Israelis have spent months dreading exactly what happened Saturday: a Hezbollah missile inflicting the kinds of casualties that demand a strong military response, threatening to finally engage Israel in a true multi-front war. And global leaders face a tricky conundrum: How can they act to avert the threat of a massive regional conflagration?
The answer is clear: It’s time for the West to shake off its understandable resistance to direct engagement in the Middle East, and step in. Yes, after the frustrating and costly U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there’s good reason to be cautious of such a move. But the alternative should be seen as even more terrifying — for Israel, and for the rest of the world.
After long months of attrition with few casualties, 12 young Israelis are now dead after an apparently errant strike on a Druze town in the Golan Heights. The question is now not whether Israel will retaliate, but when and how. It is too easy to imagine a radical escalation between Israel and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah drawing in Iran — which backs the terrorist group — not least because Israel’s unpredictable ultra-right government contains a wing with an unrestrained zest for war.
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The concerns for the so-called “free world” — led by the U.S. and arrayed against Iran, Russia and China — are obvious. Once Iran, which is perilously close to developing a nuclear weapon, gets really involved, all hell breaks loose. That hell will not only encompass Israel; it will threaten the stability of the already-fragile international order. Israel is not able to solve such a problem on its own; it should not be asked to.
Barring an end to the Israel-Hamas war — which would likely lead to Hezbollah backing off — the easiest way to protect against the worst-case scenario is to involve NATO.
International mediators from the U.S. and France — which once occupied Lebanon as a colonial power — have already stepped into the conflict, and tried to coax Hezbollah off the ledge. It is clearly not going well.
Hezbollah — backed, funded and armed by Iran — has been attacking Israel since October, ostensibly out of solidarity with Hamas, which sparked the war in Gaza by invading Israel on Oct. 7 and killing close to 1,200 people.
Hezbollah’s attacks have already been devastating for Israel, despite claiming few casualties: Over 60,000 people in the country’s north have had to flee communities near the border. The only reason Israel has yet to open a true second front in its war is the concern that Hezbollah would deploy its massive rocket arsenal against population centers like Tel Aviv.
Israel also knows that it must tread carefully: Hezbollah, like Hamas in Gaza and the Houthis in Yemen, does not care about people suffering, and if Israel were to start taking more decisive military action against it, it would risk inflicting more civilian casualties at a time when the human costs of its war in Gaza have already sparked criticism around the world.
In the wake of this weekend’s tragedy, it’s clear that the international efforts to mediate this extraordinarily delicate state of affairs have been sorely lacking. Increasingly, the prevailing belief in Israel is that Hezbollah’s presence along the Lebanon border can no longer be tolerated. That presence is a direct violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, from 2006, which calls on Hezbollah to pull back and then disarm — and which the group, weakened and unpopular after sparking a war that year with Israel, accepted.
Someone needs to enforce 1701. But it would be better if that were not Israel — an interested party whose every action is a trigger across the region. And it certainly will not be the hapless Lebanese state, which is wracked by corruption and dysfunction, at least if it is acting alone. This is a job for the world community.
On a very basic level, NATO can offer the government of Lebanon any support it needs to take on Hezbollah. Hezbollah and Iran would then have to decide if they really want a war with NATO. The case for international intervention is similar to other instances — the abject failure of local players to not be a threat to themselves and to their region, and the unacceptably high stakes of leaving the situation to fester on its own.
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In a maximal scenario NATO would send in troops.
Precedents might include the NATO’s 1995 intervention in Bosnia, which helped end a horrifying war there, and its 1999 intervention in Kosovo aimed at ending ethnic cleansing and human rights abuses by Serbia.
The first step would be to achieve Lebanese acquiescence: The government of Lebanon needs to understand it needs help, and not let Hezbollah run riot while continuing to claim it is an independent country. It must be compelled to ask for help.
This is not hopeless: The Lebanese understand well that as long as Hezbollah operates with impunity, they are sacrificial pawns in the hands of Iran.
One could imagine a multi-stage process:
- Rearmament: NATO agrees to provide Lebanon with whatever weapons, munitions, technology and training it is missing to be able to reassert control over its territory.
- Establishment of a buffer zone: Assuming the above is a long-term project, NATO forces, with a robust mandate, move into a several-mile-wide strip of south Lebanon and establish a secure buffer zone along the Israel-Lebanon border. This zone would be heavily patrolled and fortified. Hezbollah might not resist this step, but if it did, this is not a fight NATO is supposed to lose, and Israel will need to be compelled to stay out of the fray no matter what.
- Engagement with local communities: Efforts would be made to engage with local Lebanese communities to gain their support and cooperation, emphasizing that one of the mission’s major aims is to ensure their security — including from Israel.
- Negotiations and incentives: The world community would initiate negotiations with Hezbollah and other local actors, offering incentives for disarmament, such as economic aid, political integration and reconstruction support. A significant aid package would be deployed to rebuild Lebanon’s battered economy, improve infrastructure, and create jobs, thereby reducing Hezbollah’s influence by addressing the root causes of its support.
- Targeted military operations: If negotiations fail, NATO would conduct longer-term targeted military operations to dismantle Hezbollah’s military infrastructure, focusing on minimizing civilian casualties and collateral damage.
- Political reforms: Support for political reforms in Lebanon would be crucial to strengthen governance. The basic political system put in place when the French departed — which includes a stipulation that the president must be Christian — hasn’t worked for decades.
- Exit: NATO would gradually transfer security responsibilities to the Lebanese military as its capacity improves.
Obviously, this path would involve potential risks, including military strife stemming from a robust Hezbollah resistance and, at worst, Iranian intervention. But it also has real potential to deliver the shock the region desperately needs to get off its current hopeless course — and to create a system of incentives that compels a much-needed change in Lebanon.
An Israel freed of the threat of Hezbollah will start acting more reasonably as well. The current situation, simply put, s hould not be acceptable to the world.
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