Israel cannot defeat Hezbollah
After two and a half years of Netanyahu’s empty promises of total victory, the opposite reality has emerged as his military strategy appears to have reached its limits
Just as the US and Iran reached a ceasefire agreement - after six weeks of thousands of strikes across Iran that failed to achieve the war’s objectives - the New York Times published an article portraying Netanyahu as the figure who drew the Americans into what he falsely claimed would be a short and swift campaign.
European powers are now distancing themselves from Israel. Tel Aviv’s most significant failure, however, remains its confrontation with Hezbollah.
Hezbollah entered the fight in the early days of the war, proving - contrary to Israeli assessments - that it had managed to rebuild its capabilities, retaining the capacity to strike northern Israeli cities intensively, while complicating the Israeli army’s advances into Lebanon.
To make things worse, US President Donald Trump then imposed a ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel.
Now, after Israeli society embraced a violent rhetoric centred on military power, propaganda and promises of total victory, the reality has proven far more complex than many had hoped.