Israel’s last war against Hezbollah ended in stalemate. Fierce border clashes suggest a win won’t be easy

Northern Israel (CNN) — The Ziv hospital in northern Israel is on high alert. Non-urgent operations are on hold, staff have been asked to consider donating blood when needed, and all patients – including newborns in the maternity unit – have been moved underground.

The expectation here is clear: If Israel ends up sending more troops to southern Lebanon, it could get bloody.

“We have been in a war situation for the past year, but after the army entered into Lebanon, our services and all of the staff are ready for, unfortunately, the next wave of casualties,” the hospital’s director, Salman Zarka, told CNN.

Ziv Medical Center is the only hospital in the area and the closest to Israel’s borders with Lebanon and Syria, as well as the occupied Golan Heights. The hospital in Safed has been receiving people injured in cross-border fire for months, including children hurt in the deadly attack on Majdal Shams in July.

“When you have combat on the ground, usually you have more wounded and, unfortunately, dead soldiers. I hope it will not happen, (but) we have to be ready,” Zarka, an IDF reservist and a former commander of the IDF’s Medical Services Center, added.

When the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched a ground operation against the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah in southern Lebanon last week, its commanders insisted any action across the border would be “limited” in both geographical scope and duration. But the reality on the ground indicates it might be preparing for the possibility of a much bigger war.

The IDF said on Tuesday that units from four divisions are now fighting in southern Lebanon. The force doesn’t disclose its troop numbers, but each division is thought to consist of some 10,000 to 20,000 soldiers. Israel has also broadened evacuation orders to roughly a quarter of Lebanese territory, with more than 1.2 million people now displaced, according to the United Nations.

Daniel Sobelman, an international security expert at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said the IDF has remained intentionally vague about the scope of the operation.

“Initially, Israel said this is just to make sure that all the (Hezbollah) infrastructure on the other side of the fence is destroyed,” he said.

“But the thing that we all know is that this infrastructure doesn’t stop a few hundreds of meters or even a few kilometers in, it stretches out all the way to Beirut, into northern Lebanon, into the Beqaa Valley. If Israel really wants to clean up that area, then we would be looking at a very long-term operation,” he said.

The idea of a major ground invasion causes concern on both sides of the border, where memories of the last war remain raw. The 2006 conflict is known in Israel as the “Second Lebanon War” even though it was the third time Israel publicly said it entered Lebanon’s territory, after invading it in 1978 and 1982. The war ended in a stalemate after 34 days, after some 1,100 Lebanese and about 170 Israelis, including 120 soldiers, were killed.

For the Lebanese, the current conflict is already bloodier than the last war. More than 1,500 people have been killed in the country since September 16, when Israel stepped up its campaign against Hezbollah, according to a CNN tally of Lebanese health ministry statements.

Several international organizations have criticized Israel for the escalation. The UN said last month that “while Hezbollah has fired more missiles indiscriminately, forcing thousands of Israelis to leave their homes, Israel has escalated its indiscriminate and large-scale airstrikes across Lebanon,” warning that the increased violence “adds to the instability.”

And while the casualties on the Israeli side are much lower and mostly limited to military, they are not insignificant: At least 14 IDF soldiers have been killed. Zarka told CNN there has also been a steady stream of injured soldiers coming to the hospital since the ground operation started – the hospital received well over 100 in just the first few days, he said.

Both the IDF and Hezbollah said there had been fierce clashes and several cross-border attacks in the past week.

The level of resistance from Hezbollah has surprised many observers given that Israel has recently killed nearly the entire leadership of the Iran-backed group, including its long-time chief Hassan Nasrallah.

At the same time, Hezbollah continues to fire rockets into Israel on a regular basis. And while most of the projectiles are intercepted by Israeli air defense systems, some slip through. On Wednesday, two Israeli civilians were killed when a rocket struck Kiryat Shmona, a town a few miles away from the border.

Several Israeli soldiers who are currently fighting in Lebanon told CNN the open, mountainous terrain where their enemy is at home makes the operation difficult.

One soldier, who was deployed to Gaza from October to March and in July and August and who is now fighting in southern Lebanon, said the war along the northern border is very different to what he experienced in Gaza.

“The challenge is not that Hezbollah is more equipped by Iran or have more training. The challenge is the switch in the head from months of fighting in an urban territory versus fighting in an open area territory,” he said, adding that even the most basic maneuvers – including the way soldiers move around in a column – are completely different.

Since IDF troops are not allowed to speak to the media without official permission, CNN is not publishing the name of the soldier.

Guerilla warfare

On paper, Israel’s army is far superior to Hezbollah’s militia fighters. It has more advanced and sophisticated weapons, a significantly higher number of troops, better intelligence and stronger allies.

