Why Israel is Invading Lebanon

it is increasingly appearing inevitable that another major war is about to explode in the Middle East they could see Israel launching another major ground invasion of a neighboring country this time to the north into Lebanon in the span of just a couple weeks between the 17th and 18th of September the entire mood along the Israel Lebanon border shifted sharply from a low intensity simmering conflict that had been going on for a year to that of a major intensity conflict that increasingly risks spiraling into a devastating allout War it began on the 17th of September when

the Israeli security cabinet officially expanded Israel's war objectives to include the safe return of the around 60,000 Israeli civilians who had been evacuated from a strip of land in Northern Israel along the border with Lebanon the area was order to be evacuated by the Israeli government shortly after the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7th of 2023 when hamas's Ally Hezbollah based just across the border in Lebanon almost immediately began firing rockets and missiles into Northern Israel in a declared solidarity with Hamas hezbollah's nearly three decades long leader Hassan Nala continually said that his organization

would continue firing Rockets into Israel until a ceasefire was made in Gaza and until Israeli forces withdrew from the territory and since then over the roughly 12 months that followed without an end to the Gaza warrant signed up until mid-september of 2024 Hezbollah fired around 8,000 Rockets into Northern Israel that resulted in the deaths of 26 Israeli soldiers and security officers and 27 Israeli civilians along with the evacuation of around 60,000 Israelis from the north that remain internally displaced across the country at the same time Israeli forces also repeatedly bombed and attacked targets across Southern

Lebanon over the roughly 12 months that followed October 7th as well that resulted in the deaths of an estimated 500 or so members of Hezbollah and around 150 Lebanese civilians prior to September 17th and that also resulted in around 110,000 Lebanese civilians fleeing from the south and getting internally displaced across Lebanon Israel and Hezbollah were therefore already fighting a low-scale low intensity simmering war against the other for nearly a year up until the 17th of September when Israel formally added the safe return of all of its 60,000 citizens back to their homes in the north

as a formal War goal that also included eliminating hezbollah's capacity to continue firing Rockets into the north that have so far prevented their return for nearly the whole of the past year and almost immediately as the Declaration was being made Israel decided to begin rapidly escalating its nearly year-long simmering war with Hezbollah into something much more confrontational the same day as the new war goal was announced thousands of small handheld pagers belonging to Hezbollah members that they used for communications exploded almost simultaneously across Lebanon and Syria in a devastating surprise attack back and then the

very next day hundreds of handheld radios belonging to Hezbollah simultaneously exploded as well in another devastating surprise attack the combined back-to-back Hezbollah owned pager and radio explosions killed at least 42 people and wounded around 3500 others including many civilians and red absolute chaos within hezbollah's ranks as an organization most of the members of Hezbollah carrying the pagers were considered higher ranking members of the group and scores of them been left severely injured and crippled with lifelong debilitating injuries that will prevent their ability to fight in the future on top of that Hezbollah as an organization

was profoundly and perhaps irrecoverably embarrassed by the operation with the level of Israeli intelligence penetration into their organization much higher than seemingly anybody suspected somehow when Hezbollah began acquiring the pagers around 5 months before the attack the Israelis managed to covertly implant thousands of them with miniature remote controlled explosives without anybody in Hezbollah noticing until it was too late implying that Hezbollah has a catastrophic spy problem within their ranks that will be difficult for them to rout out and that'll reduce trust in them as an organization going forward and at the same time with the

destruction of all their pagers and radios and with the previous Israeli penetration into their cell networks the attack has severely crippled hezbollah's Communications Network as well with this loss of faith and Technology and no remaining reliable communication Network to rely upon for a military response to a war hezbollah's only remaining method of communication in the wake of the pager and radio attacks were effectively verbal and ridden Communications which had relied upon for a rapid in-person meeting between several high- ranking commanders only a couple days later on the 20th of September in an apartment building in

the southern bayout suburb of dahia which Israeli intelligence also somehow knew about because the Israeli Air Force bombed that apartment building as the meeting was taking place eliminating the top commander of hezbollah's Elite rodwin Force basically hezbollah's most elite special forces Wing along with around 10 other high ranking Hezbollah officers in the process crippling even more of hezbollah's leadership structure in the midst of all these attacks Hassan Nala hezbollah's ultimate top leader declared during his speech on the 19th of September that the Israeli pagaran radio attacks amounted to nothing less than an Israeli declaration of

