Higher stakes in Lebanon’s next war

A decade after fighting the Second Lebanon War against the Islamist terror militia Hezbollah, Israel is again facing a buildup on its northern border, with the prospect of fresh hostilities looming.

The 2006 conflict, waged over a month during the hot summer, was the culmination of six years of rocket attacks by Hezbollah on cities and towns in northern Israel. By the time that war broke out, Hezbollah had taken advantage of Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000 to assemble 15,000 fighters and thousands of missiles aimed in the direction of the Jewish state. 

On July 12, 2006, Hezbollah terrorists infiltrated Israel off the back of a deadly mortar shell and rocket assault on the northern town of Shlomi. An IDF patrol on the Israeli side of the border was ambushed by the infiltrators, who killed three soldiers and abducted two. For almost two weeks after that outrage, Israel restricted its response to air attacks and artillery fire against Hezbollah positions. But Hezbollah’s refusal to return the kidnapped soldiers and adhere to a ceasefire resulted in an Israeli ground invasion. 

The war officially ended on Aug. 14, though the two kidnapped soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, were not returned until two years later, in coffins, following their murder by Hezbollah. The cessation of hostilities was rooted in U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which called for the complete disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon and for full authority to be restored to the state. It also called for the removal of foreign forces from Lebanon; the bodies of several Iranian Revolutionary Guards were reported to be among the hundreds of Hezbollah fighters killed by the IDF.