Israel ready to put boots on the ground in Hizbollah’s backyard of southern Lebanon

In the three days since Israel assassinated Hizbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah, the country has used its unrivalled air superiority to launch wave after wave of strikes on Lebanon.

But now it appears set to move to a new stage of its offensive: the far riskier land operation that will put Israeli boots on the ground in Hizbollah’s backyard of southern Lebanon.

Equipment and heavy combat divisions have been deployed to Israel’s north.

And in recent days, Israeli forces have also carried out small-scale raids targeting artillery posts and other Hizbollah infrastructure in Lebanon and gathering intelligence ahead of a possible broader ground operation, according to a person familiar with the situation.

“The next stage in the war against Hizbollah will begin soon,” defence minister Yoav Gallant told mayors from northern Israel on Monday.

“It will be a significant factor in changing the security situation and will allow us to complete the important part of the war’s goals: returning residents to their homes.”

Israel has long insisted that returning the roughly 60,000 people displaced from the country’s north by rockets from the Iran-backed Hizbollah — which began firing at Israel in support of Hamas the day after its October 7 attack — is one of its key objectives.

For the last year, Israeli officials have said they would prefer to do so by diplomatic means.

But in recent weeks, Israel has stepped up its preparations for a ground operation, leaving US officials scrambling to contain the situation, and the region on edge over how far Israel will go in its confrontation with Iran and its proxies — and where it will stop.

Yaakov Amidror, a former national security adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America in Washington, said after 11 months of combat in Gaza, Israel’s military was “a little bit exhausted” and so unlikely to attempt an operation of the scale it had launched against Hamas.

Instead, he said Israel’s operations were more likely to focus on pushing Hizbollah forces north of Lebanon’s Litani river — as envisaged by a UN resolution passed in the wake of Israel’s last war with Hizbollah in 2006 — and degrading its firepower “to a level where, after the war, we can continue to destroy its facilities . . . and stop the flow of weapons systems from Syria into Lebanon”.

Itamar Yaar, former deputy head of the Israeli National Security Council, said that while he did not expect Israel to attempt a full-scale invasion of Lebanon as the price would be “higher than we are willing to pay”, it was likely to carry out operations near the border to deal with the threat posed by Hizbollah’s anti-tank missiles.

“I think that there is a good chance Israel will try to take control of some points along the [demarcation line] to make sure that at least some of our villages will not be under direct fire from Hizbollah,” he said.

“It’s easier to do on the western part of the Israeli-Lebanese border, it’s more difficult to do in the area of Metula [because of the topography].”

Netanyahu is betting that holding Lebanese territory whenever a ceasefire is reached would also give Israel options in the negotiations over the new status quo, a person who has previously worked with Netanyahu said.

“It gives us leverage. It also gives Hizbollah a fig leaf to agree [to a deal in which it remained north of the Litani] because they can say that by agreeing not to go back they’re getting the Israelis off Lebanese territory,” the person said. “It creates political cards to play.”

However, officials acknowledge that a ground operation in Lebanon would also bring a slew of risks.

Even if officials attempt to wage a limited campaign, Israeli forces could end up being drawn into protracted combat in terrain that Hizbollah’s fighters know inside out, and where Israel’s technological and intelligence advantages count for less.

It would also raise the risk of a direct confrontation with Iran, which has spent years building Hizbollah’s capabilities and views the Lebanese group as the linchpin of the alliance of militants known as the axis of resistance that it has built to buttress its fight with Israel.

Some in Israeli security circles believe that, with Hizbollah in disarray, Israel is unlikely to have a better opportunity to strike the Islamic Republic, whose pursuit of nuclear weapons is Israel’s main strategic concern.

Israel on Sunday sent its jets to bomb sites controlled by Iran-backed Houthi rebels 1,800km away in Yemen who have launched numerous drones and missiles at Israel since October 7.

It was the second time Israel has carried out such a strike, and a former official said the strike was a signal that Israel had the capability to launch long distance operations against Iran as well.

“Many Israelis think . . . if we have such an achievement versus Hamas and Hizbollah, now is the time to deal with the head of the dragon. Not just with the proxies,” said Amidror, who is still regarded as close to Netanyahu.

“In Lebanon [a war would be] about ground forces, who have been called up three times in the last year. In Iran, it would be about an exchange of missile fire, and everything that was prepared by Israel in Tehran. So this a different kind of an effort that basically wasn’t used yet.”

However, others argue a confrontation with such a heavily armed enemy would have huge costs for Israel, and a person familiar with the situation said that despite ratcheting up its operations in Lebanon, Israel was not seeking an escalation with Iran.

“Netanyahu doesn’t want Iran involved,” the person said.

Yaar said he believed Israel was also very unlikely to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities without support from the US, given the complexity of the task, and the likelihood that it would provoke a massive response from Tehran.

“The Americans aren’t willing to do it, at least for the coming few months. So in the next few months I don’t see it,” he said.

“What happens after that will depend on Iran’s activities on the nuclear issue, and the other different fields where the Iranians are acting, such as Syria and Iraq.”

Cartography by Jana Tauschinski and Steven Bernard