Even if a cease-fire is negotiated, Israeli analysts say, Hezbollah has repeatedly violated previous agreements with and commitments to Israel. Moreover, the U.S. initiative reportedly adopts the Lebanese side’s insistence that Israel stop all flights over Lebanon, hampering the IDF’s ability to monitor and interdict Hezbollah’s military buildup, something Israeli intelligence would be reluctant to do, and which would put Israel at a strategic disadvantage.

Soon after Oct. 7, Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, indicated that his “Party of God” did not intend to open a second front when Israel invaded Gaza to decapitate Hamas’ leadership and destroy its ability ever to harm Israelis again. Nasrallah and his patron, Iran, undoubtedly feared jeopardizing the military presence the group has steadily built up since its last major clash with Israel in 2006. During that war, which Hezbollah provoked by killing three and kidnapping two Israeli soldiers, Israel bombed the homes and offices of Hezbollah’s leaders in Beirut’s southern suburbs and decimated the country’s infrastructure.

Nasrallah subsequently expressed regret for the war, which the Lebanese blamed on Hezbollah, saying that he never imagined that the capture of two Israeli soldiers would result in a war “of this magnitude.” Now, as in 2006, Hezbollah prefers the ongoing tempo of contained tit-for-tat strikes, allowing the group to achieve significant tactical and strategic gains without incurring the cost of massive devastation.

The current stalemate suits not only Hezbollah, but also its Iranian patron. Tehran has made good use of Hezbollah and its other proxy militias to keep Israel and its allies on the defensive and to set new precedents that advantage Iran. Attacks on ships in the Red Sea by the Iranian-supported Houthi militants in Yemen have depressed shipping there, giving Iran the de facto ability to obstruct freedom of navigation and global trade.

Yet Tehran’s strategic gains are only partly the result of actions by its regionwide network of proxies. They are also a consequence of a U.S. posture that has failed to punish Iranian-inspired aggression while calling for restraint by Iran’s targets. For months, American forces in Syria and Iraq were forced to protect themselves against repeated attacks by Iranian proxies. In Omani-mediated talks with Iran last March, the Biden administration pleaded with the Iranians to curb these attacks. U.S. ally Jordan, too, continues to fear infiltration from Iranian-backed fighters.

Soon after Oct. 7, Israel, fearing that Hezbollah militants might cross the border and seize Israelis as Hamas did in the south, ordered the removal of some 70,000 people from the country’s northern border area. While Hezbollah’s clashes and rocket attacks have caused few civilian casualties so far, the internally displaced Israelis are furious that the government has not protected their homes, fields, and shops from Hezbollah’s daily rocket and missile strikes. This passivity, too, was the result of American preferences. In December, The Wall Street Journal reported that President Joe Biden pressured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to forgo a preemptive strike against Hezbollah days after the Oct. 7 attack.

Nasrallah has made no secret of his desire to raid Israel’s Galilee. In fact, in the months before the Oct. 7 massacre, Hezbollah held a military exercise near the border and released a propaganda video of precisely such raids against Israeli military outposts across the border. This may well have been a diversionary tactic to keep Israel off balance and focused on the northern front while Hamas, whose fighters received training in Lebanon and Tehran for their Oct. 7 attack, planned their assault from Gaza.

Increasingly, there is a growing view in Israel that, given Hezbollah’s enduring enmity and its vast, sophisticated military arsenal, a war with the Party of God and, in effect, with its patron Iran, may be inevitable.

But there remains deep division within Israel’s national security establishment over when such a war should occur. Some analysts say that now is the right moment to strike. The threat from Hamas has been severely degraded, if not neutralized. The north is already evacuated and the Israeli Defense Forces are already mobilized and in fighting mode. Many Israelis, terrified by their country’s obvious vulnerability, favor striking Israel’s enemies sooner rather than later, suggesting that a war with Hezbollah would enjoy strong public support. The assassination of so many senior Hezbollah commanders suggests that Israel’s operational intelligence is far better in Lebanon today than it was in 2006, when the IDF had only 10 days’ worth of targets to strike.

