Anti-tank missiles in garages and artillery stashed in children’s bedrooms. Weapons stockpiled in nearly every house. This was the scene one of us encountered, in village after village in southern Lebanon, during the October 2024 ground operation of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) against Hizbullah.
The IDF found Hizbullah’s battle plans for a massive invasion of Israel on par with Hamas’s October 7 attack, with dozens of cross-border infiltration routes through which to carry it out. All this occurred under the eyes of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF).
The days of Israel reluctantly accepting Hizbullah’s presence on its border are over. 60,000 Israelis—the rough equivalent of 2.1 million Americans—remain evacuated from their homes in the north. Securing the 81-mile border with Lebanon, which includes Israeli villages just yards from one-time Hizbullah outposts, is a major challenge for Israel even under the best of conditions.
Let’s start with what’s been proven not to work.
Under international pressure, Israel halted its 2006 offensive against Hizbullah and agreed to entrust UNIFIL and the LAF with enforcing UN Security Council Resolution 1701 and keeping the terror organization north of the Litani River, some 18 miles north of Israel’s border. But UNIFIL and the LAF refused to enforce 1701. Hizbullah turned villages into military arsenals, and basements and garages into weapons depots—all while UNIFIL blithely insisted it could not act on “private property.”
Equipped with a steady weapons flow and billions of dollars from Iran, Hizbullah gradually became more emboldened after 2006, shifting to an offensive posture, charting a course to attack Israel. Hezbollah restructured its forces and doctrine, creating a special operations force capable of a military-grade invasion of Israel. When Hamas staged its attack on Israel on October 7, Hizbullah had over a dozen elite battalions, comprising nearly 5,000 terrorists, many battle-tested in Syria, poised to launch an even more devastating cross-border assault.
Two developments—the American-led ceasefire oversight mechanism and Israel’s decision to maintain five strategic outposts inside southern Lebanon—provide a basis for a new strategy.
Establishing a security zone in southern Lebanon – as part of a diplomatic agreement with Lebanon and an American-led oversight mechanism – holds promise. The security zone avoids Israel having to again rely on UNIFIL and the LAF to combat Hizbullah. It enables Israel to install cameras, radars, and sensors to help prevent Hizbullah from returning to its onetime strongholds.
More broadly, Washington and Jerusalem should work together to develop a short- and long-term strategy, including a US carrots-and-sticks policy to ensure Beirut’s acquiescence and prevent Hizbullah’s reconstitution. A central pillar of this strategy should involve Washington strengthening the US-led ceasefire oversight mechanism and appointing a permanent senior US military officer to coordinate its activities.
Additionally, the US should put measurable performance criteria on funding of the Lebanese Armed Forces—including over $3 billion since 2006. If the LAF’s performance against Hizbullah continues to improve, the United States should keep supporting it.
Finally, the United States must use its influence to remove UNIFIL. It overlooked Hizbullah fortifications near its facilities for years and ignored Israeli requests to act. The United States could withhold funding, constituting almost one-third of UNIFIL’s budget, or veto its mandate renewal at the United Nations Security Council, or both.
Israel’s successful decapitation strategy against Hizbullah has brought the terror group to its knees. The United States and Israel should take proactive measures to guarantee it will not rise and threaten Israel again.
IDF Brigadier General Shai Klapper is a Visiting Fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA) and former Commander of the IDF’s 91st Division.
Yoni Tobin is a senior policy analyst at JINSA.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Strategic Tribune.