war against Lebanon and that while the attacks had dealt Hezbollah a great blow he also swore that so long as the Gaza War continues Hezbollah would continue firing Rockets into Israel and would prevent the 60,000 Israeli citizens from returning back to their homes in the north then on the 22nd of September just a few days later Hezbollah fired around 115 Rockets into Israel again with many aimed at the major Israeli city of hia representing the furthest distance into Israeli territory that has had so far fired Rockets into since the conflict began then after nearly all

of them were shot down by Israel's air defenses without causing any casualties the Israelis carried out an unprecedentedly massive air strike campaign across Hezbollah strongholds in Southern and Eastern Lebanon the following day on the 23rd of September that they send targeted Hezbollah military positions and infrastructure the Israeli military reported that these air strikes that targeted around 1,300 locations across Lebanon destroy thousands of Hezbollah owned rockets and missiles potentially as many as 50% of hezbollah's total rocket and missile Arsenal According to some Israeli sources which if accurate will of course further degreed hezbollah's capabilities to continue

firing Rockets into Israel while the Lebanese Health Ministry reported that the attacks on this single day killed more than 550 people in the country and wounded more than 1,800 others without specifying exactly how many of those casualties were hes combatants and civilians but either way it marked the deadliest single day in lebanon's entire history since the end of their Civil War in 1990 and it also represented nearly half of all the deaths that Lebanon suffer during the 34-day war that they fought against Israel back in 2006 all representing a major escalation in the intensity of

the current conflict between Israel and Hezbollah all as tens of thousands of additional Lebanese civilians fled led the heavy bombardment of Southern Lebanon for their lives to the perceived safety of the Capitol Bay rout further up to the north as all these attacks were just getting started on the 18th of September Israel's defense minister yoth Galant declared to Israeli soldiers that a new phase of the war on Gaza had begun with a new focus on the Northern front with Hezbollah as he announced the redeployment of the Israeli 98th parat Troopers division to the border with

Lebanon that consists of between 10,000 and 20,000 troops which have previously deployed four Israeli brigades On the Border that consisted of between 12,000 and 20,000 other troops and more have continued massing On the Border over the days that have followed days later on the 22nd of September Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that Israel would take whatever action is necessary in order to return its 60,000 civilians to their homes in the north while on the 25th of September the idf's chief of staff General hery halevi told Israeli forces participating in a drill in the North

near the order with Lebanon that the previous Israeli air strikes targeted against Hezbollah were intended quote to prepare the area for the possibility of your entry directly hinting at the possibility of a looming Israeli ground Invasion into Southern Lebanon and then on the 27th of September the Israeli military took the most fateful decision it is probably made in decades they decided to launch an attack designed to assassinate the longtime leader of Hezbollah himself Assan Nala forced to rely on inperson Communications with all of their other communication systems destroyed or infiltrated the Israelis learned that Nala

along with several other high-ranking Hezbollah officers were gathering together for a highlevel meeting within their Central headquarters buried beneath the ground in southern Beirut a headquarters placed directly beneath several apartment buildings above ground inhabited by large numbers of civilians regardless the Israeli Air Force decided to launch a massive bombing raid against the headquarters as the meeting was taking place dropping dozens of highly Advanced bunker busting bombs on the area once that obliterated the entire city block of apartment buildings and hezbollah's Head Quarters beneath it the attack almost certainly claimed the lives of hundreds of people

including huge numbers of both Hezbollah members and officers as well as civilians and it most notably resulted in the elimination of Hassan Nala himself leaving Hezbollah a temporarily leaderless organization on top of all of its other mounting issues rapidly afterwards fearful of hezbollah's potential to initiate a massive retaliatory strike on Israel for the assassination of their top leader and countless other officers the Israeli Air Force began carrying out additional major bombing strikes across Lebanon directed at hezbollah's known remaining rocket and missile Arsenal storage sites with the goal of racing against the clock to eliminate as

many of them as possible before they could be used and now the entire world is bracing for how Hezbollah and their primary Patron Iran will decide on responding to all of this as recently as just a month ago Hezbollah was widely feared as the most formidable incompetent enemy that Israel had supposedly ever faced and that entire perception was seemingly destroyed in only a matter of weeks in less than 2 weeks Israel completely destroyed and dismantled hezbollah's Communications networks knocked out thousands of rank and file Hezbollah Soldiers with crippling lifelong injuries destroyed huge numbers of hezbollah's

