In an opinion piece published by Israel Hayom, Israeli researcher Eyal Zisser warned that “the countdown to another war on the northern border has already begun.” A year after what he described as a “crushing victory” over Hezbollah, Zisser now admits that little has changed — and that the supposed defeat of the Lebanese resistance was an illusion born out of wishful thinking rather than reality.
According to Zisser, “Hezbollah was said to have been crushed, its senior leaders — including Hassan Nasrallah — eliminated, and much of its military capacity destroyed. Lebanon supposedly elected a president and formed a government committed to disarming the group. Washington, in its usual optimism and detachment from reality, declared that an Israeli-Lebanese peace was merely a matter of time.”
Yet, as Zisser concedes, history repeats itself. He draws parallels with earlier wars where Israel declared victory — from the Nakba of 1948 to the Six-Day War of 1967 — only to face renewed resistance days later. “In wars between Israel and the Arabs,” he writes, “there are no absolute victories. We crush their armies, only to discover shortly after the ceasefire that they remain alive and capable.”
A “Victory” That Faded in the Smoke
Zisser acknowledges that what Tel Aviv hailed as triumph has quickly eroded. Iran is rebuilding its strength, Hamas still governs Gaza, and Hezbollah, he says, “is quietly regaining its capabilities.” In his words, Lebanon represents “a unique case of total failure.” No international pressure forced Israel to halt its bombing campaign; instead, it was Israel that initiated “a flawed and questionable agreement everyone knew Hezbollah would never honor.”
He continues, “We knew this — yet we agreed anyway, hoping that Hezbollah, the so-called radical Shia organization whose conflict with Israel defines its existence, would somehow act responsibly and disarm. We also hoped that the Lebanese state — which even the American envoy Tom Barrack recently described as failed and dysfunctional — would deploy its army against Hezbollah, a force far stronger and more disciplined than Lebanon’s official military.”
A Temporary Calm, Not Surrender
A year on, Zisser concedes that the “great victory” has dissolved into stagnation. Hezbollah avoids open confrontation, not because it has grown sympathetic to Zionism, he argues, but because “it has chosen the patience of strategy — waiting for anger to subside and the next opportunity to strike.” The group, he admits, is rebuilding its strength, maintaining grassroots support within Lebanon’s Shi’a community, and reopening weapons channels from Iran “to replace those lost with the fall of the Assad regime.”
“Hezbollah speaks little now,” he writes, “but it remains firm: it has no intention of surrendering its arms. ‘Resistance’ remains its strategic choice. The question is not if Hezbollah will resume its operations against us — but when.”
Israeli Self-Deception and the Return of Fear
Despite Israel’s boasts about its freedom of action in Lebanon and its airstrikes on what it calls “minor Hezbollah operatives,” Zisser admits these actions are more about optics than actual deterrence. “Do we really believe,” he asks, “that Hezbollah — which commands tens of thousands of fighters — will surrender because we killed 300 of its men last year?”
The once-confident rhetoric has grown subdued, and even Israeli analysts now acknowledge that Hezbollah’s silence is tactical. Its restraint conceals calculation, not weakness. From Tel Aviv’s perspective, the northern front appears calm; from Hezbollah’s, it is a patient preparation for the next confrontation. As Zisser warns, “The quiet may last for years — but the question is not whether the fighting will return, but when.”
A Warning from Within
Zisser concludes with a thinly veiled call for preemptive action: “It would be wise for Israel to act decisively to neutralize the northern threat — or at least to monitor Hezbollah closely, lest we be surprised again. The countdown to renewed conflict on the Lebanese border has begun.”
Analysis and Broader Context (Sunna Files Editorial Note)
While the Israeli researcher’s words are framed as a warning to his government, they also reveal the persistent Israeli anxiety toward the resistance axis — a fear not born of Hezbollah’s immediate actions but of what it represents: steadfastness, patience, and the survival of an anti-occupation spirit despite decades of aggression.
The very tone of Zisser’s article exposes a deeper truth: that Israel’s wars, however brutal, rarely achieve their declared goals. From Gaza to southern Lebanon, every campaign ends with temporary calm and renewed resistance. The so-called “victories” become pauses — fragile interludes in a struggle that continues as long as occupation and injustice endure.
In the end, what Tel Aviv describes as “the countdown to war” may well be, from another lens, the countdown to accountability — a reckoning with the moral and political failure of a state that cannot coexist without subjugating others.
