Israel could be humiliated in Lebanon, reports suggest

Israel’s invasion and attempted annexation of southern Lebanon has been portrayed as a sideshow to the war in Iran. And legacy media coverage has tended to miss out details of stubborn resistance to the Israeli military campaign.

Israel is struggling

In reality, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) have not had an easy time at all. Met with determined local resistance, they’ve failed to achieve key goals.

Photojournalist Guy Smallman, recently on the ground in the south, reported on an Israeli mission to take the town of Nabi Chit:

This story of a failed Israeli ground mission explains why occupying Lebanon will never be an option for them. There is a multi-layered culture of resistance that is many decades old and constantly evolving.

Detailing a raid on 6 March, mayor Sayyed Hani el Moussawi said:

the Israeli raid failed in its mission. Despite their massive firepower, they were forced into a hasty retreat.

He explained that until the Israelis invaded the town:

local resistance fighters had been taking shelter from the airstrikes. But once we discovered that the Israelis were in the village, the fighters appeared and fought an epic gun battle.

Eventually, the Israelis fled:

under the cover of airstrikes. Some 40 to 50 airstrikes hit the village and surrounding roads. They fired artillery, dropped bombs, used helicopter gunships and quad-drones.

Israeli encirclement plans

Other sources in the south sketched a picture of Israel’s plans:

From the very first day in southern Lebanon, the enemy has relied on a tactic of encirclement and isolation rather than storming and seizing villages, in order to avoid attrition and heavy casualties, and to hasten its advance to points that would give it the appearance of a swift victory.

Adding:

The enemy is seeking to implement a geographical separation operation stretching across the southern Litani, fragmenting the resistance lines into separate pockets. It has been noted that the enemy deliberately began the invasion through crossings within non-Shiite villages, where there are no resistance elements.

Communications seen by the Canary suggest that Israel been trying to cut supply lines and encircle troublesome population centres in the western, central and eastern sectors of southern Lebanon.

Sources also indicated:

that the morale of the resistance fighters is very high, and that the management of the battle is cohesive, flexible and determined to sustainably wear down the enemy, and that the enemy lacks a great deal of intelligence, as evidenced by its operations and raids.

Multi-stage war of attrition

They said this implies:

that the resistance has carried out a significant portion of its work since the last war in complete secrecy, which complicates the enemy’s mission. All of this points to the extent of the lessons and insights the resistance has drawn, and is applying creatively in the current battle.

The aim of local resistance forces seems to be determined to bog down in:

a multi-stage war of attrition, beginning by raising the cost of its advance, then preventing it from establishing a foothold, and finally attacking its forces and rear lines.

They have also deployed new technologies to do so:

The resistance is making use of the Sariq anti-armour system and the drone and unmanned aerial vehicle systems, in addition to small units engaging in mobile ambushes with fire support.

They claim that:

To date, the enemy has suffered the damage and destruction of more than 100 Merkava tanks.

In theory, Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shia paramilitary group and political party, breached a US-brokered ‘ceasefire’ with Israel in early March which had held up since their last war in 2024. In practice, the US gave Israel carte blanche to strike Lebanon, which it has done constantly since the deal was struck. During the intervening period, Israel attacked southern Lebanon about 15,400 times.

Israel remains determined to enforce it colonial ambitions on Lebanon. But while the nuclear-armed, US backed state remains the most powerful country in region on paper, it will not have an easy ride if it wishes to annex its neighbour.

Featured image via the Canary