If Israel chooses to go to war with Hezbollah, it would have to strike before October and the start of the rainy season and then winter. In fact, some Israeli analysts believe that the ongoing IDF strikes in Lebanon and targeted assassinations of key Hezbollah commanders are not simply opportunistic but have been methodically shaping the battlefield for an eventual, though not necessarily imminent, ground invasion. Amiad Cohen, an IDF reservist officer who heads the Herut Center, a conservative think tank, recently described what he saw as the IDF strategy over the past eight months: “We’re crushing, mostly with airstrikes, first of all the people running the operations in southern Lebanon, and the second part of it, the infrastructure,” including underground structures.

Cohen told me over the phone that Israel should have invaded southern Lebanon months ago. “In April I said that this was the time to force Hezbollah back behind the Litani River,” he said. “But President Biden’s opposition to escalating the conflict prevented us from doing that.”

Other analysts argue that current conditions are not ideal for a large-scale war, albeit for different reasons. “Not now,” said Tamir Hayman, the former head of Israeli military intelligence who now heads Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Hayman said it would be better to wait a couple of years. Israel, he said, now lacked the resources, international legitimacy, or Washington’s approval for such a war. Israel should strike Hezbollah “when we’re ready.”

Although Israel would ultimately win a war with Hezbollah, the price could be horrendous. While Hezbollah rockets and drones now fall on houses in northernmost towns like Metula, and set fields and forests on fire, they may well overwhelm Israel’s air defenses and level villages and parts of cities. Israel’s civilian death toll in such a war could easily dwarf the cost of Oct. 7.

Cohen disagrees. He said that with shelters in almost every Israeli home and a new system of laser defenses against rockets and missiles coming online soon, Israel could win a war with Lebanon and establish a defensible border at the Litani River within two or three months, at an acceptable cost to the Israeli military and civilians.

Analysts in D.C. argue that such a war would require American buy-in. They note that Israel remains dependent on the U.S. for military supplies that would be required for such a war, and President Biden is adamantly opposed to an escalation. His administration, which has publicly criticized Israel’s operations in Gaza and withheld 3,000 bombs and 23,000 munitions, has incentivized Israel’s foes. Moreover, because of its longstanding military aid relationship with the U.S., Israel is now more dependent on American supplies than it was during the last war. The relationship also had the effect of undermining Israel’s defense industry, which has been scrambling to meet demand for ammunition and weapons systems since Oct. 7.

After nine months of fighting in Gaza, “Israel needs to refill its stocks of JDAMs and other critical munitions needed to fight Hezbollah,” said David Schenker, a former assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs who has worked closely on Lebanon policy, including the funding of the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF). Plus, many reservists are now on their third consecutive rotation. “The IDF badly needs a break,” he said.

The Biden administration’s ongoing effort to broker an agreement between Israel and Hezbollah also risks handing the terror group a win. For months, U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein has been trying to negotiate a de-escalation plan loosely based on United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel. The document called for establishing a zone free of military personnel and weapons save for those of the Lebanese government. However, its critics say, the resolution was predestined to fail, as its implementation relied on Hezbollah’s accomplices and subordinates, the Lebanese government and the LAF, as well as a neutered U.N. force mandated to coordinate its activities with the Lebanese. While UNSCR 1701 may have looked good to Israel’s supporters on paper, its aims were at odds with the realities on the ground, rendering its promises of security practically meaningless. Critics of Hochstein’s talks fear a repetition of this failure and a similar outcome if by some chance his negotiations succeed.

While the need for security has almost always trumped the desire for economic growth for Israelis, a full-scale war with Hezbollah would come at a high economic cost. In the last quarter of 2023, Israel’s economy contracted sharply and its gross domestic product shrank by 20%. By May, however, the economy had rebounded, and first-quarter GDP grew some 14%, demonstrating its resilience.

Israel’s astonishing economic record, however, may have also contributed to its current strategic peril. For too long, Israel’s success as the “startup nation” has blinded the country and its leadership to growing dangers posed by its neighbors. Now, to protect themselves against Hezbollah and its patron Iran, the cost for Israelis has become far higher.