But the soldier who spoke with CNN said these advantages don’t count for much in the type of fighting that is going on in the hills of southern Lebanon, where superior weaponry counts for less.

Sobelman, the security expert, said Israel had a similar experience in the 2006 war with Hezbollah.

“Hezbollah were up against the strongest military in the Middle East, there were literally hundreds of Israeli air raids per day, and artillery, and all the capabilities that a modern, advanced military has to offer. And they were not defeated. They survived. And throughout the entire Israeli offensive, Hezbollah was able to fire hundreds of rockets into Israel every day,” he said.

Sobelman said that after the 2006 fiasco, Israel had spent almost two decades preparing for its next confrontation with Hezbollah.

“The assumption has been that the next war is going to be with Hezbollah, not Hamas. No one on Earth probably imagined a scenario along the lines of October 7. Instead, Israel invested almost two decades preparing itself for what we’ve seen over the past several weeks – and in terms of Israel’s intelligence penetration of Hezbollah, it’s astounding.”

But while Israel has managed to kill several of Hezbollah’s top figures and inflicted much damage on the group’s rank-and-file members using exploding pagers and walkie-talkies, as well as airstrikes that have also claimed civilian lives, the IDF continues to face fierce resistance in southern Lebanon.

Because Hezbollah has been preparing for this war as well.

“The expectation is that Israel will win this war without paying too high a price. But that’s never the case with guerilla warfare,” Sobelman said, adding that Israel is fighting on a territory that Hezbollah knows much better and that its opponent is determined to inflict as many losses on the IDF as possible.

“They’re entrenched in underground facilities and they’re playing a defensive game,” he said of Hezbollah’s fighters. “And it doesn’t matter how many of them you kill, still (in a guerilla war) the weaker side ultimately wins by imposing a sustained accumulation of costs.”

He said this is exactly what happened in 2006, when Israel was not able to achieve a decisive victory despite its superior capabilities.

While the IDF has not provided any details about how its troops died in Lebanon, Hezbollah has claimed to have successfully ambushed Israeli soldiers on several occasions, saying it killed and injured a number of them.

‘Bring it on’

Despite the challenges, the IDF seems determined to push on. Speaking on Wednesday, IDF chief of staff Herzi Halevi said Israel would “strike Hezbollah with intensity, without allowing them any respite or recovery.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went as far as warning the Lebanese people that they face falling “into the abyss of a long war” because of Hezbollah.

Israeli soldiers on the ground seem prepared for a long war. “I wish we didn’t have to expand the scope of the ground incursion… but if we have to fight so that the children can go to kindergarten and not be afraid of a missile strike, we will do that too,” the soldier who spoke with CNN said, adding that he and his fellow fighters were “stronger than ever, ready and determined.”

This sentiment seemed prevalent among the dozens of Israeli soldiers CNN encountered while reporting from around the border after the IDF announced the ground operation. Most troops appeared in high spirits in the days after the ground operation began. When asked about Hezbollah specifically, one group responded by calling out “Bring it on!”

But some in Israeli society are not so sure going into Lebanon is a good idea. Several civilians living in the northern parts of Israel told CNN last week that they fear a ground war could become very deadly.

And some, like Itamar Greenberg, are prepared to go to prison in protest against the war. The 18-year-old is a conscientious objector, or “refusenik.”

Conscription is mandatory for most Israeli citizens, men and women, and only a few young people dare to refuse on moral basis. A handful end up in prison each year.

Greenberg has spent 60 days in prison so far – 30 days after his initial draft rejection and 30 days after he was called up a second time and refused again. CNN spoke to him in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, four days before he was scheduled to go back to prison after refusing to enlist for the third time.

Before the IDF attempted to draft him, Greenberg was an activist campaigning against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and against increasingly violent attacks by Jewish settlers on Palestinian villages. Some of these protests turned violent after Israeli security authorities got involved – clearly leaving a mark on Greenberg. When a police car drove past, its sirens on, he flinched and looked around with worry.

Greenberg told CNN he had refused to enlist in the army in protest of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, its war in Gaza and, most recently, its operation in Lebanon. “The war in Lebanon started when I was in jail. I joked that I didn’t even have the time to refuse all their f**king wars,” he noted.

He was born in 2006, the year of the Second Lebanon War – a coincidence that is not lost on him. “The first (Israeli) soldiers have now been killed in the Third Lebanon War and the children who will fight in the Fourth Lebanon War are being born now,” he said.

“This war is creating the next war. The children that see their family die will not stop. I am pretty sure, based on the history, they will choose resistance and violence. It’s sad, but it’s the reality.”

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CNN’s Zeena Saifi contributed to this report.