On Monday evening, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once again halted imminent military attack plans following intervention by US President Donald Trump.

Earlier that day, the premier had issued orders for the IDF to strike key Hezbollah targets in Beirut’s southern suburbs in response to relentless rocket and drone attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians, declaring: “There will be no situation in which Hezbollah attacks our cities and citizens while the terror headquarters in Dahiyeh remain off-limits.”

Hours later, after Tehran threatened to bolt ceasefire negotiations with Washington over the planned strikes, insisting that a truce with the US apply to Lebanon as well, Trump called Netanyahu and shortly after announced that both Israel and Hezbollah had agreed to roll back the fighting, apparently renewing their near-defunct April truce.

Israeli officials downplayed the severity of the exchange, but Trump confirmed Wednesday that he had called Netanyahu “fucking crazy” on the call, and US officials claimed he said, “Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.”

The episode uncomfortably encapsulates Israel’s predicament on its northern border. While the IDF has achieved significant battlefield gains over Hezbollah in recent years, the past weeks have shown how far it is from a long-term solution and how hemmed-in it is by diplomatic constraints.

With a full invasion posing a great military and diplomatic risk, expanded ground operations in the south unable to reach Hezbollah’s core, Trump blocking strikes on Beirut, and the Lebanese government unwilling or unable to disarm the group, Israel is left with no easy options in Lebanon.

The Hezbollah rebound

For roughly 18 months following the ceasefire declared in November 2024, Israel operated in southern Lebanon with near-impunity. Hezbollah had been militarily devastated, with its former leader assassinated, supply lines from Iran damaged by the collapse of Assad’s Syria, and its political standing significantly weakened. During that period — arguably the group’s lowest point in decades — the IDF killed hundreds of Hezbollah operatives with nary a response.

After Israel and the US launched their campaign against Iran in late February, however, it became brutally clear that Hezbollah had been down, but not out.

Since March 2, backing its patrons in Tehran, Hezbollah has fired some 5,500 rockets at IDF troops operating in southern Lebanon and around 2,500 at Israel, while launching around 300 drones at troops and civilians, according to the IDF. The early April ceasefire with Tehran appeared to embolden the group even further, producing the surge in drone attacks in recent weeks that led Netanyahu to vow a more aggressive offensive.

The attacks forced the head of the IDF Northern Command to acknowledge that the military overestimated the damage done to Hezbollah’s capabilities during the 2024 ground offensive. Israeli troops had thrust into southern Lebanon in order to push Hezbollah out of range for many of its projectiles to reach Israel, but the group has continued to harry the border area, just from deeper inside Lebanon

The military believes Hezbollah still possesses thousands of short-range rockets and hundreds of longer-range projectiles, launching them primarily from north of the Litani River.

The Iran dimension further compounds the problem. Tehran has insisted that a........

© The Times of Israel