Matthew Levitt
In the wake of the Israeli military’s lackluster performance in its last war with Hezbollah, back in 2006, an official Israeli commission of inquiry documented both the shortcomings of the Israel Defense Force’s (IDF’s) tactical performance during the war as well as the “weakness in strategic thinking” that went into the decision to go to war and the development of unclear and unachievable war goals. Named for its chairman, the Winograd commission concluded that the IDF not only went into the 2006 war ill prepared from an intelligence perspective, it then failed to alert the political decision-makers to discrepancies between what it hoped to achieve and what measures policymakers authorized the military to employ on the battlefield.
Fast-forward 18 years, and the IDF is back in southern Lebanon. But this time, Israeli military and intelligence planners are benefiting from years of intelligence collection and the production of an entirely new operational framework, based on an “in-depth critical learning process” directed by IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi during his tenure from 2019 to 2023. The IDF has clearly implemented lessons-learned when it comes to battlefield tactics targeting Hezbollah. What remains to be seen, however, is whether Israel also remedied the strategic shortcomings of its last war with Hezbollah. While Israel has made remarkable tactical gains in recent weeks, converting these into strategic benefits will be challenging. The Israeli government is eyeing two sets of strategic goals: The first, ensuring that Iran’s primary proxy remains too weak to pose a serious threat to Israeli security, is nonnegotiable. The second, reining in Hezbollah’s influence in Lebanese politics, is largely aspirational. The lessons of the last war can help inform how Israel might achieve these goals and what is beyond the control of Israeli policy.
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