The war on Israel’s northern front – its rarely-used official name is “Operating Northern Arrows” – is winding to an end. The IDF has incurred serious damage to the Hezbollah. Most of its leadership has been killed. In some cases, the replacements of the replacements have been killed.
A clip on TikTok shows a group of Lebanese men in an underground parking lot. One of them says, “We in Beirut are afraid of nothing. And I would like to introduce you to the new Secretary General of the Hezbollah.” He points to the person standing next to him who is wearing the clothing of a Moslem cleric. The cleric, with a look of shock on his face, punches the speaker, starts running away, and everyone else in the scene breaks into raucous laughter. Nobody wants to be the next Secretary General of Hezbollah because it is a short-term job. When Naim Qassem, who replaced Hashem Safieddine who replaced Hassan Nasrallah, was appointed Secretary General on October 29, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant tweeted “The countdown has begun.”
The IDF has destroyed, according to many estimates, nearly 80% of the Hezbollah arsenal of rockets and launchers. All villages within three miles of the Israel border lie in ruins. The IDF methodically entered the villages, located and exploded large stockpiles of arms – rockets, mortars, mines, rocket propelled grenades, sniper rifles and then some – and destroyed underground tunnels that were entered via the homes of the local civilian population. Some of these tunnels were a mile long and came within a few feet of the border. These tunnels were built to be used as staging grounds for their “Conquer the Galilee” plan in which the terrorist army vowed to commit another October 7-style massacre in northern Israel. The tunnels contained enough food to literally feed an army. 400 tons of explosives were required to destroy one of the longer tunnels. The blast was so powerful that in many locations in Israel, including my home town of Moreshet, 20 miles away, that it triggered the earthquake alarms. The villages were all empty. They are ghost towns. Their residents left months ago to safer areas in the Lebanese north. IDF soldiers have encountered minimal resistance.
Avihai Edri, the IDF spokesman in Arabic, has become a sort of legend in Lebanon. When he says to evacuate an area so that the IDF can bomb it, his words are heeded. This does not go unnoticed by the Hezbollah’s local opposition. Starting October 31, Edri began emptying out Baalbek, a town northeast of Beirut on the Syrian border, far from Israel. An opposition newspaper was quoted as saying, “[The IDF] tell you to leave and you leave… Don’t tell us afterwards that you stood tall and defeated the IDF – these are empty words. You fled and you left Baalbek to the thieves…”
The IDF seems to have completed most of its goals in its ground incursion of Lebanon. I say this because many of the people I know that served on the Lebanese front have been released or will shortly be released from months of emergency active reserve duty. The number of aircraft flying overhead has lessened to a small fraction of what it was only a few weeks ago meaning the IAF is dropping fewer bombs. Hezbollah is truly a broken organization. Its ability to project power is a fraction of what it once was. The IDF have blown up most of the bridges and border crossings that connect Lebanon to Syria, blocking the channels that were used to send arms from Iran. The Hezbollah ship is slowly and inexorably sinking.
And yet. The Hezbollah are still wreaking havoc in Israel. They still possess thousands of rockets that have sufficient range to hit targets in Israel even when launched far from the border in areas that Israel has no plans to conquer or to destroy. Granted that the extent of the rocket fire is greatly reduced from what it once was and is a small fraction of what Israeli citizens had prepared for.
As late as two months ago, we had been warned that a war with Hezbollah would see between 2,000-4,000 rockets a day. We had been warned that Hezbollah rockets would destroy our power plants, our water desalination plants, and our cell phone towers. We had been warned to stock our bomb shelters with sufficient food and water for at least three days. The number of rockets fired at Israel each day is usually less than 100, about 5% of what was once imagined, and Iron Dome intercepts nearly all of them. Nearly, but not always.
Last Thursday, in two separate incidents, 7 Israelis were killed by Hezbollah rocket fire. 5 people were killed while farming near Metulla on the northern border, and another 2 were killed a few hours later while picking olives in a field near Shefaram about 5 miles from my home. In these two instances, Iron Dome was not even used. The reason is that the system intercepts only those targets predicted to impact predefined areas that have a high population density. “Open Areas,” such as fields and roads, are more often than not unprotected. This makes driving on country roads a potentially deadly endeavor. Even when Hezbollah rockets are intercepted, a key component of Israel’s strategy of protection from rocket fire includes entering a bomb-shelter for 10 minutes. Each salvo on the Haifa area sends more than one million people into bomb shelters. Yesterday, Haifa residents experienced six alarms. My son in Acco had five, the first at 4:00 am. When large missiles are fired from northern Lebanon toward the center of the country, even larger swaths of people are sent to bomb shelters for fear of debris falling on their heads. Traumatic psychological effects aside, the effect on work productivity is not insignificant.
Recently, a new threat has entered the scene – a new family of killer drones. These drones are difficult to detect. They can fly at an altitude of less than 50 feet above ground. They have electric motors with low acoustic signatures, and they are stealthy such that radar detection at long range is nearly impossible. These drones use GPS to fly on pre-planned trajectories, usually coming in over the sea and flying a circuitous route to confuse Israeli defenses. The drones have small warheads when compared with rockets and missiles, but they are deadly all the same. On October 13, a drone crashed into the dining room of the Golani Brigade Training Base. The drone was programmed to crash into the building at dinner time when it was at its fullest. 4 soldiers were killed, and 61 were injured. The drones are often detected near the northern border. As they make their way southwards, nearby citizens enter their bomb shelters.
Last week we were driving north on Highway 6, the Trans-Israel highway. As we passed the city of Yoqneam, we noticed a large number of cars parked on the side of the road. Quickly understanding that there was an attack going on, we parked our car at the side of the road, exited the vehicle, and moved off the highway. As we exited the car, we heard a nearby siren. One of the people next to us told us that it was not a rocket attack, but rather a drone attack. With a rocket attack, a person who is caught outdoors should lie down in a ditch to minimize the chance of injury from blast and shrapnel. With a drone attack, there is nothing that can be done other than to stay away from the car and to get inside a bomb shelter as quickly as possible. And so we stood helpless at the side of the road until the drone made its way southward. Eventually, it turned back north and exploded not far from where we had stood, but by then, we were already far away.
Not only is detection of the new killer drones difficult, but shooting them down is also a challenge. Using a missile like Iron Dome or an air-to-air missile launched by a fighter jet is like using a hammer to kill a fly – the cost per intercept is considerable and as the intercept usually takes place at low altitude, and the potential for collateral damage is also great. The optimal solution would be to use a high-powered laser, but the Iron Beam system that is tasked to perform that mission is still not yet operational. Even if it were, the number of systems that would have to be procured in order to defend the entire country would be beyond our budget. In order to intercept the new killer drones, the IDF is thinking out of the box. Large Vulcan Phalanx cannons are being positioned at the border to take out the drones before they enter Israeli airspace. In a viral video from this weekend, an AH-64 Apache helicopter is seen using its cannon to intercept a killer drone. This intercept took place across the street from an outdoor amphitheater which was hosting a rock concert. A coworker, who had attended that concert, told me that it was “surreal.”
This is the new reality, or perhaps surreality, in Israel today. Hezbollah will likely continue its death throes for months or even years. Naim Qassem, in a speech last week, said that Hezbollah has no intention whatsoever of waving a white flag. They will defeat Israel or die trying. Surrender is not an option.
What options does Israel have? Are we destined to spend the near foreseeable future running in and out of bomb shelters? Must the IDF conquer the entire country of Lebanon? Is this possible or even desirable? In next week’s essay, we will offer some potential solutions.
Good Things,
Ari Sacher
Comments