What we need to know about Hezbollah (but are afraid to know)

War-time-scrambled-Waze put my location somewhere in Beirut. But that is not what made my drive from Kibbutz Lohamei Hageta’ot back home to Haifa yesterday difficult. After all, I had driven those roads for years and needed no help getting around. What made the trip home hard was because my head was filled with the unpleasantries I had heard between 10:30 and 15:30, at the Alma Research and Education Center Conference.

I don’t know why I wrote “unpleasantries.” Perhaps in contrast to the pleasantries exchanged with friends I had not seen in a long time and with new people I met. Socializing at breaks is a highlight of conferences and what makes being there far more valuable than watching on Zoom.

So I will leave my spontaneous “unpleasantries” in place but explain to you what I felt, and still feel now even after a good night’s sleep and the day to reflect: more fear, more worry, less confidence in our policy makers and decision makers (as if, after Oct 7th, there remains room to decline), less surety that this, our third attempt at sovereignty will be the one that finally succeeds.

And as I write THIS, I remind myself of the message imparted by one of the speakers: In spite of our thousands-years-history as a People, we Jews (or a significant portion of us, among whom I count myself) think of time in terms of hours, days, weeks, perhaps months. Years? Not much. This is true for the West as well. And the West aims for stability, as does Israel.

In contrast, the Iranians and our neighbourhood enemies count time in terms of hundreds of years or more. Major General (Reserves) Gershon Hacohen explained that, for our enemies, a loss today is not so terrible because tomorrow is a new day. There is no expectation of stability. Rather, he said, “constant struggle is a fundamental way of life.”

Is this not a depressing thought? That ongoing war is inevitable here?

At the outset of the conference, Alma founder and president Lt-Col (Reserves) Sarit Zehavi told us the goals of the meeting: (1) to raise awareness regarding the 60K residents evacuated from 43 communities and towns that are now ghost towns; and (2) to show us what Israel is up against given the weapons capabilities amassed by Hezbollah and the religious basis for their war against us. You can watch the YouTube video of the conference with the simultaneous English translation of the Hebrew-speakers. The conference had much more than I can write about in this short summary.

If you were there or if you watched the video and you disagree with any part of this article, please leave me a comment. Maybe some of you understood things differently from me.

Just like Jerusalem is central to Israel, Al-Quds (the Arab name for the city) is central to Hezbollah, Hamas, and Iran. They are not interested in taking chunks out of Israel, they are interested in controlling Quds.

We learned about the massive weapons accumulation by Hezbollah, the way they are transported from Iran to Syria and Lebanon along what is called a weapons transport corridor. It helped me understand some of what I have seen in the news about Israeli attacks on convoys and where they were carried out.

We learned about the technology enabling Israel to see in 3-D what is going on in the desert mountain regions of Iran and identify the armaments factories that are all underground. This is very impressive.

But, so what? I am left with the question, so what?! How will that help the residents of the north return home?

Hearing about the enormous impact on families of their relocation from the active war zone in the north to other parts of the country was more meaningful on the stage at the conference than hearing them tell their stories as a television news item. Being able to shake a speaker’s hand and get her phone number brought her story “home.” I only hope that when I interview her, I will be able to write in a way that you will be as moved as I am.

With Hezbollah embedded within the civilian population in southern Lebanon, what chance is there of ensuring that northern Israel will be safe? With tunnel cities under southern Lebanon parallel to what has been exposed in Gaza and with the far more difficult hilly terrain in Lebanon, what will enable us to prevent another Oct 7th in northern Israel? I got partial answers to these questions.

Sarit Zehavi’s Concluding Remarks

Zehavi closed the conference by talking about what she thinks has to happen and I will paraphrase what she said (for some reason there is no English translation to her lecture so this will have to do for those who don’t know Hebrew).

And I must say that I am sorry: I did not find it very encouraging.

She said that there will have to be a diplomatic resolution. In order to have “teeth,” diplomacy would have to come after having severely damaged Hezbollah’s military capabilities. At the same time, Israel has to have a solid defensive strategy in case Hezbollah wants to rear up its head again.

