From March until early June 2026, Israeli discourse attempted to reduce the difficulties facing the occupation army on the Lebanese front to a single technical problem: confronting loitering attack drones.
Israel deliberately obscured other details of what was taking place on the battlefield. Yet a review of three months of confrontations presents a very different picture. The drones were only one weapon within a much broader military system.
According to a field analysis prepared by the Al-Ittihad Centre for Research and Development, the real challenge confronting the occupation army rested on eight interconnected pillars, ranging from explosive devices and intelligence containment to drones, guided missiles, point-blank combat, precision artillery, and the ability to absorb intense aerial bombardment before returning to fight from beneath the rubble.
Booby-Trapped Terrain
The axes of advance through Lebanese villages were not the open corridors anticipated in Israeli calculations. Explosive devices effectively transformed the terrain itself into a weapon.
In Rshaf and Haddatha during May, the detonation of an explosive device against a D9 bulldozer did not end the operation. When a force advanced to recover the vehicle, it entered another field of explosives. The resulting chain of detonations destroyed four bulldozers.
On 13 May, an explosive device targeted an advancing force and then a Namer armoured vehicle, before resistance fighters disabled a remotely operated booby-trapped vehicle that the occupation was attempting to push into the town square.
North of Taybeh on 14 May, an explosive device struck a force infiltrating towards the water pumping station and forced it to withdraw under cover of smoke.
On the Taybeh-Deir Seryan road on 27 March, explosive devices were used to halt Israeli vehicles and soldiers and break the momentum of the advancing force before direct engagement with resistance fighters.
The significance lies not merely in the number of explosives used, but in where they were planted and when they were detonated.
The ability to booby-trap axes that Israel believed it controlled through firepower demonstrated that declared control did not necessarily amount to actual control on the ground.
When the bulldozer intended to clear the route becomes a target, followed by the force sent to recover it, the function of offensive engineering begins to collapse and opening a corridor becomes an attritional operation in itself.
Blinding the Occupation’s Eyes
Israeli military doctrine has long relied on aerial and intelligence superiority, allowing aircraft, drones and surveillance systems to observe the battlefield before ground forces move through it.
Yet the resistance continued launching salvos and managing engagements from areas Israel had declared destroyed, including Bint Jbeil, Ainata, Qawzah and Taybeh.
More concerning for Israel was the shift from merely attempting to conceal fighters from aerial surveillance to directly targeting the surveillance systems themselves.
The battlefield saw the downing of Hermes 450 Zik drones in several areas, a Hermes 900 over Qantara on 28 April, and a Heron 1 in the Bekaa, alongside the use of surface-to-air missiles against fighter aircraft and helicopters.
In Qawzah on 25 March, resistance fighters fired air defence missiles at a helicopter attempting to land to evacuate casualties from damaged tanks, forcing it to retreat.
On 15 and 24 April, fighter aircraft operating over the Bekaa and southern Lebanon were targeted, forcing them to withdraw and pushing Israeli aviation to operate from higher altitudes.
The direct consequence was that Israeli ground forces, heavily dependent on aerial surveillance and close air support, could no longer operate beneath an uncontested protective umbrella.
Every threat against a reconnaissance drone, evacuation helicopter or fighter aircraft made the ground battle more uncertain and dangerous for Israeli troops advancing into Lebanese territory.
A Different Kind of Air Force
The irony is that the loitering munitions and drones that Israel sought to portray as the core of the problem were in reality only one component of a much broader structure.
This does not diminish their importance. Rather, it places them in their proper role as precision weapons performing missions traditionally associated with air forces.
During the confrontations, resistance fighters targeted bases and positions including the Meron air base, Shaga base, Ya’ara barracks, Amiad base and camps in the occupied Golan Heights.
Drones also reached Acre, Nahariya and Haifa, striking command rooms, soldiers’ tents, radars and air defence platforms.
On 23 May, swarms of loitering drones targeted Iron Dome platforms, electronic warfare radars and command vehicles in Biranit, Ramim and the Jal al-Allam position.
During March and April, the resistance targeted strategic bases in Haifa, Tel Aviv, Acre and the Golan Heights.
On 13 April, it launched a coordinated drone swarm against six targets simultaneously in Kiryat Shmona, Beit Hillel and Yiftah, including soldiers’ sleeping quarters, fire-control rooms and command tents.
During May, loitering drones were also used against Merkava tanks and D9 bulldozers in areas where anti-tank missile operators did not have a direct line of sight.
