Israel’s defense minister said in a statement this week that Israeli forces are working to implement the “Rafah and Beit Hanoun model” in southern Lebanon, sparking fears that Israel is planning to flatten entire towns in an attempt to defeat Hezbollah once and for all.
As Israel prepares its forces for a full-scale invasion, the intensity of this new approach is starting to come into focus, even as most of the world’s attention has focused on the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran. Israel’s war in Lebanon has already killed more than 1,000 people in a country of just 6 million. All indications point to a new and brutal type of war in Lebanon — one that could drag on even if the war in Iran comes to a close.
Ahead of a broader ground campaign, Israel has mandated that civilians leave large swathes of territory in southern Lebanon and some neighborhoods of Beirut, which has faced waves of airstrikes. Many civilians have heeded these calls, leaving nearly 20% of the population displaced. But, now that Israeli forces have destroyed all bridges across the Litani River, which separates southern Lebanon from the rest of the country, remaining residents will have little choice but to bunker down.
As with Hamas in Gaza, Israel’s strategy is unlikely to succeed in completely destroying Hezbollah, according to Middle East analysts. An extended occupation, as Israel is now threatening to pursue, could instead provide a lifeline to Hezbollah just as public opinion in Lebanon had begun to turn decisively against it. Such a result would represent a significant setback to U.S. and Israeli efforts to disarm the militant group.
If history is any guide, a sustained occupation may even push Hezbollah’s skeptics in Lebanon to join the resistance, according to Thanassis Cambanis of the Century Foundation, who has written extensively about Hezbollah and Lebanese politics.
“Israel and some of its supporters have forgotten that they don't have free rein to do whatever they want by force,” Cambanis said. “Countries can and do fight back.”
‘Burn the lawn’
Hezbollah was forged in the crucible of Israel’s first military campaigns in Lebanon. In 1982, as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) invaded Lebanon for the second time in four years, Shiite leaders in the country’s south formed militias that would eventually coalesce into the militia-cum-political party that has in many ways defined the course of Lebanese politics ever since.
Hezbollah has never commanded the support of most Lebanese people, but it has earned a sort of begrudging respect through its military successes. Most notable among these was the insurgent campaign that drove Israeli forces out of Lebanon in 2000, ending Israel’s two-decade-long campaign in the country.
The pause in hostilities didn’t last long. In 2006, Hezbollah launched raids against Israeli soldiers along Lebanon’s southern border in an attempt to force Israel into a prisoner exchange. Israel, determined to restore deterrence with its northern neighbor, invaded the country and debuted a new military doctrine that would later become known as the Dahiya doctrine.
The Dahiya doctrine relies on disproportionate force, including the destruction of civilian infrastructure, to deliver lasting setbacks to Hezbollah and incite Lebanese popular opinion against the group. In the 2006 war, this meant flattening large parts of the Dahiya neighborhood of Beirut, which is largely Shia. After Israel withdrew, both sides declared victory. Israeli deterrence held strong until after the Oct. 7 attacks, when Hezbollah launched rockets into northern Israel.
Israel pursued the Dahiya doctrine again in its 2024 invasion of Lebanon, destroying buildings and infrastructure across the country. Hezbollah and Israel reached an agreement to stop hostilities after about two months of war, but Israeli forces have maintained a steady campaign of air strikes ever since.
Now, following Hezbollah’s decision to fire rockets at Israel after it killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Israeli leaders appear determined to move up the escalation ladder and pursue a Gaza-like campaign in Lebanon. These attacks are “unlike anything we’ve seen before” in the country, according to Cambanis. “Instead of ‘mowing the lawn,’ they want to ‘burn the lawn.’” So far, this has meant going after targets like gas stations , bridges and civilian homes .
This strategy has drawn skepticism even from pro-Israel commentators. “Israel will raze all the homes along the borders to flatten areas, apparently in order to prevent threats,” wrote Seth Frantzman of the Jerusalem Post. “[I]t’s hard not to see this as punitive and collective punishment.” Israeli Maj. Gen. Yair Golan, who still serves in the IDF reserves, argued last week that a “deep military maneuver inside Lebanon, without a clear political objective, will drag Israel back into the Lebanese mud” without bringing “real security.”
This higher level of intensity, combined with the long occupation that Israel is now threatening, could “succeed for a time” in degrading Hezbollah, Cambanis said. But “it's guaranteed to more deeply destabilize not just Lebanon, but also Syria.”
Further complicating matters for Israel is the news that Hezbollah has reconfigured its forces for a sustained insurgency. According to Reuters, Iranian military officers have since 2024 helped the militant group redesign its command structure from a centralized force into a decentralized one made up of “small units with limited knowledge of each other's operations, helping to preserve operational secrecy.”
Blowback
The campaign comes as the Lebanese government has started to seriously crack down on Hezbollah, including by declaring the group’s armed wing to be illegal. But a long, brutal occupation could help the group rebuild its domestic legitimacy.
“A prolonged Israeli military presence will likely deepen instability and further weaken Lebanese state institutions,” wrote Nicole El Khawaja and Renad Mansour of Chatham House. “It will also create the conditions for Hezbollah to reconstitute its military capabilities and rebuild popular support.”
Further inflaming the situation are comments from Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who called this week for the annexation of southern Lebanon in order to create a new “buffer line.” Rights groups have also raised allegations of Israeli war crimes, with Human Rights Watch accusing the IDF of using white phosphorus bombs, which cause severe burns and emit toxic fumes, in civilian areas.
Hezbollah, for its part, has launched more than 3,500 rockets and munitions into Israel, forcing some Israelis to live in bomb shelters full-time. These attacks have killed multiple Israeli civilians; on Thursday alone, the group fired more than 100 rockets into Israel, killing one civilian and injuring an additional 13.
The Israeli campaign, meanwhile, has led to extensive civilian harm, including at least 15 attacks on paramedics and first responders, according to Emily Tripp of Airwars, which monitors civilians in conflicts. “In the last three weeks we have identified more than 330 incidents of civilian harm,” Tripp told RS. Prior to Israel’s 2024 campaign in Lebanon and its ongoing operations in Gaza, her organization had “never documented more than 250 civilian harm events in a single month,” she added.
The early days of this latest Lebanon campaign have drawn significant international blowback. Spanish President Pedro Sanchez slammed Israel for seeking to “inflict the same level of damage and destruction” in Lebanon as in Gaza, and U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said the “Gaza model must not be replicated in Lebanon.”
The United States, for its part, has said little about the war. In an ideal world, the U.S. would withdraw “any support for Israel's campaign in Lebanon” and force Israel into negotiations, Cambanis said. “In practice, we know that the U.S. has greenlit what Israel is doing in Lebanon.”