Last Sunday, in the wake of Operation Guardian of the Walls, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi agreed to set up 14 research teams on various issues that came up during the military campaign in the Gaza Strip. The teams will review almost every conceivable topic: intelligence, targets, inventory of armaments and interceptors, the efforts against the rockets, the home front, public image, and more. In about a month and a half, the General Staff will convene for a workshop over a few days, to review insights and lessons from the operation.
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The reviews will deal with what happened in Gaza, but each of them will also have a dedicated chapter to the northern arena. Despite the built-in differences between the fronts, the IDF seeks to find out for itself what lessons can be learned from what happened with Hamas as to what will happen on the much more challenging front, against Hezbollah.
Senior career and reserve officers, with whom we spoke this week, warn of the mindset in which the IDF began these reviews. "The prevailing atmosphere in the General Staff is euphoric," said one of them, "a sense of brilliant military victory. There are those who speak in terms of the [1967] Six-Day War."
The IDF is indeed talking about the operation in Gaza in dramatic terms. There is a very large gap between the public feelings, which convey a sense of a missed opportunity and an understanding that what was is what will be, and the rhetoric heard in the Kirya (IDF headquarters), which speak of an unequivocal victory. There is also a considerable gap between the way the IDF perceives the campaign and the way it is viewed in the region (spoiler: as a Hamas victory, or at the least – a draw).
Militarily, the IDF won in Gaza. Not by a knockout, but conclusively. Hamas did not properly assess the Israeli response, and certainly not its force. Its empowerment plan was almost completely shattered, and extensive sections of its tunnel system (the "metro") were destroyed. The organization failed in all its attempts at surprise – the IDF managed to block ground and tunnel penetrations, disrupted anti-tank fire and intercepted drones, UAVs and underwater autonomous vessels.
Against the background of the number of civilian casualties in Israel (12 killed by more than 4,000 rockets fired from Gaza), thanks to the successful defense provided by the Iron Dome system, Hamas found it difficult to present a military victory. The defense of the border was almost hermetic: one soldier, Sgt. Omer Tabib, was killed by anti-tank missile fire), and there were no further casualties among the forces on the ground. In a nation that sanctifies the lives of its fighters more than the lives of its citizens, this has been a critical matter for national morale.
However, the IDF was less successful in two matters: it did not achieve a significant reduction in rocket fire into Israel; nor did it eliminate Hamas leadership. These are also the two immediate military successes that Hamas can show – its ability to rain rockets heavily on Israel from the first to the last minute, and the fact that it remained upright on its feet to the end.
"We measure mileage and count bodies," says Raz Zimmt, a researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, who specializes in Iran and its emissaries. "Our enemies look at it differently, with a broader perspective. For them, it has once again been proven that it is possible to wage a long-term conflict with Israel and endure."
Hamas knew how, as always, to leverage this for a double psychological win. In the regional arena, it presents itself as the victor and Israel as the one who failed to defeat an enemy significantly weaker than it; while in the international arena, it presents itself as a victim, with the residents of the Gaza Strip suffering from the unbridled brutality of the IDF.
Together with the fire it managed to ignite in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and on the Lebanese border, and with the violence in mixed cities, Hamas gets a pretty good grade. Although it failed militarily (especially on the issue of tunnels, which will require it to investigate in-depth and examine the viability of investing in a system that turned a city of refuge into a death trap), the overall picture is less unequivocal and requires Israel to look at it frankly and have a proper think.
This is what the IDF intends to do with the review teams it has set up. But there is a double problem here: one – some of the issues are not the responsibility of the army (PR issues, for example), so in that regard, it can't really learn anything. And second – the IDF is convinced that it has won. This may blind it and keep it from conducting a deep and honest assessment of what needs to be done.
In retrospect, it is clear that Yahya Sinwar, and not Muhammad Def, was responsible for the rampage that prompted the firing of rockets at Jerusalem. Sinwar apparently did not estimate that the firing would lead to such a harsh Israeli response, but he still knowingly took the risk. The research division at the Intelligence Branch says that when it came to the campaign for Jerusalem, Sinwar began to think of himself in terms of Salah-a-Din: The defender of al-Aqsa, the defender of Palestinians, the leader of Muslims. This is an almost complete reversal of what was said about him in the Intelligence Branch just a few weeks earlier – that he is a pragmatic factor that prevents escalation, to allow for economic rehabilitation of the Strip.