feared rocket and missile Arsenal and virtually annihilated nearly all of hezbollah's top leadership culminating with the assassination of their nearly three decade long serving General Secretary Hassan Nala himself and all with barely a response from either Hezbollah or Iran at all at least so far indeed Hezbollah has probably been so profoundly shocked by these heavy blows over the past 2 weeks that they may Simply Be incapable of responding or retaliating in any significant way very quickly and they will need an extensive amount of time to regroup and reorganize themselves with new leadership new Communications and

new weapons as a result Israel has potentially opened itself up a narrow window of opportunity to invade Southern Lebanon with ground forces to push hezbollah's forces in the area back away from the border by force while they are at their most stunned disorganized and weakened moment before they can have the time to rebuild and regroup and even though a fullscale ground Invasion into Southern Lebanon may not be desirable it might still end up becoming inevitable from the Israeli perspective anyway in order for them to guarantee once and for all that hezbollah's capability to continue firing

Rockets into Israel is ended for good because just on the 25th of September even after all of the punishing Israeli attacks on them over the week beforehand hesah still managed to fire a ballistic missile aimed directly at Tel Aviv anyway Israel's largest city and the first time that Hezbollah had ever directly targeted the city with an attack and even though this single missile was shot down by Israel's air defenses it still sent a clear message that hezbollah's capability to continue attacking Israeli cities including Tel Aviv remained intact to an unknown extent giving good reason for

any potential Israeli ground Invasion into Lebanon to pause in contemplate the potential consequences you see ever since October 88th of 201 23 when Hezbollah began firing rockets at the northern Israel and forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of Israelis from the border Hezbollah has achieved something that they had never managed to do beforehand they shifted the buffer zone between themselves and Israel from Southern Lebanon where it had been for decades deeper into Northern Israel instead a huge and unprecedented Victory from their perspective well also tying up thousands of Israeli soldiers and missile defense batteries

in the north that couldn't be deployed to the fight against and Gaza to boot for most of the past year Israel was hesitant to directly engage hezbo over the issue out of fear of escalating the situation into another full-blown War at the same time they were still actively fighting Hamas and Gaza and thus forcing themselves into an unpredictable and dangerous two-front war in the process but also over this past year as hamas's military capabilities in Gaza have been steadily degraded and as much of Gaza itself has been reduced to a pile of rubble under increasingly

tight Israeli occupation Israel's appetite for escalation on other fronts has begun to increase when the Israeli attacks on Hezbollah began to rapidly escalate with a pager and radio attacks on the 17th and 18th of September Israel essentially entered into a very high stakes gamble where they believed they could inflict enough pain and pressure on Hezbollah to force them into doing what they want without escalating the situation all the way to fullscale Warfare and a ground Invasion seen from the Israeli perspective it has all essentially been an escalate to deescalate kind of a situation with the

hope that by hurting hezbollah's capabilities enough and by causing them enough damage they can compel them to back down without them deciding to escalate things any further towards a total war that could result in their total Annihilation Israel's leaders hope that with increasing pressure and pain Hezbollah will eventually agree to a separate ceasefire irrespective of what happens in Gaza agree to pull themselves back away from the border and agree to allow the 60,000 or so Israelis to return back to their homes in the north again safely but Hezbollah well badly bloodied over the past several

weeks is still an extremely well-armed and now extremely angry and vengeful organization whose leadership though decimated has so far still remained completely Resolute through all of the pain that they will no matter what happens continue to fire missiles and Rockets into Israel so long as the war in Gaza continues without a ceasefire and with neither Israel nor Hamas appearing willing to compromise on a ceasefire agreement there in Gaza it appears that Israel and Hezbollah are currently playing one of the highest Stakes games of chicken in recent memory where the end stage is appearing increasingly likely

to be a full out Israeli invasion of Southern Lebanon as air strikes and covert pager explosions alone seem that they will not be enough to pressure Hezbollah to end its rocket campaign absent to ceasefire in Gaza historically over the past year of conflict here both sides between Israel and Hezbollah have been reluctant to escalate the fighting towards full-scale War for a plethora of reasons Hezbollah was seemingly content with only engaging the Israelis in a limited conflict tying up some of their resources in the north without escalating to a full-blown war that they know Lebanon as

a country can ill afford you see over the past 5 years since 2019 Lebanon has undergone what many economists have referred to as one of the greatest economic collapses in all of modern history since the Industrial Revolution it began with an unprecedented liquidity crisis in Lebanese banks that started over the summer of 2019 and then gradually escalated with a cascading series of Once in a generation catastrophes that all had The Misfortune of basically striking all at once starting with the onset of the covid-19 pandemic in 2020 then got even worse with the economic Fallout from

