Israel can’t kill the Hezbollah hydra

For 900 years, Beaufort Castle has dominated the villages and olive groves of South Lebanon. Yet even before its recent capture by the IDF, this crusader stronghold was far more than a medieval relic. For almost two decades, Beaufort became a symbol in stone of the futility of Israeli occupation. IDF troops first dislodged Palestinian militants from the fortress back in 1982, but then spent the next two decades trapped behind its walls, its tiny garrison often little more than prisoners of the Hezbollah fighters beyond. The steady stream of Israeli casualties at Beaufort helped spark the country’s peace movement, while movies and books vividly depicted what soon became known as the IDF’s very own Vietnam.

Now, this ancient castle has reprised its role: in what has become Israel’s largest incursion into South Lebanon since its 2000 retreat from the region. With IDF forces pushing past the Litani River, a natural barrier that’s played a major role in military operations dating back centuries, Benjamin Netanyahu seems intent on occupying South Lebanon once more. Yet with Hezbollah showing no sign of surrender, the risk is that Beaufort once again becomes emblematic of Israeli hubris.

Hezbollah has long been Israel’s more effective opponent. But after exploding pagers and airstrikes gutted the group’s leadership in September 2024, both Tel Aviv and Washington dismissed the Shia militants as a spent force. Following a ceasefire that autumn, giving IDF Northern Command a much-needed break, Netanyahu finally had the confidence to launch a ground invasion of Hezbollah’s stronghold in South Lebanon — especially after the cold war with Hezbollah’s patron in Tehran went hot. “There was an earned sense of satisfaction after decades of frustration in dealing with the most dangerous terrorists Israel has ever faced,” says Avi, a former Israeli intelligence operative specialising in Hezbollah, and who continues to consult the IDF as a reservist.

And so, in March 2026, IDF tanks rolled north once more. To be sure, Hezbollah retained significant military capabilities, not least thousands of rockets. Yet after eviscerating its leaders, Israel thought it would take years for the group to rebuild, particularly given a distracted Iran, and when the end of the Assad regime robbed the militants of strategic depth. As Avi now admits, however, “our enemies in Lebanon regrouped”. That’s something of an understatement. Now in its fourth month, Israel’s latest Lebanese incursion is proceeding far more slowly, and much more bloodily, than Tel Aviv expected. Over two-dozen IDF troops have been killed in South Lebanon since early March, with one medical captain dying near Beaufort just the other day.

Israel’s problems are largely a matter of strategy. While IDF forces, backed by heavy armour and relentless air strikes, have made physical progress, pushing some 15 kilometres into Hezbollah’s rugged stronghold, two new tactics by the militants have greatly increased the cost.

The first is a flatter organisational structure, focused on small-unit guerrilla tactics. The second is an expanded campaign of cheap-but-deadly drones, ideal for harassing the Israelis at every turn. Beyond the human toll, this approach has damaged or destroyed dozens of tanks and other armoured vehicles, while also targeting sophisticated radar, intelligence gathering, and missile-defence systems on Israel’s northern border.

Speaking by encrypted messenger last month, Has’n, a veteran Hezbollah commander based in Beirut, speaks with open confidence about the conflict. Technical innovations aside, he seems bullish about leading the enemy deep into Lebanon. Grudgingly respectful of IDF operations in Israel itself — they fight, Has’n says, “for their land” — just 500 meters across the border “the resistance” and its hit-and-run tactics are paying off.

This didn’t happen overnight. After the 2024 debacle — which saw Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s famous leader, killed alongside dozens of other commanders — the group didn’t attempt to restore its conventional military capacities. Instead, according to Israeli and Lebanese security officials, as well as Hezbollah commanders interviewed by  UnHerd , the group pivoted back to its roots as a guerrilla group: deploying the same tactics that caused Israel grief back in the Eighties and Nineties.

This reorganisation was directly led by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which sent hundreds of operatives to Lebanon, and which for the first time in decades appears to directly command Hezbollah fighters in the field. “The IRGC sent officers to take a much more hands-on approach in the wake of the ceasefire,” says Nick Blanford, an analyst at the Atlantic Council. “And they’ve streamlined the group.”

The relationship between Hezbollah and the Iranian regime has always been public: Tehran funds Hezbollah, by some estimates to the tune of $700 million a year, and supplies much of its advanced arsenal of weapons. But th…