Looks like Yoav Gallant was right

Obliterating Hezbollah before fighting Hamas would have saved many lives

Yoav Gallant at a press conference in Tel Aviv eight weeks after October 7

So much is widely known: Israel’s former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, who was controversially sacked in November, advocated attacking Hezbollah before Hamas after October 7 but was over-ruled by Benjamin Netanyahu. What most people don’t know, however, is the compelling strategic thinking behind Gallant’s position.

Until now. In the remarkable latest episode of the podcast Call Me Back, Gallant revealed the arguments he made in favour of a surprise assault on Hezbollah on October 11, 2023. The picture he painted was so convincing that it was hard to avoid the conclusion that he was right; if the IDF had dealt with Hezbollah first, the war would have been over long ago with fewer casualties and disruption to civilian life.

The principle behind such an audacious move is found in the work of the 19th century Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz, the pre-eminent war strategist used in military academies around the world. His main principle of combat is to target the enemy’s “centre of gravity”, or concentration of strength. By destroying it with maximum force, you can dismantle the enemy’s ability to resist and win a decisive victory.

“When you fight two enemies, you need to hit the stronger one first,” Gallant said. “Otherwise, you will be exhausted by the time you are finished with the weaker one.”

The theory is sound. But then the former defence minister then revealed that on October 10, 2023, Israeli intelligence discovered that 11 of Hezbollah’s most senior leaders, including Hassan Nasrallah, were due to meet three high-ranking Iranians at a location that was vulnerable to attack by the IDF. Here was an opportunity to behead the snake (as was eventually carried out much later via multiple operations).

Gallant argued that Israel should open its assault with this assassination, followed by a campaign of airstrikes to destroy Hezbollah’s caches of 200,000 missiles, the locations of which were familiar to the IDF. This would have resulted in the destruction of up to 95 per cent of the decapitated enemy’s arsenal. (Once again, this operation eventually took place a year later but succeeded in eliminating just 80 per cent of the munitions because some had been deployed to new positions.)

Then would have come the coup de grâce. In response to the attacks, Hezbollah fighters would have scrambled to southern Lebanon to engage Israeli troops. Fifteen thousand of them, Gallant disclosed, would have taken their booby-trapped walkie-talkies with them, strapped to their combat vests by their hearts.

For years, these walkie-talkies had been loaded with three times the quantity of explosives that were later detonated so effectively in the pagers. According to Gallant, the pager operation was intended to be a secondary move, backing up the damage caused by the exploding walkie-talkies (in the event, it ended up the other way around). The results would have been spectacular. Hezbollah’s leadership would have been obliterated, its arsenal liquidated and more than 15,000 of its men lying dead. It would have constituted a magnificent victory and demoralised Hamas.

Zooming out to the country and wider region, the conditions were perfect for this audacious strike. It would have gleaned all the benefits of a truly surprise attack, yet was not without a casus belli, Hezbollah having commenced rocket fire into Israel on October 8. In the aftermath of October 7, Israelis were unified in spirit, making them open to such a move. Moreover, the world was much more sympathetic to the Jewish state than it subsequently became, lending the attack “an international backwind”, as Gallant put it.

Defensive fortifications were already in place to deal with any retaliation, as substantial number of Israeli troops had mustered on the northern border and Iron Dome was fully operational. Having seen the efficacy of a similar attack in September 2024, it seems overwhelmingly likely that the Gallant plan would have been a spectacular success.

What would have been the implications? For one thing, more than 80,000 Israeli civilians would not have been displaced from the north of the country and their towns and villages would not have been decimated by Hezbollah rockets.

For another, with the Lebanese threat neutralised, the full might of the IDF could have been deployed to Gaza, enabling simultaneous assaults in both the north and south, winning the war far more quickly and decisively. The shock and awe would have restored Israeli deterrence to the region far more comprehensively, reducing the chances of the Houthis and other groups trying their luck.

Moreover, Iran would have been castrated before it had even considered launching its missiles at the Jewish state. And if it had done so, Israel would have had the bandwith to respond with far greater power.

Why, then, did Netanyahu disregard the plan? Gallant recalls: “He was pointing to Tel Aviv from his office to the buildings all around us. And he said, ‘you see all these buildings? Nothing will survive because of the retaliation of Hezbollah after you attack them.’ And he reiterated this many times later on, on this day and on other days.”

Hindsight, of course, makes decisions seem easy. Netanyahu, however, has a reputation for caution that sometimes tips into inaction; it seems clear now that had he listened to Gallant and mustered a little more courage, Israel would be in an even stronger position than it currently enjoys, having incurred far less loss of life.

But the most striking part of the interview came when the presenter, Dan Senor, asked whether a pre-emptive strike on Hezbollah — or an attack that would be perceived thus by the international community — would have squandered such goodwill as Israel held at that time.

“Your goal in war is to gain victory, nothing else,” Gallant replied, bluntly. “All the rest is less important. And in order to gain victory, this was the right thing to do.” It is hard to deny that the man’s right.