17 May 2026
https://thecradle.co/articles/israels-northern-shock-hezbollah-exposes-the-limits-of-arrows-of-the-north

Lede: Israeli commanders entered the 2026 confrontation convinced Hezbollah had
been reduced to a manageable threat, but the battle in south Lebanon forced them
to confront the limits of their own victory narrative.

The shock at Hezbollah's performance did not stay with military correspondents,
security commentators, or analysts close to the army. It reached Northern
Command itself.

On 6 April 2026, Channel 14 reported that Maj. Gen. Rafi Milo came under cabinet
criticism after admitting the army had been surprised by Hezbollah's
capabilities, with Israeli army Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir saying he had raised
the matter with Milo during a situational assessment.

In a leaked Channel 12 recording, Milo also admitted that the first assessments
after "Operation Arrows of the North" had been "too optimistic."

"There is a gap between the way we ended Arrows of the North, what we understood
and believed, and the fact that we are finding Hezbollah still standing and
operating," he said. The rockets worrying northern settlers, he added, were
directed mostly at the army.

Hezbollah still standing
Contrary to the denials from senior officers, Haaretz reported that Hezbollah
was still operating as an organized military force, with a hierarchical
command-and-control structure able to transmit orders, coordinate fire, and draw
lessons during the battle itself.

Citing military intelligence reports on 7 April, the paper said each combat zone
was being managed by a resistance sector commander responsible for coordinating
attacks and activating weapons against Israeli forces.

A reserve officer quoted by Haaretz on 6 April said he was surprised by
Hezbollah's readiness south of the Litani River. Even in villages struck during
Arrows of the North at the end of 2024, he said, the movement had quickly
rebuilt infrastructure, redeployed weapons, and resupplied itself for
combat. Northern Command had already been told internally after that operation
that the resistance was ready for a long confrontation.

Maariv, in a parallel report on 6 April, admitted that Israel and its army were
not ready for this war. It pointed to gaps in intelligence, aircraft
availability, Northern Command performance, Home Front Command, and even the
army spokesperson's unit. More strikingly, the paper reported that the original
plan had been to strike Lebanon in winter before turning to Iran in
summer. Events inside Iran pushed the army to freeze the Lebanon attack and move
first against Tehran.

Israel then began building explanations for the shock. One blamed the air force
and Military Intelligence for concentrating on Iran as the main front and
misreading how and when Hezbollah would enter the war.

Another pointed to exhausted soldiers, weak protection, and the absence of a
plan to secure the north, the army, and its bases. A third recast the Lebanon
campaign as a continuation of Arrows of the North rather than a planned war.

That explanation did not hold for long. Fighting in the south continued even
after Israel was expected to have restored its air and intelligence capacity,
while losses in personnel and equipment persisted until the truce.

The pressure soon moved from the battlefield to the home front. On 2 April,
parents of Nahal Brigade soldiers warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Israel Katz that their sons were being
exposed to unjustified danger without sufficient military support.

Explaining away the shock
Nahal Brigade commander Col. Arik Moyal defended the army's performance in a
Walla interview from south Lebanon on 19 April. Arrows of the North, he argued,
had created the conditions for the current operation by destroying large parts
of Hezbollah's infrastructure, although troops were still finding large weapons
caches in areas not reached in 2024.

Moyal claimed Hamas fighters were bolder in direct confrontation, while
Hezbollah usually withdrew, waited for Israeli troops to enter houses or rooms,
then engaged at close range while relying on longer-range fire and advanced
weapons.

Lt. Col. "A," commander of Battalion 75, gave Ynet a more careful version on 15
April: Gaza combat is centered on close ranges, he said, while "In Lebanon the
fighting is much more spatial. The anti-tank positions are located at far
ranges, and the commander's main challenge is to understand that every meter is
a potential arena."

Other Israeli accounts cut through the excuses. Amos Harel wrote in Haaretz on
10 April that the northern campaign had exposed gaps in Tel Aviv's intelligence
assessment, especially after larger-than-expected quantities of Hezbollah
weapons were found. He also described a limited five-division maneuver and an
army strained by nearly 30 months of war, with manpower and resource shortages
limiting its ability to sustain long or multi-front operations.

Walla went further in a 10 April report, saying Military Intelligence had
detected Hezbollah's intention to join the war and the southward movement of
Radwan fighters, but no preemptive strike was approved.

The report said Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem had instructed Radwan
commanders to send about 1,000 fighters from Beirut to south Lebanon, raising
questions inside Israel over why the force was not hit before reaching the
battlefield.

A separate Walla report on 12 April described an Israeli campaign built around
attrition and systematic clearing rather than a quick decision. It said
Hezbollah had forced the army to split forces and maneuver deeper, while the
movement's Almas anti-tank missiles, with ranges up to 10 kilometers, meant that
Israeli positions several kilometers from the border were still exposed.

Maariv, in a report cited by the original account, quoted the commander of
Battalion 77 in the 7th Armored Brigade describing a battlefield shaped by dense
mountainous terrain and rain that turned the ground into mud, obstructing heavy
vehicles and infantry.

The commander said Hezbollah combined close friction with light weapons and
shells with long-range attrition through anti-tank missiles - an admission that
undercut the easier claim that Hezbollah fighters simply avoid direct combat.

Cont'd ...