On October 8, 2023, the first rockets were launched Hezbollah towards IsraelIn the context of what the party called the “battle of support” for the Gaza front, where the war broke out on the morning of October 7, 2023.
However, the support front, which entered the war within a cautious and cautious scope and according to a controlled escalation by both sides, turned after a full year into an almost open confrontation on land and in the air, and the war in it is still pending, searching for a political horizon that does not seem close.
The residents of northern Israel have not yet regained their confidence in the ability of the occupying army to provide security, and they have not been able to return to their settlements. In a recent opinion poll conducted by the Israeli “Magar Mohot” Institute, 70% of those evacuated from settlements in the north expressed their unwillingness to return to their homes, even if the war stopped now.
Israel entered the war with Hezbollah with a high ceiling of statements, amounting to destroying the party’s military capabilities and imposing a depopulated zone north of the Israeli border. The goals gradually declined until the Chief of Staff declared Herzi Halevy A week ago, the assassination of the party’s senior leaders was considered sufficient to stop the war.
What did Israel lose as a result of the war on the Lebanon front that might actually push it to this relative decline?
Strategically: a major loss
Within a year of war, the region was transformed Galilee -Northern Israel – of strategic and security importance has become a threatened and weak security area, while for nearly two decades it has enjoyed security stability compared to the Gaza envelope area to the south.
The Galilee is characterized by being a region of highlands and high mountains that give an advantage in field and tactical control, and allows the establishment of military bases and secure communications and surveillance centers on the peaks of the highlands. It also represents a special importance for the Zionist heritage and Israeli national consciousness, and its settlements have a special symbolic place in the journey of establishing Israel, as they are the home of war veterans. and”Kibbutzim“(Settlement outposts) that used to receive the Jews of the Levant immigrating from Lebanon and Syria.
However, the Galilee has now become a security-exposed area that expels the population. The occupation government was forced to empty about 28 settlements of their residents, and all military and intelligence installations there were exposed to Hezbollah fire in a way that severely undermined its security reputation, such as targeting the main Israeli intelligence headquarters for the northern region in Safed, and targeting Headquarters Golani Brigade -The most important brigade of the Israeli elite operating in the north, known as Brigade No. 1 – in a very precise operation that targeted a gathering of soldiers while eating.
Related Post
It is noteworthy that the Golani Brigade belongs to the 36th Division, which leads the main effort axis of the ground operation in southern Lebanon from the town of Ramia to Aitaroun.
Moreover; The war on the Lebanon front, which continues for a long time without achieving its goals, contributes to deepening the rift caused by the Al-Aqsa flood in the Israeli combat doctrine.
Since its founding, Israel has avoided long wars and adopted the principle of “blitzkrieg wars” to achieve quick goals based on technical and intelligence superiority, which is now being subjected to fundamental questions about the extent of its feasibility.
The passive defense strategy, based on the triad of safe spaces, a high ability to intercept fire, and the settlers’ endurance, also failed. The three pillars were exposed to challenges that struck at their core.
Military: continuous bleeding
Within one month, since the start of the ground operation in southern Lebanon on September 30, 2024, Israel has lost about 95 soldiers killed in the theater of operations, more than 750 officers and soldiers were injured, and 38 tanks were damaged.”MerkavaFour high-tech Israeli drones were shot down Hermes 450 andHermes 900.
These numbers do not include losses on the home front as a result of the ongoing bombing operations, which are subject to military oversight and whose true numbers do not appear. This is in addition to the 12,000 soldiers who have been admitted to hospitals since the start of the war, of whom 1,500 were injured twice, according to data from the Rehabilitation Center.
Despite these losses, which are standard for what the Israeli army is accustomed to, it was unable to advance sufficiently on the border, nor was it able to control a single entire village. Whatever future results might place the occupation in a more advanced field situation, they will not eliminate The fact that the losses on this road were more than expected and greater than what Israel’s capabilities could bear in the long term.
Economically: another bleeding
The Israeli newspaper “Yedioth Ahronoth” said that the cost of expanding the war on the Lebanese front during the past months of September and October amounted to about 9 billion dollars, and that these major expenses will require reconsidering Israel’s budget again.
The northern region includes several economic and vital centers for Israel, especially the city of Haifa, which has become in the range of Hezbollah’s fire. Haifa represents a very important commercial and energy center of gravity for Israel, and bringing Haifa and its environs into the scope of military operations causes a loss of approximately $150 million per day, noting that the energy facilities, “ammonia” containers, and the sea dock in Haifa have not been included in the party’s goals bank to date.
