If the IDF’s respect for the ceasefire shows by the daily noise of explosions and the damage caused in South Lebanon that it is only theoretical, Hezbollah signals, more discreetly, that it has not stopped the fight either. The weapon used, whose widespread use has surprised the Israelis, is a cheap drone which the Shiite militia has made a constituent element of its strategy and which allows it to effectively play on asymmetry with its adversary. Used sparingly, this fiber optic FPV drone has the particularity of being difficult to detect by anti-aircraft defense. Above all, it can travel several dozen kilometers to strike the Israelis in their rear, which endangers the objective of establishing a buffer zone in Lebanon to protect northern Israel.
Why want to make the border part of South Lebanon a no man’s land, if it means continuing to suffer attacks from Hezbollah on Israeli territory? Many soldiers were targeted while resting in their camps or preparing to board their vehicles to depart for missions. Rescue helicopters coming to evacuate the injured were also targeted. Bulldozers helping to clear villages were destroyed, as were a number of Merkava heavy tanks and even an Iron Dome platform with its crew. The images speak for themselves and Hezbollah does not hesitate to publish them on social networks.
Lazar Berman, journalist at Times of Israelquestions the fact that, years after drones transformed battlefields, the IDF seems taken aback in Lebanon, having operated for decades with the awareness that anything that came from the air was “friendly.” Neither the PLO, nor Hamas, nor Islamic Jihad and, until recently, not even Hezbollah had air assets.
Paradox: Israel, which was a pioneer in military drones, finds itself exposed to their threat. It is the civilian accessibility and inexpensive nature of these drones that give Hezbollah an opportunity to reestablish balance with Israeli firepower and technology. For four years, Ukraine developed drone armies which made it possible to counter Russian artillery, to slow down the invasion, and above all to compensate for the lack of fighters. The Ukrainian front buckled, but it never collapsed. He owes it in part to drones. The Russians then regained the advantage by producing millions of fiber optic drones, the same ones that Hezbollah now uses.
Netanyahu gathered his generals to find
a solution
The headache facing the IDF is added to that of having to fight Hezbollah in the very place where the militia was born, a landscape of urban and plant jungles, where each hill is a Swiss cheese of tunnels. Between 1982 and the year 2000, the date of the Israeli withdrawal from South Lebanon, the militia resisted it within a majority Shiite population which, despite a recent decline in popularity, continues to support it. It is also in the heart of these small mountains that the militia has placed rocket and missile launchers which continue to target northern Israel, causing the exodus of its inhabitants.
The irruption of drones complicates the IDF’s operation, to the point that Benjamin Netanyahu summoned his generals to try to find a solution to the problem, recognizing that countermeasures would take time. With the fall of Bashar al-Assad, Hezbollah lost in 2024 its supply routes in Syria through which its heavy weapons transited from Iran. The Shiite militia has not, however, laid down its arms, and today, it is taking up the lessons of Ukraine.