Point-Blank Combat
When occupation forces attempted to reduce their exposure to long-range fire and move into close combat, they encountered another equation: point-blank fighting.
In Khiam, Bint Jbeil, Chamaa, Deir Seryan, Qantara and Zawtar al-Sharqiya, engagements with resistance fighters continued for hours.
The resistance fire was not random. The pattern began with light weapons to pin down the force, followed by medium machine guns to isolate it, before direct rocket-propelled weapons were introduced against both the soldiers and the armoured vehicles covering them.
In Deir Seryan and Qantara, point-blank fighting continued for hours.
On 15 April, a force from the 101st Paratroopers Battalion fell into a resistance ambush on the Maroun al-Ras-Bint Jbeil axis. The engagement began with an explosive device and developed into direct combat.
On the outskirts of Zawtar and Yahmar al-Shaqif on 30 May, fighting continued from dawn until nightfall, preventing the occupation from establishing effective control over the area.
In Ainata on 10 May, the engagement demonstrated the entire sequence: explosive devices first, followed by infantry combat, and then the targeting of supporting tanks with loitering drones.
One Integrated System
This dimension represents the core of the battlefield picture.
A typical resistance operation did not consist of a single anti-tank missile strike that ended when a tank was hit. Instead, it unfolded through a sequence of interconnected attacks in which evacuation and support assets were progressively drawn into the engagement.
The various combat branches therefore did not operate separately. Anti-armour weapons, combat engineering and explosives, drones, air defence and artillery were combined within the same geographical area and according to a calculated timeline.
This pattern turned axes such as Bayyada, the Taybeh Project area and Haddatha into repeated cycles of targeting, evacuation and renewed targeting.
In Qawzah on 29 March, the confrontation began when the resistance targeted a Merkava tank. A second tank participating in the evacuation was then attacked, followed by an assault on infantry forces using a loitering drone.
When a helicopter intervened to conduct a rescue operation, air defence units entered the engagement.
On the Taybeh-Baydar al-Faqa’ani axis on 19 March, the destruction of one tank was followed by attacks on five additional tanks as they attempted to withdraw towards Deir Seryan, before the evacuation area itself came under fire as helicopters intervened.
On the Deir Seryan-Zawtar axis on 4 May, direct combat overlapped with artillery fire and attempts to prevent helicopters from landing, turning the ground withdrawal route itself into part of the targeting zone.
The Merkava’s ‘Nemesis’ Returns
Despite the active protection systems fitted to Israeli tanks, resistance-guided missiles remained among the harshest challenges facing the occupation’s armoured forces.
Tanks were destroyed across several axes and villages, including Tal al-Nahhas, the Taybeh Project area, Qantara, Bayyada, Zawtar al-Sharqiya, Ainata, Deir Seryan and Yahmar al-Shaqif.
D9 bulldozers, Namer armoured vehicles and Hummer command vehicles were also targeted.
In March alone, 108 military vehicles of various types were recorded as destroyed or disabled by guided missiles.
In Qantara, eight Merkava tanks were destroyed or disabled within a single area.
At the Taybeh Project on 25 March, the resistance destroyed six tanks and a D9 bulldozer before targeting the evacuation force to prevent the recovery of the vehicles.
In Odaisseh in late May, attention shifted towards Namer and Hummer command-and-control vehicles in an effort to strike at the communications and organisational backbone of the advancing force.
The problem confronting the occupation’s armoured corps was that the tank was no longer merely a vehicle protecting soldiers and opening routes. In repeated cases, it became a target that itself required protection and evacuation, multiplying the number of personnel exposed to fire.
What Remains After a ‘Fire Belt’?
Israel relied on intensive aerial bombardment to prepare the ground before advancing.
Yet what its forces repeatedly encountered after the strikes was renewed fire from the same areas.
Following the landing operation on the outskirts of Nabi Sheet on 7 March, more than 40 air strikes and concentrated “fire belts” were carried out to cover the force’s withdrawal. Resistance artillery nevertheless continued striking the withdrawal route.
In Zawtar al-Sharqiya in late May, an engagement was followed by air and artillery bombardment throughout the night. Yet at dawn, advancing Israeli troops encountered ambushes that remained in position.
In Bint Jbeil and Khiam, salvos and clashes continued from neighbourhoods that had been subjected to widespread destruction.
On 27 May in Zawtar al-Sharqiya, soldiers from the Givati Brigade’s Shaked Battalion withdrew after an engagement, followed by a concentrated aerial bombardment. The response came through renewed attacks against tanks and concentrations of soldiers in the same area.
