On September 4, Israel announced that it had gained effective control of Ali Al Taher ridge, which overlooks the southern Lebanese town of Nabatiyeh. This came as a surprise, since many observers had expected a major battle for control of the heights, which housed an extensive tunnel network and allegedly an operational command centre for Hezbollah.
According to officials cited by Reuters, Iran had warned the US that if the Israelis tried to seize control of Ali Al Taher, it would respond forcefully. That is what made the sudden Israel announcement odder, accompanied by the absence of denials from Hezbollah. It led to speculation that some sort of deal had been worked out to allow the Israelis to take over the facility. The news in Beirut last week was that Ali Al Taher was surrendered in exchange for allowing Iranian advisers trapped in its tunnels to evacuate with combatants.
The fall of Ali Al Taher generated much discussion in Beirut, because the state had asked Hezbollah to hand over the facility to the Lebanese army instead of allowing Israel to occupy it. Hezbollah refused. This led one journalist to write: “To avoid giving a symbolic victory to the Lebanese Army, [Hezbollah] gave a genuine victory to Benjamin Netanyahu. To save … its weapons, it sacrificed the land these weapons were supposed to save.”
The journalist’s point was that, at a time when the Lebanese authorities seek to impose a monopoly over weapons, and Hezbollah refuses to comply, the group would have created an unwelcome precedent (for itself) by handing over Ali Al Taher to the army. Such a step would have legitimised similar handovers in other parts of Lebanon not occupied by Israel. The problem is that this reasoning allowed Israel to take the ridge, not the Lebanese government, which did further damage to Iranian and Hezbollah’s credibility in Lebanon.
One can’t help but underline the bankruptcy of Hezbollah’s position. The group is directly controlled by Iran, and its principal preoccupation is to push back against the Lebanese government and its legitimate demand to be the only party taking decisions on war and peace in the country. The Iranians fear that if this happens, it will leave Tehran with no military leverage over Israel.
However, this reasoning has isolated Hezbollah inside Lebanon, even if many in the Shiite community continue to sympathise with the group, and would see attacks directed against it as targeting the community as a whole. Yet that doesn’t mean Shiites are not aware of the terrible price of Hezbollah’s having opened a front against Israel last March 2.
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Smoke rises after an Israeli strike near the southern Lebanese city of Tyre. AFP -
A woman makes her way through the rubble of a residential building hit in an Israeli attack, near Burj Al Shamali, on the outskirts of Tyre. AFP -
The aftermath of bombing by Israeli jets in the city of Nabatieh. AFP -
Civil defence members search for victims in the rubble in Burj Al Shamali. AFP -
Strikes near Beaufort Castle, seen from Marjayoun. Reuters -
Lebanese soldiers in Burj Al Shamali. AFP
All of the Shiite-majority villages in the Lebanon-Israel border area have been razed by the Israelis, who have defined a so-called yellow line demarcating the area they occupy in the south, and which they have transgressed. While the Israelis may have reached the limit of their operations outside that zone, this doesn’t make Hezbollah’s task any easier.
There are those who believe Iran had an interest in drawing the Israelis into Lebanon, as this will help revive Hezbollah’s resistance option, making its disarmament virtually impossible. Perhaps, but there is an unknown, namely whether the Shiite community can continue to support the group when the Israeli response is bound to be devastating, and has already swallowed an area seen as the heart and soul of the community’s presence in Lebanon.
The situation today is not like the one that prevailed in the 1980s and 90s, when Israel occupied much of south Lebanon and established a militia, the South Lebanon Army, to fight on its behalf. At the time, the Israelis and their allies were vulnerable to rocket attacks and suicide operations, while Hezbollah enjoyed the backing of Syria, which dominated Lebanon, and therefore of the Lebanese government. Today, no such assistance exists.
Moreover, the Israelis are fighting a very different kind of war at present – one of annihilation. They have made the border area unliveable by destroying all Shiite villages and bombing agricultural areas (those they haven’t burned) with white phosphorous, which contaminates land for years. They are also relying much more on AI and drones, which means they can manage and gather large amounts of information, exposing their soldiers less to attack than before. They are also using robots in a variety of roles, including combat support.
Hezbollah also appears not to have the same military capabilities it once did. While there have been reports of Iran trying to rearm the group through smuggling networks in Syria, and sending funds through regional countries, this seems hardly enough to turn it into the fighting force it once was. Hezbollah can engage in small operations against Israeli forces, but for now these are highly unlikely to change much, given Israel’s technological superiority and the fact that Hezbollah seems incapable of imposing a deterrence equation on Israel.
However, Hezbollah’s major problem remains one of national legitimacy. The group worked hard over the decades to anchor its anti-Israel stance in a national consensus, which was formally approved in government statements endorsing the role of the resistance. This is no longer present, as many Lebanese now consider the group to be an Iranian proxy force that has led their country to disaster.
Even regionally, countries such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey, as well as Syria and Egypt, would like to end Iran’s influence in the Levant. That is not to say Hezbollah won’t try to reinvent itself as a resistance force. But given the exhaustion of its community, the loss of its base in the south, domestic hostility to its agenda, Israel’s military domination and a regional desire to see the Lebanese state reassert itself, the group’s path to success is very narrow.
