Hezbollah’s Sustained Counterattack

After the ten days of major blows against its leadership and its administrative structure by Israel, Hezbollah has recovered and returned more fiercely both on the land front of South Lebanon and its artillery capacity based on rockets and missiles, ballistic, hypersonic, hit northern and central Israel.

It took Hezbollah a critical week to regroup, during which it scaled back its attacks on Israel, maintained radio silence, and activated autonomous groups in southern Lebanon to absorb the security shocks temporarily left by the loss of Nasrallah, Saffieddin and of the rest of the leadership structure of the organization while at the same time accepting the stormy Israeli bombardments in Beirut and further south.

After the loss of Nasrallah some in the West rushed to “write off” Hezbollah. But they were disproved by the developments.

The organization quickly and methodically replaced its slain leading members and kept its morale, arsenal and firepower intact. In no time it returned to the operational level it was at in the year-long war and its readiness is currently shown by the successful repulsion of repeated Israeli ground invasion attempts in southern Lebanon.

In nearly a month of ground operations, Hezbollah has pinned down Israeli forces at their original starting point along the entire length of the border from the east to the center-west. The Israelis have penetrated to a depth of at most one kilometer without a bridgehead and the ability to move significantly deeper, as Hezbollah has mined the passages, set up ambushes and has agile motorized units that spring from tunnels in the semi-mountainous terrain of the area.

The fighting so far between the Hezbollah army and Israel has resulted in at least ninety Israelis dead and seven hundred wounded, as well as the destruction of more than thirty Merkava tanks and an unknown number of light vehicles.

But mostly it is the entrenchment of Israeli forces on the border for a prolonged period that lowers their morale and prompts Tel Aviv to consider completing the operation in a week to prevent a possible collapse of the Israeli lines as a result of their prolonged entrenchment.

Given the above developments, it would not be surprising if Hezbollah attempts, even in the short term, a counterattack with the aim of retreating the Israeli forces and penetrating the southern border. Such a counter-attack is in the intentions of Hezbollah, which has the operational capability to penetrate the Israeli positions above ground and perhaps underground. It is possible that Hezbollah’s warning to the Israeli residents of the border to evacuate the wider area is part of this rationale. A Hezbollah penetration south of the border would change the current situation on the Northern Front with strategic ramifications for ending the war on the Southern Front of the Gaza Strip.