Sinwar may have undergone a complete makeover, causing him to abandon the suit and tie and return to the soldier's uniform. It may have happened due to his near-loss in the Hamas election and the harsh internal criticism he received for abandoning the path of jihad. The problem is that the Intelligence Branch missed this change: had they it recognized in time, Israel would not have been surprised by the rockets on Jerusalem, and would not have fallen into a state of an inferiority complex following this firing.
"We are expected to recognize such a strategic change on the other side," a senior security official admitted this week. "We cannot ignore the fact that this has happened to us with Nasrallah in the past [in 2006]."
A confrontation in the north does not have to start like it did in Gaza, with the surprise firing of six rockets at Jerusalem. It can start from the bottom, from the field, from a local incident that gets out of control or forces the parties to react and counteract. In recent years, the IDF has been talking in terms of "battle days" in order to prepare the forces and civilians in the north for escalation. But such an escalation has a dangerous dynamic that is difficult to predict, and could throw the parties into widespread war without anyone intending to.
"Hezbollah has no interest in heating up Lebanon," Zimmt says. "The Iranians do not care that Gaza is being crushed and that Hamas pays a price, but Lebanon is another matter. Hezbollah for them is a strategic asset, built to deter Israel from attacking their nuclear program. One does not risk such an asset for no reason.
"Therefore, the chances of a campaign initiated by Hezbollah are very low. The organization has been deterred since 2006 and deeply preoccupied with its internal problems in Lebanon – from the unprecedented economic crisis that threatens to turn Lebanon into an insolvent state, to the pandemic. The Iranians will not let Hezbollah ignite Lebanon: their top priority right now is a return to the nuclear deal, the removal of sanctions and the restoration of Iran's economy. They do not want to turn the fire on them again, as those responsible for the instability in the area."
And yet, one has to take into account that Nasrallah will think differently. It happened to him in 2006, and it may happen to him again. At the time, he admitted that if he had known that these would be the results of the Second Lebanon War, he would not have started it. But the risk that in Israel he is not read correctly – or that he will change its mind – always exists.
The Gaza campaign pushed back until later in the year the "month of war" planned by the IDF, the broad exercise focused on dealing with a campaign in the north. The lessons of the operation in Gaza enable the IDF to come to this exercise sharper.
"Gaza was an exercise on a model, which worked very well in the connection between the division, the command, the General Staff, the Air Force and intelligence," says Maj. Gen. (Res.) Giora Eiland, former head of the Planning Division and head of the National Security Council. "It was a demonstration of how this system works together, and there is a clear improvement in capabilities when compared to the past."
But Lebanon is not Gaza, and the challenge it poses is several times more complex, in almost every parameter. Hezbollah has about ten times more missiles and rockets than Hamas. It does not matter if the exact figure is 80,000 or 140,000 (as the IDF estimates) – the bottom line is the same: the organization intends to fire thousands of rockets on Israel every day, capable of hitting any point in the country.
"One of the main parameters that gave the Israeli citizen a sense that matters in Gaza were under control was the small number of casualties on the home front," says a senior officer. "Iron Dome did the job, giving decision-makers the opportunity to act without pressure. With Lebanon, that will be different.
"Hezbollah sees the Iron Dome standing up well to the challenge from Gaza, and it will try to learn from it. It is looking for bottlenecks on our side. We are likely to see it increase firing, and of course, continue to work on improving accuracy, this is its flagship project.
"Obviously, we also see it trying to hit Iron Dome systems themselves, to put them out of use, at least temporarily. We all saw the barrages on Ashkelon. Now think what would have happened if dozens of rockets that were not intercepted had fallen on it. That's what Hamas tried to do, and that's what Hezbollah will try to do.
"In any case, given the amount of rockets that Hezbollah has, Iron Dome will have a hard time getting the same results. The number of casualties will be significant, and the damage will be massive, all over the country. The public will be shocked. This is a dramatic issue, because the resilience of the home front is a critical component in the fighting."
