February 03, 2025
By Nasser Kandil
• Israel’s plan to maintain control over a border strip – now reduced to a wasteland of destruction – has failed. Homes were demolished to deter displaced residents from returning, yet the strategy collapsed despite these efforts. The plan, first announced on October 1, 2024, at the outset of Israel’s ground offensive, was outlined by the commander of the Northern Command in the occupation army under the pretext of preventing presumed infiltrations by Hezbollah’s Radwan forces into northern occupied Palestine. The stated objective was a special operation extending three kilometers deep to dismantle the resistance’s infrastructure. Israeli newspapers detailed the strategy, built on a scorched-earth policy designed to ensure the area remained depopulated.
• Israel had wagered on indefinitely extending the withdrawal timeline under American mediation, citing various pretexts. The calculation rested on the assumption that the Lebanese Army would not engage militarily with Israeli forces and that Hezbollah was constrained by internal Lebanese pressures discouraging any response that could reignite war. Any Hezbollah movement south of the Litani River was framed as a direct violation of agreements, though Hezbollah and the Lebanese government have consistently sought to demonstrate that Israel is the true violator.
• Yet, the mass return of border villagers – storming the ruins of their towns, confronting occupation forces with their bare bodies, and sacrificing martyrs and wounded – shattered Israel’s expectations. This spontaneous movement, entirely outside Israeli projections, breached deep into targeted villages and unraveled the occupation’s plan. Forced to withdraw from most border villages, Israeli forces have since resorted to stalling tactics, knowing full well that withdrawal is their only option, while peaceful weekly demonstrations persist.
• Yesterday, Israel’s Defense Minister, Yisrael Katz, acknowledged an embarrassing – out of the box – challenge. Expressing frustration, he admitted that drones are continuously penetrating occupied Palestine’s airspace, a phenomenon Israel has failed to contain. His threats – declaring “No more drones, or no more Hezbollah” – insinuated a return to war, but rang hollow, as he is well aware that his entity and army lack the capability to enforce such ultimatums. While he postured about returning to war, he knows that such a decision is not as simple as his rhetoric suggests. Perhaps it is time for him to reconsider his approach by thinking outside the box, as he put it, not through empty threats, but by entertaining a different equation: offering to halt Israel’s own violations of Lebanese airspace with reconnaissance drones and warplanes in exchange for stopping the drones he now seems obsessed with, though no one else has even raised the issue.