Bay Root's Infamous Port explosion that caused billions of dollars in property damage then got even worse with the Russian invasion of Ukraine that severely disrupted lebanon's Imports of grain and then still somehow got even worse with the onset of the Israel Hezbollah shooting war that started in October of 2023 because of all of this since 2019 the Lebanese currency has lost a whopping 98% of its value while the country's GDP has crashed by more than half while the national inflation rate skyrocketed to more than 221 by 2020 3 and has remained in the triple digits

for years now ever since 2021 simultaneously lebanon's public debt to GDP ratio absolutely ballooned to more than 282 by 2022 ranking the country as having literally the highest debt level as a percentage of GDP in the entire world even before the current conflict began with Israel in late 2023 the Lebanese economy was teetering on the edge of a fullscale collapse and entering into a major war with Israel would probably result in the country falling off the cliff entirely into the abyss Hezbollah and Lebanon have each launched on over the past year as the Israeli Air

Force has relentlessly bombarded the Gaza Strip into a veritable pile of rubble while for several years now numerous Israeli military officials have warned that a fullscale war with Hezbollah would include the Israeli Air Force obliterating lebanon's civilian infrastructure as well in the hope of turning the Lebanese ation against Hezbollah such an action with lebanon's already precarious economic situation would be impossible for the struggling country to afford to rebuild on its own and would probably push the country over into the status of a failed State like neighboring Syria and as a major political party within Lebanon

that actively participates in the Lebanese government that's a situation that Hezbollah and the Lebanese people can ill afford moreover hezbollah's top supporter for years has always been Iran who over the past 18 years since hezbollah's last war with Israel has provided billions of dollars worth of increasingly Advanced rockets and missiles to the group including many highly valuable Precision guided longrange missiles that Hezbollah has so far largely kept in reserve both the CIA and the center for strategic and International Studies have each variously estimated that immediately before the current conflict with Israel hezb was in possession

of an Arsenal that included around 150,000 rockets and missiles of various different types types mostly supplied to them by Iran which made Hezbollah the most heavily armed non-state actor in the world to the Iranians this arsenal of rockets and missiles provided to Hezbollah became one of their greatest ever insurance policies against a potential Israeli or American attack on their nuclear research facilities because if they were to do that Iran could always just give hezb the green light to unleash that Arsenal upon Israel's cities an enormous volume of fire that would stand to potentially overwhelm Israel's

air defenses and cause massive damage and Iran would be loath to lose this insurance policy because without it there wouldn't really be much else standing in the way of an Israeli or American attack on their nuclear research facilities which encourages the Iranians to pressure Hezbollah into at least an amount of restraint in their fight against Israel on top of hezbollah's own desire for restraint so as not to Plunge Lebanon into an irreversible collapse scenario and these fears of escalation also extend into the Israeli perspective as well ever since the last war between Israel and Hezbollah

concluded in 2006 both sides have spent the past 18 years methodically preparing themselves for the next war and Israel has long been aware that Hezbollah is a far far greater threat than Hamas has been in Gaza the center for strategic and International Studies estimated immediately before the current war that hesah had around 30,000 active duty armed Fighters and another 20,000 more in their reserves that could be wrapped rapidly called up in the event of an emergency which closely matches the cia's estimate of Hezbollah possessing around 50,000 armed members within its ranks as well which is

also roughly equivalent to the numbers of personnel within the Lebanese government's own military and in addition hea's massive arsenal of rockets and missiles that far exceeds anything the Lebanese government itself has the group has enormous amounts of machine guns RPGs Heavy Artillery pieces and even tanks it is more of a highly trained conventional military utilized by a state rather than a mere militia and thousands of its soldiers have extensive and recent combat experience from fighting in the Syrian Civil War on the side of the Bashar al-assad regime hezbollah's military Wing is so powerful and well-armed

