“Lebanon Debate” – Muhammad Alloush
Since the first months of the war, Israel has tried to deal with the southern Lebanese front as a front that can be broken with intense fire, assassinations, and pressure on the incubating environment, on the basis that the scale of destruction, killing, and displacement will push the resistance to retreat or to reduce the level of engagement.
But what happened in practice was completely the opposite, as the resistance did not move towards retreat, but rather towards developing the form of war, and gradually moving from the traditional pattern of attrition to a more complex pattern based on the combination of technology, complex action, simultaneous targeting, and psychological and media pressure, making the cost of the battle against Israel much higher than what the Israeli military and security establishment had expected.
According to field sources, the most prominent development in this context was not in the size of the operations, but rather in their nature. The resistance moved from using drones as a means of reconnaissance and attack initially to introducing helicopters on a large scale, then to using integrated swarms of helicopters and drones, some of which undertake photography, monitoring, and live broadcasting, and some of which carry out simultaneous attack operations on more than one point, while the operation itself is accompanied by the launch of missiles and missiles and precise targets, which transforms the attack into a complex, multi-layered operation, which is difficult to detect. Israeli defense systems must be contained or dealt with all at once.
This transformation, according to the sources, has military and security implications that go beyond the technical side of the issue. Israel, which built a large part of its combat doctrine over the past years on air and technological superiority, finds itself today facing an unconventional combat model, low in cost for the resistance, but high in cost for it. The small, cheap missiles that are launched in large numbers force Israel first, if it is able, to use expensive interception systems, and also create a state of permanent exhaustion for the defense systems. Radars, and most importantly, a state of psychological exhaustion for both soldiers and settlers, if you were able to detect it and deal with it, which you could not do at the moment, especially when the attack became simultaneous and multi-directional.
Sources via “Lebanon Debate” indicate that more importantly, the resistance is treating this round as a long war of attrition aimed at striking the Israeli sense of security. This explains the focus on filming and broadcasting operations directly or semi-directly. The picture here is part of the battle itself. When an Israeli sees that a military site is being targeted moment by moment, or that soldiers are moving under close surveillance, or that a mechanism is being directly hit, then the message goes beyond the material loss to turn into a deep psychological and moral blow to the army, the political establishment, and Israeli society.
In this context also come the specific operations carried out by small groups or what resemble lone wolves in the front villages, including the killing of a high-ranking Israeli officer in Al-Quzah, or even operations targeting an Israeli position in Al-Bayyada and pushing the enemy out of it, then the resistance removing the Israeli flag from it. These operations confirm, on the one hand, that Israeli control over the border strip is not complete, and on the other hand, they instill a permanent feeling among Israeli soldiers that danger does not come only from the sky or from distant missiles, but may be close, direct, and sudden. This type of operation has a psychological impact that sometimes exceeds the effect of the missile strikes themselves, because it strikes the image of the army that claims absolute control.
What is also noteworthy is that these developments came despite the massive size of the Israeli fire. During this war, Israel used a scorched earth policy, expanded assassination and targeting operations, and raised the level of destruction in southern villages to unprecedented levels. However, on the other hand, it was unable to stop the development of the resistance’s capabilities. Rather, it seemed that every stage of Israeli escalation was matched by a corresponding stage of development for the resistance, whether at the level of tactics, technology, or operational audacity.
According to estimates and data circulating within Israel itself, this phase recorded one of the highest rates of casualties in soldiers and vehicles since the start of the war in 2023 and 2024. This very point is the essence of the current resistance strategy. The resistance is not only trying to prevent Israel from achieving its goals, but is working to raise the cost of the war to a level that makes its continuation a strategic burden on Israel, militarily, economically, psychologically, and politically.
The sources believe that the view of the resistance is based on the fact that what required 18 years of resistance before the liberation of 2000 may require much less time today. The comparison here is not only related to the period of time, but rather to the nature of the new military and technological environment. In the eighties and nineties, the resistance relied mainly on ambushes, bombs, and direct clashes, and the media image was relatively limited, but today the battle is taking place simultaneously on the ground, in the sky, on screens, and within the Israeli consciousness itself, as every targeting turns within minutes into media material that strikes the morale of the Israeli interior and reproduces the image of security deficit.
Israel is aware of the danger of this transformation, and therefore it is trying to permanently focus on targeting the drone and helicopter units and the technological infrastructure of the resistance, because the real danger for it does not lie only in the missile that hits a target, but in the model of war that is gradually taking shape, which is a model based on smart attrition, complex operations, psychological pressure, and expanding the circle of threat with low-cost and highly effective tools.
Sources indicate that the problem for Israel is that this type of war is not easily resolved by firepower alone. The higher the level of destruction, the higher the level of incentive for the resistance to develop its tools and methods, and the more Israel tries to impose a deterrence equation, the more it finds itself facing new tactics that break or circumvent this equation. This makes the northern front, for the Israeli establishment, one of the most exhausting and complex fronts in decades.
Through this complex escalation, the resistance is trying to say that any Israeli attempt to impose new realities by force will be met with an open and increasing cost, and that the war has become a long battle over will, endurance, and the ability to attrition.