Diplomacy will not include reference to UNSC Resolution 1701 (Hezbollah moves north of the Litani River) because the UN failed to enforce it. It will be more effective, argues Zehavi, to base the new conditions on Resolution 1559 from 2004, a resolution that is concerned with domestic Lebanese issues having nothing to do with Israel.

Wikipedia defines 1559 as:

… free and fair presidential elections in Lebanon, urging the Lebanese government to establish control over [all of] its territory, disarm militias like Hezbollah, and facilitate the withdrawal of any remaining foreign forces from the country. … It called on Syria as a foreign force to withdraw from Lebanon and to cease intervening in the internal politics of Lebanon.

Zehavi told conference participants that the Lebanese army helped Hezbollah rather than sought to control it, even provided Hezbollah with military structures. In fact, there can be members of the same family in Hezbollah and in the Lebanese army.

Her worst nightmare is a ceasefire. “That would take us back to Oct 6th,” she said, leaving the north under the same periodic missile launchings as went on in the Gaza Envelope for years. “And we saw how that ended; it ended in slaughter.”

What did she say has to be in place?

1. A deadline by which time Hezbollah has to be disarmed.
2. Effective oversight with a clear mandate to police the situation. When she talks about this with foreign bodies and they tell her the oversight must be under international auspices, she replies that she is happy to have others die in place of Israelis because if they want international oversight, they have to be willing to die to stand up to Hezbollah. They look at her in shock because they do not get that oversight means confronting Hezbollah.
3. It has to be understood that disarmament is not moving Hezbollah north of the Litani. Hezbollah members live south of the Litani. They are part of the local population there and moving them from there is unrealistic.

To the complaint that Israel has also violated 1701 because Israel flies over Lebanon, Zehavi replies that we will continue to fly over Lebanon as long as there is no definitive proof that Hezbollah has been disarmed.

And to the argument that Hezbollah will never agree to these points, Zehavi answers: “True. But that doesn’t mean that Israel should not demand it. Israel has to be clear about what reality we want to see regardless of what we think Hezbollah will agree to or not.”

She concluded with the opinion that there will be no success without involving international organizations. “We will have to work WITH international bodies and we [our decision makers] have to give the international bodies all the information available about what is happening here in order to motivate them to work with us.” They have to know all about everything that was talked about in this conference.

Hezbollah has already been successful in this round of hostilities in that it has forced our northern residents out of their homes for an indeterminate time, Zehavi admits.

For Israel’s northern residents, their deadline for an end to this is September 1. For the USA, it is even earlier. For Hezbollah and Iran — who knows?

She then declared that Israel has to have the legitimacy to defend herself. Internationally, that legitimacy is not self-evident. “We have to work at recognition of that fact,” Zehavi said. “Now! Not after the war erupts.” And the world needs to understand that Iran is a global problem and not an Israeli problem.

And finally, she shared her ideas about how northern Israelis would be able to return home:

1. Serious damage to Hezbollah’s military capabilities. It is possible that much can be accomplished even without an all-out war. A weakened Hezbollah will agree to items that a strong Hezbollah would not.
2. Properly protected public spaces, such as schools and all homes, civilian community defense plans, and defense scenarios for any eventuality.
3. We learned from the Gaza operations that we need to prepare for the humanitarian needs of the civilian population.
4. We cannot leave the timing of the war to Hezbollah, we cannot leave it to them to carry out a slaughter or to attempt to fulfill their plans for conquering the Galilee.
5. We have to relate to attacks on Metula as we would relate to attacks on Jerusalem. “Our enemies see it that way — if we would give up on Metula, we would give up on Jerusalem. We saw what happened when we did not behave in this way regarding the Gaza Envelope.”

Zehavi is a very charismatic speaker. She is powerful. And I am sure her voice is heard in the corridors of power in this country. She gives clear and learned assessments of what is happening and what Israel has to do. So what caused me to be so disheartened at the end of the day? Because I see the dilly-dallying of our decision makers and do not see them moving forward in a way that would keep us safe. I understand the complexities more and don’t have the confidence our leaders have the determination or the guts to do what needs to be done — and to do it in time.

I am scared.