that is most often considered to be even more powerful and capable than the Lebanese military itself is and unlike Hamas and Gaza that is completely encircled by the Israelis hezbollah's position in Lebanon can be much more easily resupplied directly from Iran in the event of a fullscale war through wellestablished land and air routes across friendly Allied territory in Iraq and Syria Israel has known for a long time that a fullscale war against Hezbollah would be a much more challenging and costly fight than its ongoing war against hamas's ban and the Damage that Hezbollah could potentially

inflict on Israel's own infrastructure in cities with all of its rockets and missiles could be catastrophic if all fired at once giving Israel a high incentive to to be cautious as well but some other Israeli incentives to be cautious have been steadily eroding with time the IDF now occupies large swamps of Gaza and hamas's Military capabilities while not completely destroyed have been severely degraded giving Israel the recent possibility of Greater flexibility to devote greater resources to other pressing fronts like Lebanon at the same time the Israeli military leadership and the country's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu

are increasingly eager to Gam in order to score a military victory that they can sell to the Israeli people it's no secret that the war in Gaza going on a full one year of length now has devolved into a costly and expensive Quagmire with Hamas still unwilling to accept final defeat and with around a 100 Israeli hostages still being held by them netanyahu's promise of ultimate victory over Hamas one year in has still proven elusive while his popularity continues to waver Netanyahu himself ALS still faces numerous domestic threats within Israel to his continued political leadership

including multiple ongoing corruption trials demands from many Ultra Orthodox members of his own coalition government to revoke a new controversial military draft law that requires Ultra Orthodox Israeli Jews to serve in the military in addition to a looming government inquiry that will eventually call him to answer and testify for how hamas's October 7th attack was able to break through Israeli security some analysts have even speculated that the moment the current War is Over netanyahu's long political career in Israel will likely end alongside it with a poll conducted by Israel's Channel 12 News as recently as

August of 2024 the showed a whopping 69% of Israelis believe Netanyahu should resign from his office and not seek reelection from netanyahu's own personal perspective then the longer he can continue the state of War towards some kind of Victory the better his personal political prospects could become in the future since they're already basically hopeless in short he doesn't really have anything left to lose personally by gambling and continuing or escalating the current War towards an outcome that might look better for him in the end so for both him and the Israeli military who have each

failed to destroy Hamas and fail to free all of the hostages in Gaza after a year of fullscale War there delivering a different Victory on another front in Lebanon against Hezbollah is a gamble they suddenly appeared willing to roll the iron dice for in September but the gamble rests on their assumption that Hezbollah badly humbled by Israel's weak of heavy attacks will simply cave into the pressure and do what they want indeed Hezbollah now has significantly less ability to respond to Israeli escalation than they did before the pager radio attacks and all of the air

strikes that followed it for three key reasons with their Communications Network destroyed and compromised they will struggle to coordinate any kind of effective military response with so many of their top leadership killed or severely injured over the past few weeks of attacks including their longtime top leader their leadership structure is likely crippled and paralyzed on top of their Battlefield Communications being crippled while their third issue is that they still haven't really figured out exactly how deep Israeli intelligence has managed to infiltrate them hezb will need to spend a great deal of time reorganizing itself and

finding new leadership inspecting the remaining equipment for potential Israeli sabotage and rooting out any spies within their ranks not to mention replacing the likely thousands of rockets they've lost to all of the recent Israeli air strikes as well Hezbollah is now in the weakest possible position they've ever been in probably their entire history to adequately confront Israel and Israel knows it and will continue trying to mount pressure in the hope that Hezbollah eventually cracks and agree to withdraw away from the border in a separate ceasefire from Gaza without a fullscale war explo floting but this

is probably unlikely to happen because there are many many diplomatic hurdles standing in the way of that from actually taking place hezbollah's entire identity and the whole reason why it was founded in the first place back in the 1980s was to militantly resist Israel's presence in Lebanon after Israel invaded the country the first time in 1982 in the middle of the devastating Lebanese Civil War in order to try and root out Palestinian militants from the country who had established themselves in Beirut and launched multiple raids across the border into Israeli Territory between 1983 and 1985

the Israelis began withdrawing from most of Lebanon but they retained their control over a strip of land in the south of the country that they simply referred to as the security Zone a militarily occupied buffer zone within Lebanon that the Israeli military for years argued was necessary to protect Israeli citizens from further raids by terrorist organizations based in Lebanon the security Zone comprised about 10% of lebanon's total territory and about 6% of lebanon's total population or around 180,000 people and the Israelis continued occupying the area even after the chaotic Lebanese Civil War ended in 1990

