The Israeli army is mired in the quagmire of war in southern Lebanon.
According to Al Jazeera, the Zionist regime has suffered internal divisions over the Third Lebanon War and has lost its consensus due to the severe human losses that the Zionist army is suffering from the loss of soldiers and officers on the Lebanese and Gaza fronts, especially the clashes with Hezbollah on the northern borders.
Last October has been described as the bloodiest period for the Zionist regime since the October 7, 2023 attack, with 88 Zionist soldiers and settlers killed in the Gaza and Lebanese fronts and other scattered operations inside the occupied territories.
Of these deaths, 37 soldiers were killed in clashes in southern Lebanon and on the northern borders. This figure is based on a report by the Yedioth Aharonot newspaper website.
Following these human losses, military and political experts’ analyses agree that the longer the war against Lebanon lasts and the more remote the possibility of victory or any political agreement becomes, the more the Zionist regime will be caught in a dangerous abyss and its army will drown in the Lebanese quagmire. Especially since Hezbollah has regained its capabilities and consolidated its field presence.
Analyses indicate that Hezbollah, despite the blows inflicted and the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, the party’s Secretary General, and many of its senior military commanders, will impose much more dangerous challenges on the regime in light of the human losses it has inflicted on the regime’s army.
According to Zionist assessments, Hezbollah is preparing for a scenario of a long-term war. This is the scenario that the Zionist regime fears and may be forced to stop the ground war in Lebanon without achieving victory, but it will still not be able to end the war.
An indicator of collapse
One indicator of this internal divide is that Amir Makhoul, a researcher at the Center for Arab Progress Policy Studies and an expert on the Israeli regime, believes that Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet is deliberately missing opportunities for a political solution with Lebanon and instead escalating the war and expanding the scope of military attacks. He believes that this will cause a change in the Lebanese government’s position and force it to make concessions to make fundamental changes to the provisions of Resolution 1701.
In this context, Makhoul told Al Jazeera that opposition voices in the Israeli regime that want to take advantage of the opportunity provided by the military operation to achieve a political solution on the northern front with Lebanon have increased.
He added that the Israeli settlers cannot bear the huge amount of human losses.
Despite the high costs of the war against Lebanon and the human losses suffered by the Israeli army, Makhol states that most Jews from all political and party lines still support the continuation of the war in Lebanon and Gaza, but this is not a decisive majority and reflects the division among the Zionist settlers and the weakening of the consensus on the war, which prevailed before the military operation in southern Lebanon.
In this context, Shaul Mofaz, the former Chief of Staff of the Israeli army and former Minister of War of the regime, accuses the Netanyahu cabinet of continuing military maneuvers and the continuation of the war, and not engaging in any political initiative or preparing a roadmap to end the war.
In statements to the Israeli Channel 12, Mofaz accused Netanyahu of not caring about the release of the remaining Zionist prisoners held by Hamas in Gaza and instead focusing on continuing the war on several fronts to secure his personal and political interests.
He pointed to the scale of the Israeli army’s casualties on the Lebanese and Gaza fronts, and considered these casualties to be the result of the political leanings of Netanyahu and his cabinet from the extreme right-wing parties.
He also strongly criticized the cabinet’s decision to evacuate residents of the Israeli settlements bordering Lebanon, saying that this decision was disastrous and that over time it had become a strategic crisis that had placed a heavy burden on the armed forces and had depleted the army’s capacity.