IDF, Not Netanyahu, Controls Hezbollah Fight

Sept. 24—Were it up to the Butcher of Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister “Bibi” Netanyahu, Israeli troops and tanks would already be rolling through the West Bank and Lebanon, as he extends his slaughter of Palestinians to the northern front. But it isn’t. Instead, he has been forced to cede control of the northern front to his military commanders in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the security services, including Shin Bet’s Ronan Bar and the Mossad’s David Barnea. Sources report that they are operating from a battleplan that uses air strikes with precision weapons to target Hezbollah’s war fighting capabilities, degrading its ability to strike Israel’s north and central regions with missiles and drones.

Yesterday, the IDF ramped up such strikes, hitting more than 1,200 targets in the West Bank and mostly southern Lebanon, going after arms and weapons, according to the IDF. Targets included civilian residences, however, locations where the IDF claims cruise missiles were being stored and from where they could be launched. Lebanese health officials say the strikes killed more than 356 and wounded over 1,200, including women and children. In the early evening, the IDF said it had carried out “precision” strikes on Beirut, adding that their target was Ali Karaki, a member of Hezbollah’s Jihad Council and commander of Hezbollah’s southern front. According to a report from Lebanon, Karaki was indeed killed in the strike.

Today, the IDF said it carried out a "targeted strike" in Beirut, in which it said it killed the head of Hezbollah's missile unit, Ibrahim Qubaisi. Further airstrikes targeted Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon, as well as deep within the country.

Sources report that the loss of life in these attacks, as well as in another strike Sept. 20 that decapitated the senior Hezbollah leadership as they were gathering to plan a major cross-border attack on Israel, intended to kill “thousands of Israelis and take several hundred hostages,” is significant, and has left the organization bereft of seasoned leadership that could lead an all-out fight against Israel. But it pales before what would happen were Israel to launch a full-scale ground war.

Hezbollah said today that it fired at several military facilities in northern Israel today, including "an explosives factory" near Zichron Yaakov, and according to its Al Manar channel, also targeted airfields, as well as "the central logistical transportation base," in northern Israel. Most of the 220 missiles fired were shot down by Israeli defenses.

Israel is focused on aerial operations and has no immediate plans for a ground operation, an IDF official told the Associated Press, adding that the airstrikes are aimed at curbing Hezbollah’s ability to launch more missiles into Israel. Similarly, Hezbollah has limited its targets to military and security facilities and has not targeted civilians for mass casualties.

“The IDF has significantly separated itself from the messianic, race-hating Bibi,” said a source, “and is attempting to fight a limited war, that would end in a negotiated peace, with Hezbollah withdrawing to areas in Lebanon north of the Litani River [18 miles from the Israeli border] and ending their missile attacks on Israel. This would enable the more than 60,000 Israelis who have evacuated from residences in northern Israel to return home. The IDF and Defense Minister [Yoav] Gallant have said that this is the primary mission of these operations. Bibi has thus far been forced to go along. There have been no words from him about ‘exterminating Hezbollah’ or even destroying Hezbollah as a political force. The military knows they could never accomplish this, as they have failed to do in two other wars in the last 25 years. Those were bloody affairs—the kind that Bibi likes, with major casualties on both sides.

“Bibi wants the tanks to roll and the West Bank and part of Lebanon to be awash with the blood of Hezbollah and Palestinians,” the source continued. “ But the military knows that they will suffer thousands of casualties, as Hezbollah is no pushover like Hamas, even though it has been degraded by the air strikes and exploding pagers and communication devices that the Israelis are accused of detonating last week. They have pre-discounted that [Hezbollah chief Hassan] Nasrallah will have to retaliate, and the IDF is hoping that he sticks to using missiles and drones as he has in striking for a second day the Rafael Advanced Defense Systems industrial complex outside of Haifa that produces equipment for Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system. Most of the more than 200 drones hurled at Israel were shot down.”

“The IDF General Staff expects more such exchanges in the north, at least in the short term,” wrote analyst Amos Harel in yesterday’s Haaretz—“[hitting] Israeli military targets and avoiding civilians. So far, that is what Nasrallah has done, Harel concludes. “Military sources are talking about an attempt to change the rules of the game in the conflict with Hezbollah. Their hope is that the fighting will end in a diplomatic settlement that will require Hezbollah to withdraw its forces north of the Litani River. It can be assumed that Israel would prefer this without being dragged into an all-out war. But these calculations to a great extent rely on the level of civilian casualties on both sides of the border.”