they remained in place in the security Zone in southern Lebanon for another decade until the year 2000 when Israeli forces finally withdrew from the security Zone back to Israel after it was determined that it was costing too many Israeli soldiers lives to maintain and wasn't making Israel any safer Hezbollah was born as a Shiite militia organization out of Southern and Eastern lebanon's own Shia Muslim communities during this time period in the 1980s to resist Israel's continued occupation of Southern Lebanon and after the Lebanese Civil War concluded in 1990 all of the country's various militia organizations

that have been bloodily fighting against one another for the past decade and a half all agreed to disarm themselves and disband all of them except for Hezbollah that is is who managed to carve out an exception for themselves based on the argument that they needed to continue existing in order to liberate Southern Lebanon from the Israelis which remained under occupation well their argument was made all the more convincing by the fact that they were heavily supported by the Iranians and supplied with massive volumes of weapons by them that left Hezbollah in a unique position that

was unchallengeable by the secular Lebanese military without causing additional massive Bloodshed and a continu ation of the Civil War Iran then continued to carefully nurture hezbollah's position in Lebanon with advisers and billions of dollars worth of weapons over the years that passed and after Israel managed to assassinate hezbollah's old leader back in 1992 they merely paved the way within the organization for the rise of Hassan Nala instead who showed back then that Israel's use of force and assassinations would not destroy Hezbollah as an organization nor compel it to moderate its stance on militant confrontation with

Israel a lesson that likely remains true still today even after Israel's final assassination of nestala 2 it was under nesta's long leadership that Hezbollah shipped it away from a shadowy organization that engaged in tactics like suicide bombings and hostage taking and towards a new focus on Guerilla Warfare and a professional military Wing aimed primarily at Israeli military targets like the security Zone that Israel continued to occupy across Southern Lebanon throughout the 1890s after continuous Relentless attacks on the security Zone nras Hezbollah managed to convince the Israelis that it was no longer worth maintaining by the

year 2000 when the Israelis finally decided on an organized withdrawal from it and afterwards Hezbollah began basing their argument for continuing to exist in Lebanon on the supposed need to continue defending Southern Lebanon from another Israeli invasion in the future and to liberate a small area of land here known as the Sheba Farm that Hezbollah and Lebanon each claim is rightfully Lebanese now the overall history of the Sheba Farms is incredibly complicated and outside the scope of this video but for the sake of brevity Israel came to occupy the territory as a part of the

Golan Heights They seized from Syria in The Six Day War of 1967 the Lebanese government however has claimed the small Sheba Farms area as a part of their own territory ever since then based on historical records while Syria has since agreed with lebanon's claim to the Sha Farms while they continue claiming the rest of the Golan Heights for themselves while Israel counter claims that the Sheba Farms territory originally belonged to Syria but has since been annexed into Israel since 1981 along with the rest of the Golan Heights now because of lebanon's continued claim to the

Sheba farms and Israel's continued control of the territory following their withdrawal from the security Zone in southern Lebanon after 2000 Hezbollah has argued ever since that Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon has never been completed since they remained present in the Shea farms and it's been entirely on this rather flimsy premise that Hezbollah has based its entire legal argument for continuing to exist as an armed militia within Lebanon on for the past 24 years the argument that enables Hezbollah to essentially function as a separate Iranian back state within Lebanon complete with its own separate foreign and defense

policies its own separate better armed and more powerful Army and most importantly the capability to throw the entire country into a war with Israel if they decide so without the need to consult any of the rest of Lebanon because of that argument to continue existing within the context of Lebanon Hezbollah cannot ever just easily consider withdrawing away from the border with Israel because to do so would cast their entire argument to keep existing in Lebanon into Jeopardy how could hezel truthfully argue that they needed to continue existing in Lebanon and defending the Border against Israel

if they were located far away from the Sheba Farms of the Border if they did so somebody within Lebanon would eventually make the case that Hezbollah should finally abide by the treaty that ended the Lebanese Civil War in 1990 and disarm and disband itself like every other Lebanese militia group besides them already did a long time ago and so Hezbollah has every incentive to strongly resist pulling away from the border with Israel even when international law compels it to do so as has been the case ever since 2006 the last time that Israel and Hezbollah

