back.

13. Come over to r/Lebanese if you want to get accounts of what is happening in South Lebanon.

    Israeli censorship on news coming out of Southern Lebanon is very tight so you barely hear anything coming from that side.

14. I also want to know what is going on in southern Lebanon. But unfortunately it been very quiet because there isn’t much new from there. Best can do we have to sit and wait. Netanyahu came out and say that 1701 resolution have to happen and I want to know if Israel can make it happen or not. From my point of view if Israel were to push hezbollah to the Litani river than Israel succeed in their goal we can forget the disarming Hezbollah part because that would be impossible.

15. apparently fighting a controlled population is much, much different from invading a neighbouring nation.

16. People are quick to forget but before the IDF went in everyone was predicting that this would be an extremely tough fight. It was thought that the IDF might lose hundreds. As it stands IDF losses are much lower than feared. It’s going better than anyone dared hope, about as well as we can expect.

    The goals in Lebanon were always more limited than in Gaza. Israel wants to push Hezbollah back and eliminate the possibility of an October 7th-like raid in the north. Hezbollah has taken heavy losses, lost enormous quantities of weaponry, and its tunnel infrastructure is being systematically blown up.

17. Israel has humiliated itself again, and for the second time now their expansion into lebanon has failed, and are retreating again.

    It has of course been very bloody. They’ve bombed the shit out of beirut.

18. Its basically iran vs israel

19. The situation is basically the following. Hezbollah has thousands of guided missiles that can hit targets deep inside Israel. For the last 11 months, they have been firing short range unguided missiles that forced Israelis out of their houses. They basically assumed that they could continue the attacks in solidarity to the situation in Gaza, and Israel would not retaliate since they were not hitting highly populated areas. Israel had other plans and they were not going to wait for an escalation of the conflict and have to fight against thousands of high precision guided missiles. Israel implemented a hybrid attack that decapitated most of the senior Hezbollah command structure, their communication networks, as well as targeting missile storage facilities.

    It is uncertain if this attack will have a positive long-term impact in the ability of Hezbollah to attack Israel or if this will just lead to more intense fighting against a much better armed opponent.

Comments are closed.