Changes in strategy

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Thursday the 27th of June, 2024.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: And I’m Paul Butler.

First up: Israel prepares for another war.

On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said intense fighting at the southern border with Gaza is about to end and the military will soon be moving troops to the northern border.

For nearly nine months since Hamas’s October 7th assault, the better-armed terror group Hezbollah has been firing thousands of rockets and missiles over the border from Lebanon.

BROWN: Tens of thousands of Israelis evacuated from northern Israel and are living in hotels, short-term apartments, and anywhere they can find room waiting to go back home.

What’s happening at the northern border and are changes on the horizon?

WORLD’s Mary Muncy reports.

MARY MUNCY: On October 8th, Yotam Detagani, his pregnant wife, and one-and-a-half-year-old son were at their home about a mile from Israel’s border with Lebanon.

YOTAM DETAGANI: I just asked my wife a simple question, if you start hearing loud noises of missile rockets or landing of missile rockets, will you be afraid?

She said yes.

DETAGANI: So I said, it's not worth it, even if nothing starts, let's just go for a couple of days.

They went to stay with Detagani’s in-laws in central Israel. Just days later, the government ordered the rest of the town to evacuate.

DETAGANI: We never, in our wildest dreams imagined that we'll be sitting in the end of June and with no idea of when and how we'll be able to go back home.

Even during the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, Israel did not order civilians to leave. That conflict ended with United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701. It called for a full cease-fire, for Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah, and for UN peacekeepers to enforce the agreement. Israel says Hezbollah has violated that agreement by amassing weapons just across the border.

SHUKI FRIEDMAN: Hezbollah is currently refusing to obey to the Security Council Resolution, therefore, it’s immediate threat for the Northern Israel.

Shuki Friedman is the Vice President of the Jewish People Policy Institute.

FRIEDMAN: The dilemma is whether Israel should attack or manage to get this target by negotiating.

Friedman says Israel is weighing the long-term elimination of a threat to its people against what it can accomplish militarily.

IDF says 314 soldiers have died since it started ground operations in Gaza. Troops are also fighting against terrorists in Syria, Iraq, and the West Bank. Friedman says between deterring militants and protecting their own state, Israel’s forces are stretched thin.

A recent court decision may help with military numbers. On Tuesday, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled the government must begin conscripting ultra-orthodox Jews. Military-aged men and women in this group were previously exempted so they could spend their time studying the Torah.

FRIEDMAN: The question of conscription to the army was about equality and was about fairness, and the fact that majority of the Israelis do serve in the army.

Beyond fairness, there’s a numbers problem. Freidman says about 66,000 men were exempt before the court’s decision…with another 13,000 added to that number every year. That makes ultra-orthodox communities the largest untapped source for recruitment.

FRIEDMAN: We need these soldiers to join to the IDF and enable us to protect Israel and join the battle.

But one of Israel’s biggest challenges comes down to military strategy. Two weeks ago, Hezbollah fired more than 200 rockets over the border in one of their largest barrages recently… and in April, Iran launched ballistic missiles at Israel. That’s the first time Iran has attacked directly. So far, the only offensive actions Israel has taken has been targeting Hezbollah generals in Lebanon. Otherwise, the IDF has stuck to defensive measures.

RICHARD GOLDBERG: But in the end of the day, Israel's not supposed to be a turtle. No democracy is supposed to be a turtle.

Richard Goldberg is a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He says that while Israel’s defense systems have kept most of the missiles from striking their targets, the IDF cannot survive if it only takes defensive action.

GOLDBERG: The reason to have these systems is to thin out the threat as much as you can, intercept as much as you can, and give your offense the time it needs to prepare for a major counter strike.

The Biden administration has said that it will only support Israel’s defensive action and will not provide weapons for a counter-strike. Goldberg says that puts Israel in an unwinnable situation.

GOLDBERG: Your offense is part of your defense, intrinsically. If you have no offense, if you're hamstrung, if you're hamstrung, you are a sitting duck. You're a turtle, just hoping that your air defenses work. And that's not sustainable, clearly.

Back in central Israel, Detagani and his family agree that something needs to change.

At first, they hopped from apartment to apartment, waiting to go back north. But Detagani says his now two-year-old son and three-week-old daughter need more stability. So this month they signed a lease on an apartment until August of 2025.

DETAGANI: We'll get through it. Winning and continuing on living in the north and in Israel is our only option. We don't have another option.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy.

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