went to war with each other was for 34 days of Highly attritional combat back in 2006 after a Hezbollah raid on the border killed three Israeli soldiers and took two more as prisoners of war that ended in an inconclusive stalemate for both sides after Israel reinvaded Southern Lebanon with a ground Invasion again that war concluded with the United Nations security Council resolution 17 01 which called for an immediate end in hostilities between both sides the withdrawal of all Israeli troops from Lebanese territory the withdrawal of hezbollah's armed forces to the north of the Lani River

within Lebanon roughly 30 km away from the southern border and the deployment of the Lebanese Army and UN peacekeeping forces to the south of Lebanon between the border with Israel and the Laton River to keep the Israelis and Hezbollah away from each other and to maintain the peace however While most SS honored the terms of resol ution 1701 hdah in the end never lived up to their end of the treaty and never actually withdrew their forces to the north of the Lani River instead over the past 18 years since then they dug numerous tunnels from

South Lebanon into Northern Israel beneath the Border massively rearmed and reorganized themselves with billions of dollars worth of support from Iran and dug themselves in across the area south of the Lani River directly on Israel's Border in open violation of the un's resolution 1701 with Iran's extremely heavy external support Hezbollah continued to remain more powerful than both Lebanese Army itself and the UN peacekeeping force that was deployed to Lebanon which left them both effectively powerless to actually compel hollah to abide by the resolution and withdraw away from the border while resolution 1701 itself contained no

punitive measures to actually punish Hezbollah for not really abiding by it the only way that the Lebanese Army or when peacekeepers in the country could make Hezbollah withdraw north of the Lani River was by attacking them with Force which would probably have reignited the vicious Lebanese Civil War of the 1970s and 80s so for nearly two decades ever since both the UN and the Lebanese government have each been effectively powerless to ever do anything about hezbollah's continued and building presence on Israel's border and now we arrive at why a diplomatic solution between Israel and Hezbollah

in the current escal conflict is going to be extremely difficult if not even impossible to arrive at and why the probable failure of diplomacy will most likely lead to another catastrophic War hezbollah's leadership has sworn over and over again that they will not stop firing rockets and missiles into Israel or consider withdrawing away from the border until the war in Gaza is concluded and Israeli forces withdraw from the territory which means that Israel's only option for diplomacy with Hezbollah is linked to concluding the war war in Gaza which doesn't seem likely anytime soon so without

ending the war in Gaza Israel has decided to increase their military escalation against Hezbollah by hitting them much more aggressively in the hope of compelling them to quietly withdraw away from the border and abide by the terms of the un's resolution 1701 rather than choosing to escalate things any further but if Israel escalates the situation too far such as by blowing up hezbollah's Central headquarters in Beirut killing their top leadership and by going after their preciously valuable long range missiles a vengeful and Furious Hezbollah maybe pushed too far into a corner and decide that it

would be better to use up all of their remaining missiles in a show of strength rather than lose them which could ultimately spark the much feared allout war between them and Hezbollah is very unlikely to just agree on withdrawing their forces and Equipment away from the border and north of the Laton River like UN resolution 1701 demands they do because to do so would undermine their argument for continuing to exist within Lebanon Hezbollah could in theory always agree to withdraw away from the border and keep the remaining weapons and just refuse to disarm but then

if the calls within Lebanon eventually grew loud enough for them to disarm Hezbollah now in a severely weakened and humiliated state may get itself into a situation where it would be forced to turn their weapons against their fellow Lebanese citizen cens in order to continue existing in the country which would essentially reveal Hezbollah as more of an Iranian asset than a true protector of Lebanon with lebanon's own best interests at heart and would probably reignite the Lebanese Civil War again in the process it is impossible for Hezbollah to really function outside of the context of

Lebanon and so Hezbollah needs to at least appear willing to cooperate with lebanon's political and legal systems in order to maintain its standing within the country's diverse highly sectarian demographics of Shia Muslims Sunni Muslims Christians and Drews and rather than face all of that as a possibility Hezbollah even after all of its recent massive setbacks may still decide on holding its positions on Israel's border as its new leadership decides on how and when to respond to the assassination of Assan Nala and on the other side Israel is no longer willing to tolerate hezbollah's long-term dugin

position immediately North of their borders in a post October 7th world and is no longer willing to tolerate the permanent displacement of tens of thousands of their citizens from the north and with no ceasefire anywhere on the horizon in Gaza and with neither Hezbollah nor Israel seemingly willing to make any compromises the direction seems increasingly inevitable towards fullscale war that will involve Israel eventually launching a ground Invasion into Southern Lebanon again to try and force Hezbollah away from the border at the point of a gun is Israel would then likely try and either set up

