Twenty years after the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, UN Security Council Resolution 1701 still sets the right end state for Lebanon: one state, one authority, no militia army. Israel tolerated its violation. Hezbollah converted seventeen years of quiet into military power. 1701 got the order right. Israel got the enforcement wrong. The bill arrived anyway.

Success has many fathers and failure is an orphan. The legacy of the Second Lebanon War reversed the rule. For 20 years, failure had no shortage of fathers: Israel, the Lebanese government, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and the international community. Success alone went unclaimed.

On 11 August 2006, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1701, the framework that ended the 2006 Lebanon War, known in Israel as the Second Lebanon War, and sought to restore Lebanese state authority in the south. Three days later, the ceasefire entered into force and the war ended. Twenty years have passed since.

1701 failed as a regime of disarmament and enforcement. Hezbollah was not disarmed. The Lebanese government did not establish a monopoly on force. UNIFIL did not prevent Hezbollah’s buildup. But the resolution ended the war and preserved the order meant to follow it.

The Winograd Commission, the government-appointed inquiry into Israel’s conduct of the 2006 war, left findings seared into Israeli memory: failures in the conduct........

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