By striking Hezbollah’s planning meeting for a proposed cross-border attack, something that sources say Nasrallah did not support, the IDF may have prevented an Oct.7, 2023 type massacre which would have served Bibi’s purposes in most assuredly launching a bloody slaughter in the north, no matter what the IDF and the security services thought of such a foolish venture.

Two days ago “a commentator decried in Haaretz, ‘Israel is a society that runs on blood,’” said a source. “This is especially true during the near 20-year reign of murderous ‘race-patriot’ Netanyahu, who has kept Israel in an endless cycle of bloodletting with the Palestinians, who, being frustrated, respond in kind, setting off the next cycle. That is what is in play here, with Hezbollah, whose leader Nasrallah, if these Israeli strikes continue, will be under enormous pressure to retaliate with more than rockets and/or with rockets aimed for mass killing of civilians.

“The massive blows that Hezbollah suffered this past week leave behind a strategically important question as to how its relationship with Iran will be affected, and its status with other Iranian proxies. Hezbollah and its leader Hassan Nasrallah have a special status, since Nasrallah is the coordinator and orchestrator of the proxies’ ‘united front.’ Consequently, a severe blow to its capabilities isn’t just a shock to the morale of its remaining members. It could also affect the other proxies, all of which are militarily weaker than Hezbollah,” wrote Zvi Bar’el in Haaretz Sept. 23.

“The only sure way out of the crisis in the north is for there to be a cease-fire deal in Gaza,” said the source. “That deal can be had at almost any time, if Bibi would only cease his sabotage. His co-evil twin Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, is also a problem.”

Speaking of Yahya Sinwar, reports surfaced yesterday that Sinwar is dead, killed by an Israeli air strike, sometime during the last month. The reports have been denied by Israeli intelligence officials, who say that all they are based on is an absence of communications from Sinwar to his associates over a period of several weeks. The intelligence officials say that such absences are not unusual, as Sinwar moves from place to place to prevent the Israelis from zeroing in on his location.

But what might give some credibility to these reports is a leak that there may have been a breakthrough in the ceasefire negotiations. Veteran peace activist Gershon Baskin, who helped broker the 2011 deal to release Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, claimed on Sunday that Hamas had agreed to a one-phase agreement in which it would release all the remaining hostages in exchange within three weeks, for the release of a large number of Palestinian security prisoners being held by Israel. Baskin said Netanyahu’s office has received the text of the offer, as have the mediator governments of Egypt, Qatar, and the U.S. The offer reportedly contains language of a ceasefire and a statement by Israel of its intention to end the war. This runs contrary to the general media line, usually coming from both the White House and the Prime Minister's office, that there has been no progress at all, and none is expected before the Nov. 5 elections in the U.S.

"Now this [the prosal from Hamas] is something that both Sinwar and Bibi would have trouble with, or at least did have trouble within the past,” said the source. “If Hamas [has] accepted this, it might in fact mean that Sinwar is no longer around. As for Bibi, he may have been too clever for his own purposes, To avoid dealing with a new American proposal crafted by [CIA Director and chief U.S. negotiator William] Burns, that had the support of the Israeli military leadership, the security services, the Hostage families, and Defense Minister [Yoav]Gallant, Bibi crafted a one-page proposal that called for a single phase hostage/ prisoner exchange, a ceasefire and an end to the war, and safe passage for Sinwar and his family and several thousand Hamas out of Gaza. With Gallant and the military and security services saying Hamas is no longer a military threat to Israel, and with his own proposal endorsing a one-phase deal and an end to the war, Bibi may be finally backed into a corner. He offered the deal because he thought that Sinwar would reject it. But now Hamas has accepted all the key elements of his plan. If Bibi signs this, [Minister of National Security Itamar] Ben-Gvir and [Minister of Finance Bezalel] Smotrich leave the government and the coalition collapses—and Bibi is gone. There is no war to prevent the calling of an election by the opposition, as the Hezbollah will sue for a negotiated settlement, as they said they would, were a deal in place in Gaza"

Sources report that Burns was already tweaking his plan, with the help of his fellow mediators from Egypt and Qatar. “If this report of Hamas’s new offer is true,” said the source, "if I were Burns, I would adopt it, run to daylight, and finally get the deal done. In a New York minute I would do that, no matter what that nasty bitch [Vice President and Democrat Party nominee for President Kamala] Harris says about the Jewish vote. The next few days will tell.”