some kind of new security or buffer zone in southern Lebanon similar to the one they maintained in the country for years between 1985 and 2000 again or they would try and create a situation where they would destroy and dismantle hezbollah's remaining presence south of the Lani River and then withdraw handing over the area between the river and the border to the Lebanese Army in the UN in the aftermath like the un's resolution 1701 originally envisioned back in 2006 from Israel's perspective absent of diplomacy and absent of compelling Hezbollah to vacate the Border by limited escalation

a fullscale ground Invasion and reestablishment of some form of a security Zone in southern Lebanon may be their only way to create a situation that actually enables their tens of thousands of displaced residents to return back to their homes in the north again but a fullon ground Invasion into Southern Lebanon would carry with it enormous risks as well and it may actually be exactly what Hezbollah wants to happen yet another Israeli invasion of Southern Lebanon and potential long-term occupation of territory in Lebanon would fundamentally justify hezbollah's continued argument to exist within Lebanon and would probably

give the group significantly increased legitimacy in volunteers within the country something that Hezbollah would probably actually relish after suffering all of its humiliations and reputational damage recently not to mention how costly the ground Invasion would probably be both in terms of lives and legitimacy for Israel hzb would be fighting on its own turf that it knows very well and the land in southern Lebanon is very rugged and hilly and full of underground tunnels and builtup fortifications that Hezbollah has constructed over decades perfectly suiting Hezbollah to wage a tough Guerilla style war that could devolve into

a long and drawn out slugfest even with the loss of potentially as many as half of their arsenal of rockets and missiles to the Israelis over the past few weeks of attack and the assassinations of nearly all of their top leadership hezbollah's prized arsenal of strategic longrange missiles likely remains largely intact which could still potentially be used to cause massive damage to Israeli infrastructure and cities and if hezbollah's new leaders decide to unleash whatever of their Arsenal remains on Israeli cities the attack could be devastating enough to trigger the looming Israeli groud Invasion or The

Invasion could be launched a preemptively stop it at the same time the sight of Israeli Jets pulverizing Hezbollah positions in Lebanese cities and infrastructure would mirror the Carnage that Israel has already inflicted upon Gaza over the past year which will probably negatively impact Israel's International perception more than it already has been and will likely contribute even more to Israel's International isolation that has been growing since the War Began implying that even a tactical Israeli success in southern Lebanon could ultimately still proved to be a strategic failure in the long run moreover Israel would struggle to

stop hezbollah's Logistics and resupply lines that connect directly to Iran over land and through airspace across Syria and Iraq and there's never any guarantee that a ground Invasion and occupation into Southern Lebanon wouldn't just morph into another long grinding military Quagmire like Gaza has turned into and even further would iron's leaders truly just sit back and watch on as their most valuable proxy force in the region gets itself destroyed and pushed out of Lebanon if Hezbollah gets practically dismantled or defamed by the Israelis then Iran loses its most valuable insurance policy against the Israelis or

Americans attacking their nuclear research facilities which means that Iran would be incentivised to heavily intervene if it looked like Hezbollah was on the brink of collapse or if the Iranians feared intervening too heavily with all of the American forces around them and the concerns about their own infiltration by Israeli intelligence you're also could end up deciding to rush through the development of a nuclear weapon as quickly as possible in order to restore their deterrence and insurance policy before their research sites could be destroyed of course such a decision would be like a catch22 situation for

them Iran has always relied on hezbollah's conventional deterrence to protect their nuclear research sites from attack and so if the Iranians decided to Sprint towards a nuclear bomb due to losing Hezbollah their nuclear research sites would be open to a window of attack attack which would almost certainly provoke Israeli and American air strikes on them anyway which is why Iran is treading very carefully here and calculating on what kind of a response to actually commit to no matter what decision Iran or Hezbollah take it is going to have bad consequences for them they either look

extremely weak and incompetent if they do nothing or they face unpredictable and dangerous escalation that could result in even more damage for them by responding the entire border between Israel and Lebanon exist on the edge of a knife right now and the ultimate spark that could tip the delicate balance here into a horrendous regional conflict even worse than what we've seen so far in Gaza could happen at nearly any time and it's probably coming sooner than later watch out for this area of the world and continue paying very close attention to it now there's a

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