Israeli forces, exhausted in Gaza, on high alert for Lebanon war

But behind the scenes, there is growing concern in Israel that its soldiers are exhausted and resources are depleted after its longest war in decades. A brutal nine-month offensive against Hamas in Gaza has failed to destroy the group, and politically embattled Prime Minister Netanyahu has yet to outline a withdrawal strategy. In Lebanon, experts warn that Israel faces a larger, better-armed and more professional enemy, threatening an even more serious military quagmire.

Israel has been fighting on two fronts since Oct. 8, a day after Hamas-led militants stormed southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostage. Within hours, fighters from Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed political and militant movement allied with Hamas, launched attacks from Lebanon into northern Israel, the start of a tit-for-tat border conflict that has escalated with each passing month and penetrated deeper into both countries.

Israel says it is moving to a de-escalation phase in Gaza and has resumed hostage release talks in Cairo, but Hezbollah insists it will not lay down its arms or consider withdrawing from the Israeli border until there is a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

While both Israel and Hezbollah say they want a diplomatic solution, neither appears willing to make the concessions necessary to achieve it. The result is a tense stalemate, a rising death toll, abandoned border towns, untended fruit trees and dairy farms, and growing pressure from displaced Israelis for the government to act.

Israeli military leaders have been planning to attack Lebanon for months. On Wednesday, the day after a Hezbollah missile attack killed two Israeli civilians, former war cabinet member Benny Gantz said he and others had urged Netanyahu to approve an Israeli invasion of Lebanon in March but that he “hesitantly” refused to commit to allowing Israelis to return to their homes in the north by September 1, when the new school term begins.

“Israel cannot allow events in the north to continue as they are and lose another year,” Gantz said. “It is time to pay the price with military targets and infrastructure in Lebanon, where Hezbollah also participates.”

Netanyahu, who once boasted about his ability to prevent war, “knows that the Israeli people are not prepared for thousands of rockets aimed at Tel Aviv,” said Gayle Tarshir, a political scientist at Hebrew University.

She said that instead of strategizing, Trump has “isolated himself”, avoiding difficult decisions to buy time and surrounding himself with supporters who have no military expertise.

Since dissolving his war cabinet following Gantz’s recent resignation, analysts say Netanyahu has further distanced himself from top military officials, including Gallant, who has for months called for a ceasefire in Gaza and a hostage deal to allow troops to focus on Lebanon.

“This is an important day in exercising our power. [Hezbollah]”Israel will only respond with force,” Gallant said Sunday as dozens of missiles fell on Israeli soil, including on the strategic military base at Mount Meron.

The few Israelis who stayed in northern Israel to protect the border since October 8 did not expect to be in limbo for so long.

“The families are exhausted,” said Omer Simchi, who has served for nine months with the local defense force in Kibbutz Sasa, a farming community in Upper Galilee about a mile from the Lebanese border.

Simchi’s wife and two young children were among some 100,000 Israelis who fled northern Israel last year when Hezbollah rockets, kamikaze drones and anti-tank missiles turned the idyllic mountain region into a war zone. Israeli attacks across southern Lebanon have forced a similar number of Lebanese to flee.

Israeli attacks in Lebanon have killed at least 94 civilians and more than 300 Hezbollah fighters, while Hezbollah attacks have also killed at least 20 Israeli soldiers and 11 civilians.

When Simchi’s family needs her, she looks for replacements within her unit, but there aren’t enough volunteers.

“We don’t know whether it will be a diplomatic agreement or war, but we know that the situation cannot continue like this,” he said in a school auditorium in a kibbutz that was destroyed by a Hezbollah missile in December.

Local council speaker Moshe Davidovich said hundreds of homes had been damaged or destroyed across northern Israel.

This is just a taste of the destruction Hezbollah could cause in an all-out war, which would include widespread blackouts, massive rocket and missile barrages, and fierce ground battles with well-trained and well-equipped fighters fighting in familiar terrain. Hezbollah is thought to have more than twice as many fighters as Hamas and more than four times as much munitions, including guided missiles. Concerns are now being openly expressed that Israel is unprepared.

“The reserve and regular army systems are exhausted,” Yair Golan, leader of Israel’s Labor Party and a former deputy chief of staff of the IDF, told Israeli radio last month.

“Israel is used to short wars,” said Yoel Guzansky, a former Israeli National Security Council official and now a senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies, “but after nine months, the IDF is exhausted, its equipment needs maintenance, its ammunition is depleted, and every Israeli home is affected.”

Even the relatively low-intensity clashes along the border have taken a heavy toll on soldiers on the front lines. A 25-year-old Israeli reservist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in line with military practice, deployed to northern Israel on October 7. After four months under fire, he said, he had accumulated “burnout.”

When his tour of duty ended, “it was hard to go back to normal life,” he said. Feeling guilty, he asked for time off from his teaching job so he could readjust to civilian life.

As he prepares to be called up again, he’s nervous about whether he’ll be ready, and he says his friends are also struggling with the decision.

Since the start of the Gaza operation, 325 Israeli soldiers have been killed, more than four times the casualties in the 2014 war with Hamas. The losses have been compounded by a growing sense of strategic failure. Israel brought most of its reservists home at the end of the winter, having failed to achieve either of its declared war objectives: the destruction of Hamas or the return of the more than 100 hostages remaining in Gaza.

More than 38,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians but says the majority of the dead are women and children.

Experts say a war between Israel and Lebanon would be disastrous for both sides.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah last month warned of a war “without rules or limits” after releasing drone footage of the Israeli port city of Haifa. On Tuesday, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz posted on X: “Mr. Nasrallah, if you do not end your threats and violence and withdraw to the Litani River, you will be considered the destroyer of Lebanon.”

But an Israeli invasion of Lebanon could be a “trap” that could drag Israel into a brutal new war with no end in sight, Guzansky said.

“There is a mistaken belief in Israel that the war there will be over in a few days or weeks,” he said.

A devastating situation in Lebanon would also increase international pressure on Israel and escalate tensions with Washington.

Last month, Netanyahu said there had been a “dramatic drop in arms deliveries from the United States to Israel” and that only a “trickle” had been delivered since then, a claim strongly denied by U.S. officials. On Wednesday, U.S. officials said some of the bombs that had been stuck there since May were now on their way to Israel.

To avert a Lebanon war, Israeli officials, through U.S. and European diplomats, are demanding that Hezbollah withdraw about 10 miles north of the border across the Litani River, a military demarcation line agreed upon at the end of the 2006 war.

Darina Karabrino, a resident of Sasa Kibbutz, was living in the nearby city of Kiryat Shmona and hid in a bomb shelter when a Hezbollah missile hit her home in 2006. In 2018, the Israeli army said it had discovered plans for Hezbollah to “conquer” the Galilee. The army has found several tunnels across the border, but residents believe there are many more.

Karabrino said his greatest fear was a mass invasion and massacre like the one he experienced in his southern kibbutz.

“We need to make sure we don’t have another Oct. 7th like this,” she said. “We’ve seen with our own eyes what can happen.”

Suzy Haidamos in Beirut contributed to this report.