What Will Keep the Peace Between Israel and Hezbollah?

Seth Mandel argues that any ceasefire or truce treaty with Hezbollah that requires the IDF to withdraw from south Lebanon will be a snare and a delusion. The only way to restore and then keep the peace in Israel’s north, he says, is through deterrence. Israel has now shown that it can wreak terrible damage on Hamas. It has now hit the “head of the octopus” by directly attacking Iran, destroying Iran’s air defenses and its ballistic missile factories. This leaves Iran wide open, literally defenseless, should Israel decide to launch a second strike on the targets it refrained from attacking on October 26, to accommodate an American request  — that is, Iran’s oil and nuclear installations. A weakened Iran will no longer be able to supply Hezbollah with weapons, because Israel has been bombing sites in Syria where those weapons were in transit. Hezbollah is on its own. And the IDF continues to pound Hezbollah fighters, assassinate its leaders and commanders, locate and blow up its weapons hideouts, destroy its tunnels, on the Blue Line, in southern Beirut, and in the Bekaa Valley. No wonder the new leader of Hezbollah, Naim Qassem, has said he would be amenable to a “ceasefire.”

“Deterrence Is All That Matters,” by Seth Mandel, Commentary, October 30, 2024:

…If—and it’s still a big if—the Lebanon-Israel border can be pacified, it will be for one reason and one reason only: deterrence.

The structure of the status quo in Israel’s north favors Hezbollah and Iran; the balance of military power favors Israel. Every so often, Israel is forced to use that military advantage because the UN and the international community allow Iran and Hezbollah to stay in position to start wars. The aim of all sides is to end those wars before they expand beyond south Lebanon—in other words, before Iran and Israel come into direct conflict.

Well, we’ve passed that particular line. And rather than drag the world into a great global conflagration, the ensuing skirmishes revealed the fact that Iran is wildly overmatched.

But deterrence isn’t only about getting in the enemy’s head. Israel destroyed all of the air-defense systems provided to Iran by Russia. IDF jets also crippled Tehran’s ballistic-missile development and reportedly some drone launch sites.

That means Iran cannot keep up this tit-for-tat even if it wanted to. Israel, however, could do this every day of the week and twice on Sunday, if it needed to.

Hezbollah is depleted and demoralized, and Iran is licking its own wounds. That’s why Amos Hochstein can ask everyone to go back to their corners.

The word for this is deterrence. It’s possible that Iran will still come out of its corner swinging despite its glass jaw and blurred vision. But the result of the recent conflict is that Iran’s next attacks would be necessarily weaker than the previous round, and Israel’s responses would be stronger.

No, UNIFIL isn’t going to disarm Hezbollah. Its peacekeeping forces aren’t capable of keeping the peace, and they are unlikely even to try. Hezbollah cannot be trusted to keep its end of an agreement. Iran does not seek peace and coexistence. US and European mediators are window dressing.

Israel’s display of force is the one and only factor. If there is quiet in the north, it’ll be because Israel reestablished deterrence, and anyone who thinks otherwise is living in a fantasy.

Pacta sunt servanda — “Treaties are to be observed” — is a principle of Western jurisprudence. In Islamic jurisprudence, peace treaties with Infidels may be observed but only until the Muslim side believes it is stronger, in which case It is right and proper that it ignore the treaty and attack the Infidels. The template and model for this view is the Treaty of Al-Hudaibiyya, that Muhammad made with the Meccans in 628 A.D. That treaty was supposed to last for ten years. Instead, having realized that his forces had become stronger than those of the Meccans, after 18 months Muhammad ignored the treaty and attacked the Meccans. And all subsequent treaty-making by Muslims with Infidels follows the example of Muhammad when he breached the Treaty of Al-Hudaibiyya.

Israel can’t rely on Hezbollah’s assurances that this time it really will adhere to UN Resolution 1701 and pull back north of the Litani River. It might do so now, temporarily, just to get the IDF to pull out of southern Lebanon, where it has been conducting a brilliantly successful campaign of killing Hezbollah leaders, including both Hassan Nasrallah and his heir apparent, Hashem Safieddine, ten of the twelve members of Hezbollah’s Jihad Council, and dozens of its commanders, including both the commander and the deputy commander of the elite Radwan Forces. In addition, using everything from airstrikes to artillery shells to exploding pagers to snipers, the IDF has killed about 2,600 Hezbollah members.

Nor can it count on UNIFIL, whose troops have been complete failures over the past two decades, when they were unable to force Hezbollah from the area between the Litani River and the Blue Line (the name given to the border between Israel and Lebanon). And the testimony of a former Danish member of UNIFIL, describing UNIFIL’s fear of Hezbollah, bodes ill if UNIFIL is again entrusted with the “peacekeeping” task it so singularly failed at before. Why would UNIFIL be able to keep Hezbollah from moving south of the Litani this time?

The only sure way to keep Hezbollah from returning south of the Litani is if IDF troops — a few thousand would be enough, able to quickly call on ground reinforcements from Israel, or airstrikes, if necessary — were to remain between the Litani and the border — to keep the peace that the UN peacekeepers couldn’t in the past and wouldn’t in the future.