KIRYAT SHMONA, Israel — As the U.S. and its allies struggle to impose a cease-fire in Gaza, Israel has another potential hot war brewing on its north.
Despite the drain of troops and resources in the fight against Hamas, Israeli Defense Forces officials say they’re ready to open a second front against Lebanon’s Hezbollah if ordered by the government.
“We are approaching the point where a decision will have to be made, and the IDF is prepared and very ready for this decision,” IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi said on a recent visit to northern Israel, where he met with military commanders and the regional fire brigades that have been fighting the fires caused by Hezbollah. “We have been striking here for eight months and Hezbollah is paying a very, very high price.”
“Hezbollah has increased its attacks in recent days,” he noted.
The government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under increasing pressure to act against Hezbollah’s escalating attacks along Israel’s northern border. On June 5, an Israeli soldier was killed and another ten wounded in a Hezbollah drone attack on a field near the northern Israeli town of Hurfeish.
The attack came after the Iran-backed Shiite militant movement also attacked an IDF base near the city of Kiryat Shmona on June 1 and in the wake of Hezbollah rocket fire causing large fires to break out across the border on June 3.
Hezbollah, which has kept up a steady exchange of missile barrages with Israel since the Hamas rampage on Oct. 7 ignited yet another Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is increasingly using precision drones to strike locations in northern Israel, forcing tens of thousands of Israeli residents to abandon their homes to escape the line of fire. It has also expanded its drone attacks to target Israeli cities on the coast, such as Nahariya.
And the tempo of attack is only increasing: A recent study by the Alma Research and Education Center, which covers threats to northern Israel, concluded that Hezbollah had launched twice as many drone and anti-tank missile attacks in May as it had in the previous month.
“There were 85 [drone] infiltration incidents in May 2024, up from 42 in April 2024,” the report concluded. June has started with another wave of attacks and the expectation is that the northern front for Israel will grow even hotter as weeks go by.
The Biden administration, which has been anxious to prevent the Hamas conflict from igniting a more general regional war, has consistently urged restraint on the Netanyahu government in the clash with Hezbollah.
On June 4, Mr. Netanyahu himself visited northern Israel to see the damage caused by the attacks, followed two days later by Yossi Shelley, the director of his prime ministerial office. The Israeli government is investing almost a billion dollars on “Northern Dawn,” a development that is supposed to rehabilitate the area.
“Whoever thinks that they can harm us and we will sit idly by is making a big mistake,” Mr. Netanyahu told reporters during his visit, according to the Reuters news service. “We are prepared for a very strong action in the north. In one way or another we will restore security to the north.”
That same day, however, Mr. Netanyahu convened an emergency meeting of his War Cabinet to consider options to stop the steady drumbeat of Hezbollah rocket attacks and to push Hezbollah fighters farther away from the border. The threat, Mr. Netanyahu and his advisers concluded, was real, but the time was not right.
“The risks to Israel inherent in a determined assault against Hezbollah — which has been heavily armed by Iran with 150,000 precision-guided rockets and missiles, as well as sophisticated drones and anti-tank weaponry — prompted the Israeli war cabinet to defer a decision on escalation against the militant group,” the New York-based Soufan Center, a think tank, wrote in a June 10 briefing paper. “Other IDF sources indicated that, since October 7, the IDF’s directive from political leaders has been to focus on defeating Hamas in Gaza and avoiding war in Lebanon, adding that changing this policy could have ’far-reaching consequences.’”
But Israel’s military is pushing the envelope even if an all-out shooting war has not broken out: Israeli fighter jets this week struck a major Hezbollah logistics compound deep inside Lebanon after the Lebanese group downed an Israeli drone. The attack is believed to be the deepest IDF strike inside Lebanon so far, more than 80 miles from the Israeli border.
Evacuated
About 80,000 Israelis were evacuated from northern Israel in October 2023 when the Hezbollah attacks began, and around 1,000 buildings have been damaged in Israeli communities near the Lebanese border. On a recent visit to Kiryat Shmona, the damage is visible from the street, with some apartment blocks pockmarked with holes from shrapnel. Burned cars in one area show precisely where a Hezbollah rocket struck.
Mr. Shelley said the government is providing support for the north.
Mr. Netanyahu’s government “is committed to the comprehensive implementation of [Northern Dawn] to rebuild and develop the communities in these complicated times. The decision that was made strengthens the northern communities in the immediate term and is indicative of growth engines for the region,” he said on June 6.
Many communities along the border of northern Israel are off limits to visitors these days because it is too dangerous. New roads have even been cut through forests by IDF engineers using earth-moving equipment, so that soldiers and civilians can access area roads out of the line of fire from Hezbollah.
In addition, IDF soldiers on the front line have learned how to contend with the enemy’s increasingly sophisticated arsenal. The militants have employed new drones that make a distinctive sound like a “flying lawnmower,” Israeli soldiers report. In addition, the Iranian-backed terrorists use anti-tank missiles and rockets.
Hezbollah attacks are often intercepted by Israel’s air defense systems, such as the Iron Dome system. However, on June 4 Hezbollah claimed to target one of the Iron Dome missile launchers, a significant escalation by Hezbollah to try to strike at Israel’s defenses. Hezbollah also targeted a large surveillance balloon in May and claimed to have shot down four sophisticated Israeli drones over the past several months.
Kiryat Shmona itself appears nearly deserted. Some soldiers and first responders cluster around the main street of a city that once had 20,000 residents. Only a few small shops are open. Otherwise the place is a ghost town.
Playgrounds for children sit empty, the swings at rest. Ironically, the sound of singing birds can be heard distinctly — all the cars have disappeared from the streets.
South of Kiryat Shmona in the Huleh valley, the situation is the same for several miles.
Most of the communities are deserted. Gas stations, among the few commercial establishments that are still open, have become the new gathering places for people. The coffee shops serve the thousands of soldiers stationed in the area, mostly reservist soldiers in their thirties who are sometimes getting coffee on their way to or from their units.
Many of these men have been on the front line, either here or in Gaza, since Oct. 7. They usually were given several weeks off and then called up again. Today they are on the defensive, but many say the time to switch to the offensive against Hezbollah is coming closer by the day.
• Seth J. Frantzman can be reached at srantzman@washingtontimes.com.