Recent remarks by the defense minister have clarified Israel’s strategy in Lebanon. While the IDF is currently striking targets there, it is doing so under a defensive logic. The goal is to establish a geographic buffer zone that would push Hezbollah away from northern communities.
The proposed depth of this zone varies. The defense minister has referred to the Litani River, while statements from the IDF point to the range of anti-tank missiles.
Chasing a Hezbollah drone in northern Israel
(Video: Ronen Halfon Segal)
Either way, this is a flawed strategy rooted, as the cliché goes, in the previous war. In the 1990s, Israel’s security zone in Lebanon proved unsuccessful. Politically, the IDF’s presence elevated Hezbollah as a popular resistance movement within Lebanon. Militarily, whenever Israel gained the upper hand in the guerrilla war, Hezbollah turned to rockets, bombarding northern communities and imposing unfavorable rules of engagement.
This dynamic shaped the understandings reached after Operations Accountability in 1992 and “Grapes of Wrath” in 1996.
Long-range rockets bypassed the buffer zone and shifted the battlefield into Israeli territory. Later, anti-tank missiles were added, offsetting Hezbollah’s weakness in direct confrontations and turning IDF outposts into exposed targets while the enemy operated from a distance. During the attrition campaign throughout 2024, leading up to Operation “Northern Arrows,” Hezbollah’s anti-tank missiles remained the primary threat to evacuated northern communities and a central risk to Israeli forces.
A new vulnerability
Long-range weapons, therefore, are a key vulnerability in efforts to defend northern residents. In recent years, however, a new dimension of warfare has emerged, reshaping the nature of conflict.
Drones and UAVs are long-range, relatively inexpensive and more lethal than rockets or anti-tank missiles. In Ukraine, mass use of small explosive drones has helped halt Russian advances, inflict heavy casualties and destroy tens of thousands of vehicles.
Drones are largely indifferent to terrain. Fiber-optic guidance makes them resistant to electronic interference, and their flight paths are often low and unpredictable. They identify targets and choose attack routes in ways that neutralize traditional methods of concealment. Despite ongoing efforts in Israel and elsewhere to develop countermeasures, there is still no effective solution.
In Ukraine, a “kill zone” roughly 30 kilometers wide has emerged along the front, where movement by vehicles or personnel is almost impossible without being detected and attacked from the air. Ukrainian drone units have also struck deep into Russian-held territory.
It is doubtful the region will remain quiet for decades, and Lebanon’s stability remains uncertain. But a clear, decisive strategy still offers advantages.
If Hezbollah, whose forces are now largely deployed in the south, survives this war as an organized military force, Israel will hand it a rare strategic gift. Under a buffer zone scenario, Hezbollah’s internal political pressures would quickly ease as it frames the situation as ongoing Israeli occupation.
Militarily, the buffer zone would become a drone firing range. Strong Israeli responses would likely prompt Hezbollah to target northern communities, as in the 1990s. Those who long for the old security zone forget the dynamic that ultimately forced Israel to withdraw.
A weakened enemy
The broader strategic picture is not entirely bleak. Hezbollah has shown a rapid learning curve in recent weeks, including in drone warfare, but according to IDF assessments and the results of March fighting, it remains significantly weakened.
Its decision, reportedly under Iranian direction, to deploy its main forces in the south presents a strategic opportunity. What is required from Israel’s political leadership is a clear directive: shift from defense to offense.
Brig. Gen. (res.) Eran Ortal Such a shift would mean focusing less on holding terrain and more on pursuing and dismantling the enemy.
In Israeli security doctrine, “decisive victory” has never meant a permanent or absolute outcome. Rather, it refers to dismantling the enemy’s current military capability, forcing a swift end to the war on favorable terms and imposing years of recovery on the adversary. Those years are meant to allow Israel to prepare for the next round.
Hezbollah has maneuvered itself into a position of clear disadvantage. A determined and well-executed military campaign could destroy its key units and disperse the rest. Such an outcome would also cement its defeat.
Defeating Hezbollah on the battlefield offers the best chance of creating conditions that would allow the Lebanese government to enforce sovereignty in the south and prevent renewed attrition under unfavorable conditions.
A decisive strategy is the best path toward a reality in which Lebanon upholds its commitments, while Israel uses the resulting strategic pause to prepare for the era of drone warfare.
Brig. Gen. (res.) Eran Ortal is former head of the Dado Center and leads the military studies program at the Begin-Sadat Center at Bar-Ilan University.