How an all-out Israel war could rope in the US and other countries

By Michael Oren

Tens of thousands are displaced, dozens killed, and vast swaths of territory are set ablaze. Sounds like the Gaza Envelope, the belt of Israeli communities bordering Gaza in the south — but it describes the reality in Israel’s north.

Starting with Hamas’ invasion of Oct. 7, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon launched an utterly unprovoked assault on the Galilee. Now, eight months later, entire cities stand abandoned and countless acres of farmland uncultivated or burnt.

For all the horrors it inflicted on Oct. 7, Hamas only poses a tactical threat to Israel. Hezbollah, by contrast, threatens Israel strategically.

Rockets and attack drones target any Israeli — civilian or soldier — exposed. Each day, the range of Hezbollah fire advances southward, today targeting the major cities of Safad and Tiberias, and tomorrow, most likely, Haifa. If left unchecked, Hezbollah soon could render half the country uninhabitable.

This would be an intolerable situation for any country and certainly for Israel, a nation still reeling from the trauma of Oct. 7, the almost daily deaths of its soldiers ever since and its sense of international isolation. Hezbollah, one of the most powerful military forces in the Middle East, is waging a war of attrition designed to further erode Israel’s resources.

Israeli counter strikes have killed hundreds of Hezbollah terrorists and destroyed many of their emplacements, but such actions will have little effect on an organization that unflinchingly lost thousands fighting in the Syrian civil war.

While Israelis are reluctant to expand the northern front while fighting in Gaza still rages, soon the government will have no choice but to act. 

But a full-scale war in the north will differ profoundly from Gaza.

At its height, Hamas fielded some 15,000 rockets of limited accuracy and destructiveness along with 30,000 armed terrorists. For all the horrors it inflicted on Oct. 7, Hamas only poses a tactical threat to Israel. Hezbollah, by contrast, threatens Israel strategically.

Among its arsenal of at least 150,000 rockets and missiles are those that can hit any target — airfields, military bases, oil refineries, even the Dimona nuclear reactor — as far away as Israel’s southernmost port of Eilat. Hezbollah’s innumerable exploding drones have picked off civilians trying to access their homes and soldiers resting in an Arab community center.  Unlike Hamas, confined to Gaza and cut off from resupply, Hezbollah has all of Lebanon in which to maneuver, and logistical lines stretching across Syria.

Any war with Hezbollah is likely to involve rocket fire on Israel from Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Yemen, as well as missile onslaughts, similar to that launched against Israel on April 14 from Iran. The war with Hamas is localized. War with Hezbollah will be regional, at least, if not broader. The war will differ not only from that in Gaza but also from Israel’s previous conflict with Hezbollah in 2006.

At that time, Israel distinguished between Hezbollah and Lebanon and did not declare war against its northern neighbor.

Unlike Hamas, confined to Gaza and cut off from resupply, Hezbollah has all of Lebanon in which to maneuver, and logistical lines stretching across Syria.

Today, though, Israel regards Hezbollah and Lebanon as one. War on the first will be war on both. Lebanon, a country already on the verge of collapse, could be devastated.  For these reasons, the Biden administration opposes a major Israeli operation against Hezbollah.

With an estimated 2,000 to 6,000 rockets pummeling Israel daily, and the Iron Dome batteries potentially overwhelmed, the United States would be called upon to come to Israel’s aid with its own sea-borne anti-missile systems.

An attack on any of these Navy vessels could drag America into the war with Hezbollah and its Iranian sponsors and possibly even with Iran’s ally, Russia.

While senior Israeli military officials reportedly supported a lightning campaign to neutralize Hezbollah last fall, political leaders, first among them Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, took America’s opposition into account and held back. But public pressure for decisive action is rapidly mounting and cannot be ignored for long.  A diplomatic solution would, of course, be preferable to full-fledged war.

American mediators have been shuttling between Jerusalem and Beirut to resurrect UN Security Council resolution 1701 from 2006. Crafted by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the resolution called on Hezbollah to withdraw north of the Litani River, about 13 miles from the Israeli border, and for UN peacekeepers to establish a buffer zone in-between. Hezbollah violated the agreement almost immediately, while the UN merely looked on.

Today, Israelis cannot help but wonder why, with its forces now vastly greater, Hezbollah would retreat beyond the Litani. How could UN peacekeepers possibly prove more effective than they did in the past? And what leverage could the United States, anxious to avoid Middle East entanglements, bring to bear?

Hezbollah, meanwhile, has vowed to press its attacks on Israel for as long as the fighting in Gaza continues. But with Hamas now rejecting US and Israeli proposals for a cease-fire, no end to Hezbollah’s aggression seems possible. Israel can’t be expected to respond passively, firing at the incoming rockets until its Iron Dome interceptors run out. Tragically, a combination of Hezbollah barbarism, UN impotence and America’s fears have brought Israel to the point of no choice.

The anguish of northern Galilee is simply unsustainable and must be ended, even at an exorbitant price. 

Though the media, fixated on Gaza, all but ignores the conflagration unfurling further north, a major war is liable to break out there any moment, with untold ramifications for the Middle East, the United States and the world.

In that event, Israel will act to defend itself, and Israelis will look to our American allies to assist us in restoring our security.