The conclusion is that Israel will not be able to rely on air defense alone in Lebanon. Certainly not for almost hermetic protection, as seen in Guardian of the Walls. "This requires us to immediately move from an outlook of Iron Dome to one of Iron Blanket," says Maj. Gen. (Res.) Israel Ziv, former head of the General Staff's Operations Division, "not only to defend, but to build an effective system that will know how to hit Hezbollah rockets on the ground or above, in their skies. This will be the strategic revolution that will change the equation. While this requires huge investments in technology and intelligence, it is well worth the price. There is no other choice. "
The border with Lebanon is dramatically different from the border with the Strip. Topographically, Hezbollah has an advantage over Israel. During the campaign in Gaza, Metula was attacked twice: for the first time, Lebanese crossed the border at a point where there is no real barrier, near the Ayun stream; they set a fire and were scared away by IDF gunfire. Contrary to the claim that these were Lebanese Palestinians showing solidarity with Gaza, it turned out that the victim was a Hezbollah operative.
The second incident was more disturbing. Under cover of darkness, a squad infiltrated Metula. It cut openings in the new fence erected in the area, and began to move towards the houses of the town. A Givati brigade force, deployed in the area in advance, opened fire and scared it back into Lebanese territory. It was later revealed that it had left behind some explosive devices.
These two events were not even the promo for what is expected in the next campaign in the North. Hezbollah intends to use its elite forces, the "Radwan" battalions, for ground raids into Israeli territory in order to occupy settlements or outposts, kidnap and kill, and most importantly – to transfer the fighting to Israeli territory. This is exactly what Hassan Nasrallah meant when he promised a decade or more ago to "conquer the Galilee".
This requires Israel to first and foremost invest in defense. In the last operation, the Gaza Division succeeded in producing almost perfect defense, thanks to quite a few methods and exercises developed, but mainly thanks to the defensive wall built on the border, running for 68 km, which completely prevented infiltration into Israeli territory.
Now Israel will have to accelerate the construction of the barrier in the north as well; walls, fences and other means of protection. Some of them have already been built, mainly in the western sector – from Rosh Hanikra to the ridge of the Ladder of Tyre, and between Misgav Am and Metula; but these are complicated engineering projects that take time and require budgets several times larger than in Gaza, due to the topography of the land. Such an obstacle will not completely stop Hezbollah, but will slow it down and reduce the potential for damage.
At the same time, the IDF will be required to move to offense. "We will not be able to sit on the border and wait for them," warns Eiland, "they will find loopholes, and penetrate. And since the line of contact will always be breached, we will have to go inside, set up a defense far from our border line, so they don't score against us. The question of how deep to go in – four to five kilometers, or much deeper – is less important. What is important is that we internalize it is inevitable we will need to carry out immediate ground action. "
"Ground invasion will be required both to stop the firing on the home front and to prevent penetrations into our territory," says a senior official. "It will not be possible to wait, because the price to the home front will be heavy."
Here, too, the public image component is critical. In Lebanon, in contrast to what happened in the operation in Gaza, terrorists will probably infiltrate, and soldiers and civilians will be harmed. Hezbollah will accumulate achievements and try to leverage them. Israel will get hit on the border and the home front. This will dramatically affect national morale, and so will the pressure on decision makers.
"Resilience is critical," the senior official admits, "if the interceptors do not intercept on such a scale, and if there are many more casualties, there will be no such resilience. We must prepare for that."
Another dramatic difference between Gaza and Lebanon will be in air superiority. In Gaza, there was no significant threat to the Air Force (although several shoulder-fired missiles were fired at the planes, they did not threaten them). "It was relatively easy," says Eiland, "we used all the Air Force's power. There was no problem with aerial superiority, the operation was conducted a meter and a half from home and near Air Force bases, and the Air Force focused only on Gaza because it was not required to operate on other fronts."
This will not be the situation in the campaign against Hezbollah. The Air Force will be under attack, at all its bases. The Air Force is prepared for this, mainly in terms of changing and spreading out deployment of the planes during an emergency, but also knows that it may pay a price, both in plane damage on the ground and possible damage to runways.
Unlike Gaza, Lebanon is large, and distant, and also more protected against aircraft. Hezbollah has more advanced means than shoulder-fired missiles – most notably SA-17 and SA-8 anti-aircraft missiles, which were used to fire at the Air Force UAV's over Lebanese skies in November last year. Beyond that, it also uses the Syrian anti-aircraft umbrella. Dealing with S-300 missile batteries will require the Air Force to destroy them first, in order to allow itself aerial superiority, which will most likely also lead to war with Syria.
