OPINION:
For the past year, Israel has demonstrated the resolve one would expect of a nation facing an existential threat. It has, for decades, reached back to the nation’s founding in 1948.
The conflicts between Israel and its Arab neighbors began when the latter opposed the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan that would have divided Palestine evenly between Jewish and Arab populations. After rejecting the plan, the Arabs began a war that ended in their utter defeat. The result was a larger portion of that partition plan winding up in the new state of Israel.
Determined to destroy Israel, more wars with Arabs followed in 1956, 1968 and 1973, the latter threatening to involve the United States and the Soviet Union. That didn’t materialize. Subsequent conflicts would increasingly involve Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Eventually, that contest shifted to southern Lebanon, where the PLO and its leader, Yasser Arafat, fled after Jordan ejected them in 1970. Israel was not alone in being fed up with the PLO.
The conflicts in southern Lebanon that followed the 1973 Yom Kippur War were focused on pushing the PLO northward to deter attacks on northern Israel by Arafat’s artillery and rockets. And now, another war has erupted in southern Lebanon that threatens to expand into a regional one. But there is a difference in this latest flare-up.
In 1978, Israel attacked southern Lebanon to push the PLO and its artillery north of the Litani River to preclude attacks on Israeli civilians living in upper Galilee. Yet the Israelis fell short of achieving that objective.
Within four years, Israel would find it necessary to attack again to push the PLO not only out of artillery range but out of Lebanon altogether. That 1982 war, however, created an unintended consequence. Hezbollah would fill the vacuum created by the expelled PLO, a void made worse by the precipitous withdrawal of Israeli forces pressured by the United States to end the fighting.
In 2006, Israel would be compelled to confront Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Unfortunately, that conflict was less than decisive despite having damaged Hezbollah’s military capability. Since then, fighting in southern Lebanon has simmered and flared, depending on the latest terrorist provocation.
Oct. 7, 2023, changed everything.
After Hamas’ massacre of innocent Jews, Hezbollah began shelling northern Israel. Now that Hamas has been largely defeated, Israel is correctly focused on Hezbollah. In doing so, the Israelis are rejecting the half-measures of previous incursions into Lebanon. They’ve learned from the past that once you begin the job, you must finish it.
That’s why they’re not willing to leave Gaza until Hamas is eviscerated. There is every evidence that Israel is determined to not only decapitate Hezbollah in Lebanon but also surgically remove its entire military operational complex that has been enabled and financed by Iran. Most recently, they have targeted senior Hezbollah leaders with precision strikes, now adding to that list the organization’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah. More strikes will follow as Israel seeks to finish the job.
Sadly, the Biden-Harris administration has given Israel the cold shoulder in pursuing the war in Gaza — hampering it with overtures to Hamas at home and abroad by mollycoddling pro-Hamas demonstrators on U.S. campuses and insisting Israel enter a cease-fire with an enemy that hides behind women and children while holding American and Israeli hostages.
Israel can expect that it will be alone in Lebanon at precisely the time when the U.S. should be demonstrating indefatigable resolve in supporting the deconstruction of Hezbollah. Why?
After then-President Donald Trump had the commander of Iran’s Quds Force, Qasem Soleimani, eliminated, Iran turned to Hezbollah to fill that void. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei chose Nasrallah, who was in lockstep with Iran. Indeed, the ayatollah treated Nasrallah like a son. But Israel has summarily dispatched Nasrallah to the afterlife, leaving Iran with a dilemma.
Will President Biden deter Iran by standing resolutely behind Israel?
The right answer is clear. After Iran’s attack on Israel, the U.S. must summon the backbone to join Israel not only in defeating Hezbollah but by attacking Iranian military and oil infrastructure targets in their homeland.
Unfortunately, Mr. Biden’s vacillation, irresolution and confusion will not deter Iran. Nonetheless, the exigencies of the regional war before us should be clear to anyone with eyes to see, ears to hear and a brain to think.
Those attributes do not appear to be in residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
• L. Scott Lingamfelter is a retired Army colonel and combat veteran (1973-2001) and former member of the Virginia House of Delegates (2002-2018). He is the author of “Desert Redleg: Artillery Warfare in the First Gulf War” (University Press of Kentucky, 2020) and “Yanks in Blue Berets: American UN Peacekeepers in the Middle East” (UPK, 2023).
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