An Israeli operation against Hezbollah that finishes what it had begun in the 2024 war is only a matter of time. The ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah on 27 November 2024 was not a truce that ended a round of escalation between the two sides. It was a turning point that effectively paralyzed Hezbollah. The group suffered heavy human and structural losses: its leadership was smashed, two of its secretary generals were killed, its missiles and equipment were damaged, and, most importantly, its self-image and reassurance regarding its secrecy were undermined by Israel’s extensive intelligence breaches.
The ceasefire froze hostilities on only one side. Attacks stopped being waged from Lebanon, while Israel continued its near-daily strikes on Hezbollah targets, leaders, positions, and logistical structures, with the latter having completely avoided retaliation. For its part, the Lebanese state failed to render the “post-war equation” into a binding public policy that ends the perverse presence of a militia over its territory.
Hezbollah fills that vacuum with symbolic maneuvers that compensate, to some degree, for its bleeding. After losing its deterrence and its combat capabilities, these gestures aim to rebuild its narrative at costs it can handle, unlike the price that returning to the field, or reestablishing security and military control would entail. The party’s theatrics began with its Shiite ministers walking out of a cabinet session to discuss the army’s plan to restrict armament in the country. In doing so, the party deprived the plan of the political consensus umbrella needed to be more than a political manifesto, rendering implementation untenable in terms of the sectarian balance.
These displays will not end with dyeing the prime minister’s decision to prohibit Hezbollah from using landmarks as sights for political mobilization, by projecting an image of the party’s two assassinated general secretaries on the Raouche Rock monument.
Aware that Hezbollah stands on shaky political ground, Israel is preparing to deliver a decisive strike to reshape the operational environment in southern Lebanon, the Bekaa, and Baalbek. Its campaign will not merely push Hezbollah away from the border; it will also finish the job that it had begun in last year’s war. This resumption of the conflict will entail massive aerial strikes on logistical and leadership nodes and swift ground operations across Lebanon. There is no reason to believe that Lebanese infrastructure would be spared, raising the cost of recovery to levels Lebanon cannot bear.
Indeed, Israel is relatively confident that there will be no regional expansion of the war, with other Iranian proxies joining the conflict, in light of the blows Iran sustained during the 12-day war.
The next war, whatever rules may govern it, will strike what remains of Lebanon’s fragile infrastructure: electricity, telecommunications, and public services. That means chain imports disruptions, sharp increases in the price of commodities, and further deterioration of services already in decay. As for the banking sector, still confined to the intensive-care ward, it will be incapable of absorbing the shocks of war, while mass displacement will fuel civil strife, given the climate fostered by Hezbollah’s recent shows of force.
For its part, Washington is evidently losing patience. The statements of US envoy Tom Barrack. sent a direct message to Beirut: adopt disarmament as an explicit goal in a government-approved plan with a clear timeline and an independent, rigorous monitoring mechanism to assess progress, or Israel will act unilaterally.
The most concrete indication of its uncompromising stance is the final deadline it has set for UNIFIL’s mandate in southern Lebanon, which signaled that the administration is seeking a definitive resolution to the Israeli-Lebanese conflict. In Washington’s eyes, there is no rationale for this conflict beyond the residues of the Iranian project.
The shifting US position coincides with other considerations raised by the Midterm elections. Trump is pushing to end the Gaza war and remove this question from the electoral arena, a move that could raise Netanyahu’s appetite to open the southern Lebanon front sooner than many expect.
Hezbollah’s options seem bleak. Negotiations over a political settlement that would increase its share of power are not on the table. It is being offered equality in size with the other factions and sects, no more and no less, as per the 1989 Taif Accord. Indeed, the party is not fighting for domestic political gains but a regional ideological project.
As for its insistence on retaining its arms, whether in whole or in part- as it is currently doing- that is the quickest recipe for either an Israeli war or domestic strife. Either scenario would ultimately lead to the same outcome as surrendering its weapons, which no longer have a future, through a peaceful settlement. Hezbollah’s own base, like the Lebanese public at large, is in dire need of political options that open the door to rebuilding the devastated regions and facilities of the country. Getting there necessarily demands closing the chapter on its arms, once and for all.