"Nasrallah understands from the campaign in Gaza that he needs to strengthen his surface-to-air missile system," says the senior official, "he will look for a solution for our air superiority, because he knows that otherwise he will be vulnerable, with no real ability to defend himself."
Hezbollah also saw that all of Hamas' surprises had failed. They also invest quite a bit in matters other than rockets or ground invasions: armed drones, which are supposed to explode on targets in Israel; extensive maritime activity for raids on Israeli territory or damage to vessels and gas rigs; and in technology, to perform electromagnetic blockages and disrupt IDF activity, which relies significantly on the technological dimension.
It can be assessed that Hezbollah will seek to strengthen all of these and protect itself from any Israeli harm. Along with investing in the offensive field, it will also have to think about defense – and what all this means for its own war logic.
Israel has proven in Gaza that it is ready to go crazy. Hezbollah must take into account that this will also be the situation in the north: that Israel will not be able to contain and restrain itself, and will have to go all the way (or at least be seen as willing to do so, even at a heavy price).
It is likely that the Lebanese organization is concerned about the depth of Israel's intelligence intrusion into Gaza, and consequently the effectiveness of its airstrikes. This combination of accurate intelligence and accurate fire is the result of many years of investment and processes, but it peaked in Guardian of the Walls.
In Lebanon, the IDF has a larger number of targets than what it had in Gaza. If every such target equals a falling building, one can only imagine the extent of damage expected in Lebanon. This is exactly what Chief of Staff Kochavi warned about in a speech in January at the Institute for National Security Studies. It was intended to generate political and legal legitimacy for possible future action, and especially to make it clear to the Lebanese people that anyone who goes to bed with missiles should not be surprised if he wakes up in the morning homeless.
His words did not garner much attention then, because the media headlines wandered towards the Iranian nuclear issue, and in any case, it is doubtful whether the Lebanese people are even able to speak against Hezbollah and its actions. But the organization needs to look at Gaza and think about Lebanon: do they want Beirut to look like Gaza?
"All of Hezbollah's power and its rationale are based on the fact that it is the Shiite defender in Lebanon," the senior official said.
In order to increase the pressure on Hezbollah, the IDF has already made it clear that in any future campaign it will work for the widespread evacuation of the population from southern Lebanon, in order to protect it. The mobilization of the population is intended to protect it and prevent the killing of innocent people, and also to put pressure on Hezbollah. In Gaza it was difficult to carry out, because it is small and crowded, and there is really nowhere to run; Lebanon is larger.
The Military Prosecution and the Air Force are looking at this matter all the time. The IDF has already succeeded in the past: in Operation Accountability in 1993, in Operation Grapes of Wrath in 1996, and in the Second Lebanon War in 2006 – by causing hundreds of thousands of residents of southern Lebanon to flee to the north. The number will increase dramatically in the next war. Along with the pictures of houses collapsing and the destruction of the 230 Shiite villages in southern Lebanon, which have become fortified battlefields, Hezbollah will also be come up with answers to the Lebanese.
The IDF's operating concept for the next war includes three efforts required to achieve victory: multidimensional blows (in the air, at sea, on land, through cyber), multidimensional maneuvering (in the air and on the ground), and multidimensional defense. There are eight factors that should enable these: Intelligence superiority, digital superiority, superiority in the network environment, aerial superiority, marine superiority, superiority in information extraction, superiority in the electromagnetic spectrum, functional continuity, and the use of force (fire and maneuvering) in built-up space – the so-called "eighth enabler".
In discussions following the campaign in Gaza, Home Front Command General Uri Gordin demanded that another "ninth" enabler be added: the home front's resilience. The operation that ended and the northern challenge show that there is a reason to this demand, because the home front will have a dramatic role in national resilience, and by implication, in the course of the war. Fifteen years after the Second Lebanon War, one can only wonder how this factor was not there in the first place.
If the IDF conducts the investigative work with mental courage, it will add a tenth "enabler" – public image. Israel may have won militarily in Gaza, but lost PR-wise. The political echelon has abandoned this issue: the communications and public diplomacy directorate has not been manned for two years, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been relieved of its powers, and at least three unnecessary government ministries are dealing with the issue in miraculous disharmony (the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, the Ministry of Intelligence, and the Ministry of Diaspora). The investment in technology and digital is also insufficient, and the results accordingly. The Start-up Nation lost the battle over global public opinion throughout the whole operation.