During April and May, the ruins of sections of Bint Jbeil and Khiam became networks from which resistance fighters could resume both direct engagement and shelling.
This decentralised flexibility undermined the purpose of aerial preparation. If a fighter could survive the initial strike, reposition and return to firing, then air raids did not automatically produce a safe corridor for ground troops.
No Safe Place to Gather
Alongside drones and missiles, artillery, mortars and short-range rocket artillery played an important role in imposing continuous attrition on occupation forces.
Troop concentrations at forward and rear assembly points, from Misgav Am, Metula, Avivim and Shtula to Zar’it, Khiam, Deir Seryan, Taybeh, Ainata, Rshaf, Haddatha, Qawzah, Bayyada and Naqoura, remained exposed to repeated concentrated shelling.
The objective was to prevent the establishment of safe supply lines, deny infantry secure gathering and rest areas, and turn the very act of maintaining a field presence into a daily burden.
On 24 May near the Deir Seryan River, the resistance targeted a single Israeli troop concentration five times within several hours.
On 18 May, it carried out a concentrated fire raid against positions in Khiam, Taybeh and Deir Mimas.
Throughout the three months, evacuation forces and helicopter landing areas were repeatedly shelled, turning evacuation from a stage separate from combat into a continuation of the engagement itself.
The Battlefield Extended Beyond the Border
Israel’s predicament was not confined to the border area.
The war that was supposed to secure its home front and push resistance fire away from northern settlements instead saw attacks extend deeper into occupied territory.
In Tel Aviv and central areas, resistance fire targeted sites including the Israeli Defence Ministry headquarters in the Kirya, the Doviv barracks affiliated with military intelligence, the Glilot base housing Unit 8200, the Tel Hashomer base and Palmachim air base.
In Haifa, the resistance targeted the naval base, Stella Maris, military-industrial complexes in the Krayot and Ein Shemer base.
The naval base in Ashdod and a warship at sea were also targeted.
Northern settlements remained under resistance rocket and drone fire, keeping the Israeli home front directly involved in the confrontation rather than turning it into a protected area behind the battle line.
This exposed the core of Israel’s strategic problem.
If the purpose of the ground operation was to protect the interior and stop the fire, then the continued ability of the resistance to strike bases and centres farther away meant that tactical ground advances had not translated into a strategic security achievement.
US Pressure on the Lebanese Authorities: Confront Hezbollah
Political circles have placed the latest US sanctions within a framework extending beyond the attempt to dry up Hezbollah’s funding sources or restrict its financial networks.
The broader objective appears to be increasing pressure on the Lebanese authorities and pushing them to treat Hezbollah as a challenge that must be confronted.
Washington is seeking to increase the cost of maintaining the current situation for the Lebanese state and place greater responsibility on its institutions to monitor financial movements and pursue channels believed to benefit Hezbollah.
This dimension has gained further importance as the US administration continues linking Hezbollah to what it calls the “Iranian influence network”.
That classification changes the nature of Washington’s approach to the Lebanese file.
Hezbollah is no longer being treated solely within the framework of an internal Lebanese dispute, but as part of the wider confrontation with Iran.
Pressure on the group therefore automatically becomes pressure on the Lebanese state, which finds itself being asked to redefine its position within that confrontation and take clearer steps towards Hezbollah.
According to these political circles, the most dangerous aspect is that Israel may exploit this political and financial environment to intensify military pressure in southern Lebanon.
From the Israeli perspective, weakening Hezbollah financially and politically could create an opportunity to impose new realities on the ground.
In such a context, areas of strategic importance could become primary targets in any Israeli military escalation aimed at strengthening control over elevated positions and reshaping the military balance around Nabatieh and the Iqlim al-Tuffah region.
US and Israeli pressure would therefore operate in parallel despite using different instruments.
Washington employs sanctions and financial and political pressure to push the Lebanese state towards confronting Hezbollah and restricting its freedom of movement, while Israel uses military force to impose direct changes on the battlefield.
Amid these pressures, the Lebanese authorities find themselves in a difficult position.
Deputy Prime Minister Tarek Mitri reflected that tension when he said: “The government is continuing to consolidate the concept of the state, but it does not want to implement its decisions by force, out of concern for national unity.”
Lebanese media figures also quoted Army Commander General Rodolph Haykal as saying that anyone who believes a confrontation could take place between the Lebanese Army and Hezbollah is mistaken, and fails to understand that the army’s mission is to preserve civil peace rather than ignite a civil war.