A study by the Aharon Institute for Economic Policy also said that with the continuation of the current military scenario on the northern front, war expenses may increase by NIS 111 billion until the end of 2024, in addition to a deficit of 6.8%, so that the debt ratio will be about 71.6% at the end of 2024.
The losses of the tourism sector in the north have amounted to about 3.5 billion dollars so far, noting that the Galilee – especially the Upper Galilee – has great tourist importance, as it is visited annually by about 1.5 million tourists.
The evacuation of the 28 settlements in the north – as of last February – cost about 613 million dollars (at a cost equivalent to 163 thousand dollars per day), while about 1.7 billion dollars were allocated to continue financing the evacuation of the population until July 2024.
Israeli Channel 14 said that 6,000 requests were submitted for compensation for homes damaged by Hezbollah’s bombing of northern settlements at a rate of about 150 missiles per day, noting that the compensation requests cost the state treasury about 4 billion dollars. The Bank of Israel estimated that the absence of 57,600 people from the workforce in the northern settlements costs the Israeli economy about $63.2 million per week.
The Galilee has become an area exposed to security and agricultural expulsion of the population (Al-Jazeera). The Galilee region suffered heavy losses, as Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper said that fear of Hezbollah fire is disrupting the ability of northern farmers to reach their orchards, and the resulting damage amounted to about 500 million dollars.
While agricultural crops worth 20 million shekels ($5.4 million) were still on trees in the Upper Galilee, they were completely damaged due to a labor shortage that reached about 90%. The poultry industry was also damaged, and 24 large animal pastures were closed for security reasons.
The damage to the agricultural sector in particular is not only counted in the financial balance, but there are deeper dimensions represented by the damage to the farmer’s relationship with the land and his connection to it, as the farmers of the north in particular are seen in Israel as an example in the national consciousness, and that they played a tremendous role in protecting the state’s borders and enabling settlement. .
Also, the solidarity nature of the residents of the kibbutz and the agricultural settlements makes any losses to an orchard or farm a collective loss borne by the entire population. Therefore, the accumulated economic losses may, over a long period of time, lead to difficulty in restoring the settlers’ connection to the land and bringing the Galilee settlements back together again.
In addition to this, there are economic burdens that these settlers bear after their transfer outside the north. Despite the government’s attempt to compensate them, there is greater damage than the government’s ability to compensate.
In a poll conducted by MindPool last September on 500 people evacuated from the north, 68% of them said that they had not received any employment assistance since the beginning of the war, and 32% reported that they do not currently find work and their professional skills are eroding, and 31% expressed About being psychologically prepared to work if it is available.
It seems that these profound losses, some of which will have a long-term impact, have left clear effects on the Israeli political perception regarding the goals that can be achieved on the northern front. After the Israeli rejection of any understandings based on the reference of Resolution 1701 and the talk about its unsuitability for implementation, things returned again to accepting the same resolution, which means Reducing expectations.
Despite the occupation’s intention to maintain a great deal of ambiguity about the objectives of the ground operation, a full month into a large operation led by five Israeli army divisions, the limited breakthroughs achieved so far do not seem to be equivalent to what was expected when the commander of the northern region, Uri Gordin, said: “We are determined to destroy all infrastructure, remove Hezbollah from here, and prevent them from launching any attack against us.”
Given the nature of the war and considering the difference in the balance of power, the losses are certainly not only on Israel’s side, as Hezbollah’s infrastructure has been severely damaged since the war entered the stage of widespread escalation starting on September 17 last year. Israel demonstrated high intelligence capabilities in Lebanon, compared to its counterpart in Gaza, and was able to direct powerful strikes at missile depots and launch pads.
Israel claims that it was able to destroy two-thirds of Hezbollah’s missile infrastructure, but this is likely a great exaggeration, but it certainly struck an influential part of its capabilities. All of this is in addition to the liquidation of the first-line leaders, and the attack on Hezbollah’s internal communication system in operations that showed a high probability of the existence of a penetration within the party or in its leadership environment working for the benefit of Israel.
Perhaps the most important and profound is the displacement of approximately 100,000 residents of the south, and it appears that the displacement operations are not random, but rather Israel mainly targets areas where the party’s popular incubator is gathered, which constitutes moral pressure on its fighters, as well as a demographic re-engineering of the Lebanese population that may affect the party’s social base. Sustainably if the security situation continues as it is for the long term.
On October 8, the current Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Naim Qassem, said, “War is the war of those who scream, and we will not scream, and you will hear the enemy’s screams.” But what is certain is that the war on the Lebanon front has not yet reached its end, and is not close. Among them, and as it is known that its losses in Lebanon are enormous, both civilly and militarily, its losses in Israel are also as well.