Even today, the army acts on publicity, but on a one-off basis, for the benefit of specific operations. It must move to systemic thinking and introduce the value of victory here as well. The chief of staff is fleeing from it right now like wildfire, for fear that it is a minefield, and this is a shame: one of the lessons of Guardian of Walls is that in the absence of a publicity victory, there can be no victory in the battle.
Experts believe that there are a few more issues that Israel must focus on now. In the political sphere, massive work is required to generate legitimacy for a future war in Lebanon. "The destruction we will see there is not like what we saw in Gaza," says the senior official. "We must prepare the world for this, both the West and the Arab world."
In the intelligence sphere, the IDF must re-invest more in classical research. In recent years, the Intelligence Branch has become a factory for producing targets. In doing so it is evaluated on a regular basis – how many waypoints it is capable of producing, which can be attached to an accurate bomb from an airplane. A similar process has happened at the Mossad, which focuses almost exclusively on operational intelligence. This has weakened the research on enemy intentions. Those who want to avoid conceptions, or at least be prepared for any development, should know how to get into the other side's head better.
Hassan Nasrallah spoke on Tuesday. The IDF claimed that his speech was a mistake. Although he tried to send deterrent messages to Israel, he seemed weak, and probably sick with COVID-19. This assessment sounds like a late attempt to correct the faulty assessment regarding Sinwar and Gaza. It's not certain that the Intelligence Branch is right this time, either.
The lessons learned should also raise questions about the structure of the army. Is it right to continue investing in a large number of tank brigades even in the absence of an armored enemy? Or is it better to invest in the establishment of additional commando brigades, armed, trained and mobile, that will know how to respond to a large number of threats.
The IDF will also be required to accelerate the arming of Iron Dome interceptors and penetrating bombs for the Air Force. These are processes that have already been identified and marked in the last two multi-year plans, but now need to be moved quickly to fill the warehouses. In the face of the number of rockets that Hezbollah will launch into Israel and the scale of attacks that the Air Force plans to carry out in Lebanon, it is necessary to prepare and equip early so that the IDF does not approach any red lines in its inventories, which will require it to limit attacks or interceptions.
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The IDF believes that the campaign in the north will lead to a multi-arena escalation. Although Gaza also led to a heating up in other sectors, it is expected to be much more widespread against Hezbollah. Gaza will certainly ignite, and most likely Judea and Samaria will as well. Missiles and rockets will also fly from Syria, as part of the "First Northern War", and possibly even from Iraq and Yemen, and maybe Iran itself. This will be an unprecedented defensive challenge for air defense systems, and an offensive challenge for fighter jets, which will be required to operate in parallel even in more distant and lesser-known arenas.
Furthermore, Israeli Arabs will be a major challenge. "It is impossible to ignore what happened here," warns Israel Ziv. "We need a dramatic change, and immediately. The Israel Police are too small and weak to meet the challenge. The Border Police cannot respond to the expected size of the threat. We must set up a national guard, deployed in each of the cities, and from the moment events begin, it will work to put out the fire. If we do not do this, we will face in the next war an extent of violence several times greater, including blocked roads, which will make it difficult for the IDF to mobilize forces for the battle in the north.
"At the same time, Israel must invest more in the Arab sector – in infrastructure, education, welfare – in order to reduce feelings of alienation and increase their connection to the country."
Above all, Israel must do what it has never done, neither in Gaza nor in Lebanon: define a policy. "The IDF is convinced that it is capable of defeating Hezbollah militarily, but this is a campaign that requires a different way of thinking, different preparation, a different coalition – and I'm not sure the General Staff understands that," says Eiland. "We must formulate a clear strategy against whom and what we are fighting for – whether we are fighting only Hezbollah, or also the Lebanese state, that sponsors it. It is impossible to start discussing this when the fire has already begun."
Eiland warns that what happens in the next war will shock the world and the country. The amount of destruction and the number of casualties require advance preparation, not only in terms of intelligence and bombs, but mainly in the formulation of policy and the decisions that need to be made. "Gaza was a wake-up call to the extent of our readiness for war in the north," he says, "we must not ignore it."
