For anyone skeptical that the nearly year-long daily exchange of fire between Israel and Hezbollah was an actual war, all doubts were erased over the past ten days. The new phase that began with exploding Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies was followed by Israeli airstrikes across southern Lebanon on the group’s weapons depots and top leaders and hundreds of Hezbollah rockets shot deeper into northern Israel than during the previous 11 months. The increased pace and scope of exchanges have raised fears of an escalatory spiral that will end with an Israeli ground invasion and possibly a wider regional war, and there are legitimate fears that Israel is on the verge of embroiling itself in a second front without a clear strategy or exit plan, replicating the seemingly perpetual cycle it is going through in Gaza.

The comparison to Gaza makes sense on some levels. Israel is proceeding with the theory that it must first escalate with Hezbollah in order to de-escalate, similar to the theory it has utilized in Gaza that escalating military pressure will eventually force Hamas into capitulation by seeking a ceasefire on Israel’s terms. It has conducted a stunningly effective aerial campaign over the past week and a half but left unclear is what comes next or what the underlying strategy is to translate its military success into realizing its objective of allowing 60,000 displaced Israelis to return to their homes in northern Israel. This too is reminiscent of where Israel finds itself after 11 months of fighting in Gaza, having demonstrated clear military superiority but without any demonstrable plan to turn it into a strategic victory.

Nevertheless, the fight against Hezbollah should not be viewed as a similar but larger version of Israel’s fight against Hamas. While the theory about escalation eventually forcing Hezbollah capitulation may appear to be repeating a tactic that has not yet proven true in Gaza, Hezbollah’s situation is distinctive. Unlike Hamas, which exists to futilely attempt to resist Israel out of existence, Hezbollah has a specific purpose, which is to serve as an Iranian deterrent mechanism against a large-scale Israeli military campaign against Iran. Hezbollah’s guided missile arsenal is Iran’s core interest since it is viewed as the equivalent of second-strike capability that can target Israeli cities and infrastructure. This counterintuitively gives Israel more room to operate against Hezbollah rocket stores and even top commanders since Iran wants to preserve the heavy missiles. While Israel’s latest moves have upped the escalatory factor in a real way, Hezbollah may not be in a position to risk its most important weapons by responding in a way that draws an even greater Israeli response.

Hezbollah also operates in a trickier political environment than Hamas. Unlike Hamas, which was the unitary power in Gaza before October 7, Hezbollah is the most powerful actor in Lebanon but it is not the only one. Lebanon is fragmented in a way that Gaza was not, which means that even Hezbollah has some political restraints that Hamas did not. Complicating things further, Hezbollah is a Shia militia and political party that also operates as an Iranian proxy in a state that is only about 30% Shia and where large segments of the population resent Iranian domination and interference. There is a genuine debate about the level of support for Hamas among Gazan Palestinians, but Hamas reflects significant popular will in terms of its general attitude—if not tactics—of resistance to Israel. Hezbollah is far more sectarian, far more controversial, and far less popular due to the perception that it has led Lebanon to state and economic collapse. All of this gives Israel more leeway to operate against Hezbollah with less blowback than it has in Gaza. The IDF has so far made the most of that leeway, and so far the cost to the Israeli homefront—whether because Hezbollah is in disarray or because it is biding its time—has been much less than feared.

Despite this, there remain warning signs ahead. No matter how thoroughly the IDF dismantles Hezbollah’s capabilities, it will not eliminate the group’s capabilities entirely—including with a ground operation—and that means that absent a plan to translate the military operation into a diplomatic offramp, tens of thousands of Israelis cannot go back to their homes since there will still be intermittent rockets and drones. The biggest looming concern is that Iran’s response to the degrading of its most valuable proxy will not come via other proxies or Iranian conventional weapons, but on the nuclear front. If Iran believes that its only reliable deterrent against Israel has been eliminated, it may rush to establish a more permanent deterrent in the form of nuclear breakout. This leaves Israel with a difficult balancing act: needing to eliminate the Hezbollah threat without doing so in a way that will lead to an actually existential threat. Even with these considerations though, the last ten days should provide Israeli decision-makers with a level of optimism that has been in short supply since October.

Of course, there is one reliable place where Israel is still fighting a losing battle. To listen to international commentators across television airwaves and journalists in various mediums, the last ten days are a shocking example of disproportionate and barely provoked Israeli aggression. Despite Hezbollah firing rockets at northern Israeli communities starting on October 8, there remains a fiction in some quarters of Hezbollah restraint. Despite countless videos of secondary explosions from Hezbollah weapons stores literally going on for minutes following Israeli strikes on allegedly civilian structures, there remains a narrative that the IDF is indiscriminately blowing up anything it sees in southern Lebanon. Despite the fact that Hezbollah has been designated as a terrorist entity by the U.S., the U.K., and Germany and has killed hundreds of American soldiers, there remains a clueless interpretation of Hezbollah as nothing more than a legitimate Lebanese political actor. Despite the fact that Hezbollah made the conscious decision to attack northern Israel with rockets, drones, and anti-tank missiles in solidarity with Hamas one day after the October 7 attacks and has not let up for a moment, there remains a fatuous insistence that Israel is the aggressive party with expansionist designs on Lebanon. 

And this is where the comparison to Gaza breaks down most thoroughly. Nothing can ever justify Hamas’ October 7 massacres, rapes, and abductions, but they rest in the larger context of battles over nationalism, legitimacy, and territory that define the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Hezbollah has nothing to do with this, no matter what it or its defenders claim. Israel is not occupying Lebanon. It does not control the lives of millions of stateless Lebanese. Any rationale for Hezbollah’s resistance against Israel disappeared the day Israel withdrew from its security zone in southern Lebanon a quarter century ago. Even taking the most sympathetic possible view toward Hezbollah of the situation does not justify anything it has done since October 7, or make its attempt to don the mantle of defender of Palestine any more coherent. Those who take at face value Hezbollah’s linkage of October 7 and Gaza with its own military assault on northern Israel should think hard about how and why this makes any sense at all. The intellectually honest move would be to drop the pretense that Lebanon has anything at all to do with Gaza, and to admit that the real problem some have is Israel using force to defend itself in any guise and against any foe.