Mossad’s tricks can’t light path as splits around Netanyahu deepen

Israeli reserve combat troops take part in a training drill in the Golan Heights. Picture: Getty Images

Citizens of island nations, or those with only allies on their borders, can be taken aback by the closeness of the enemy when they get to climb the lookout posts of countries at war.

International journalists are among the few to have stood unimpeded on both sides, and it was on an Israeli concrete platform a few months ago that soldiers told me how ready they were to “finish what they had started” in the valley beneath. They were referring to previous attempts by Israel to invade Lebanon and “sort out the terrorist threat”.

Braggadocio is one thing, but it can in the right circumstances be taken seriously, and these were the right circumstances. Earlier, one of the soldiers’ senior officers told me that the Israel Defence Forces had completed their plans for an invasion of southern Lebanon and presented them to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. All that was needed was his war cabinet’s sign-off.

At the time of writing, that sign-off has not been given but it may not be far off. If you wanted to stage a full-scale attack on an enemy, then blowing up thousands of its operatives, including commanders, with exploding pagers and walkie-talkies might be a good opening salvo.

Israel wants to clear Hezbollah out of the southern stretch of Lebanon, an area it occupied between 1982 and 2000, to reduce the threat to the residents of northern Israel. Eighty thousand or so have been forced to flee their homes, both under a barrage of Hezbollah missiles since October 7 and in case an October 7-style attack be staged on their own villages.

That’s the proximity of the enemy again.

On the face of it, an invasion of Lebanon’s south should be a less painful task than the attempt to destroy Hamas as it hides in tunnels under Gaza. That has involved the destruction of the entire strip and the killing of thousands of Palestinian civilians, as well as the loss of hundreds of Israeli soldiers. Hezbollah has its tunnels too, but the landscape is more sparsely populated and much of the civilian population has already left for safer areas in northern Lebanon.

Israel would undoubtedly end up bombing Lebanese infrastructure and even residential suburbs of Beirut if a full-scale war did take place but its operations would not require what we have seen in Gaza, and the consequent worldwide obloquy. However, Israel has had a foretaste of such a plan’s difficulties, which have almost certainly been the reason no invasion has been mounted so far.

An Israeli firefighter takes cover as sirens sound to warn of rockets launched from southern Lebanon, in Kiryat Shmona in June. Picture: AFP

The assaults the boasting soldiers mentioned were not out-and-out successes for Israel. Its invasion of 1982 remains a textbook case of being careful what you wish for. The IDF achieved its aim of driving the Palestine Liberation Organisation out of Lebanon but its actions alienated allies, made eternal enemies even of factions within Lebanon’s civil war that might one day have made peace with Israel, and failed to deal anyway with the broader terrorist threat. The PLO was replaced by Hezbollah and a variety of even more radical factions. A second, more limited operation to take on Hezbollah in 2006 was in some ways worse, widely regarded even by its own officers as a poorly planned fiasco.

What might happen in the coming days, weeks or months therefore remains open to argument. Netanyahu is said to be reluctant to open a new front: he has, historically, been a risk-avoider. Defence Minister Yoav Gallant was, at least when I was there, said to be keener, but there was an interesting side note. After my report appeared, I was rung by an anguished army press officer who told me my interviewees had gone beyond their brief and played down war’s chances. That was then, and this is now, but it is clear that divisions run deep on Israel’s broader strategy, within both the political and military ­establishments.

A member of Israeli security forces inspects remnants of rockets launched from southern Lebanon which fell in Kiryat Shmona, Picture: AFP

That is something worth bearing in mind as we either admire or abhor Mossad’s exploding pagers, or perhaps both. The most coherent explanation for this operation’s timing was that it was hoped to be an alternative to an invasion rather than a precursor. Since Hezbollah cannot really be destroyed, based as it is in Lebanon’s broader Shia community and backed by Iran, better to set back its plans and hope for some later deal over the border areas than risk the tank traps that would await an Israeli incursion.

It’s a nice idea, but clarity and certainty are better ones. Israeli intelligence has had huge triumphs recently, knocking out Hezbollah’s military commander, Fuad Shukr, in Beirut; Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran; and before them Iran’s nuclear chief, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, in 2020. But these are salves not solutions. Such men are replaceable.

Meanwhile, Israel is locked in a conflict in Gaza that it seems ­unable to end. It has no means of reconciling itself with some neighbours, particularly Lebanon and Syria, while others like Jordan, erstwhile partners, are furious with it. Iran’s nuclear program continues. Netanyahu’s divided cabinet and divided army flounder on but with little conviction, the man himself loathed by most of those who work with him. Many Israelis wonder where their nation is heading and Mossad’s box of tricks cannot show them the answer.

The Times