I do not recall coming across mentions of a “Support Front” in any military history book, especially one that involves a military support front by a force already suffering from significant limitations and constraints, all while facing an enemy that far surpasses it in key aspects of military and operative capabilities which possesses a strategic depth and a supply line unparalleled by almost any other force in the world. But when the leadership of the Lebanese resistance announced the opening of the southern front on the 8th of October in support of Gaza and in response to the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation which started the day before, it showcased the importance of this front for both Gaza and Lebanon.
Over the 11 months of the first phase of the war—before the recent escalation—the Lebanese resistance continuously updated its assessment of the front’s significance. Its strategy remained centered on core elements in confronting Israel: showcasing capabilities, applying calculated pressure, attrition, and dispersing enemy efforts. These all fall under the broader category of “war of attrition” in its most comprehensive sense. Thus, describing the “Support Front” model as a kind of “war of attrition aimed at providing support” is a more valid interpretation of this notion.
The southern Lebanese village of Kafarkila after the war, with the Metula Israeli colony on the other side behind the wall (Photo by Hadi Hoteit).
A war of attrition is a type of warfare that seeks to achieve its objectives by inflicting severe losses on the enemy over an extended period, disrupting the pre-existing balance of power to the extent that the weaker party finds withdrawing from the war and accepting a new equilibrium as its best option. This type of warfare is mainly characterized by high costs for both sides, the systematic use of strategic deception, and the necessity of having an overseeing command capable of assessing the overall strategic situation. This command must closely monitor the evolving balance of attrition, identify red lines that must not be crossed by either side, and also ensure the enemy is not forced into abandoning the attrition framework in favor of full-scale war.
Military history provides numerous examples of leaders who have opened attrition fronts against their enemies. This strategy is by no means an anomaly in warfare; rather, it is one of the most complex military strategies used against adversaries. It is more than just trying to outlast the other side’s sheer brutality, it requires calculations and equations that very few military forces have successfully navigated, let alone translated into effective military policy and battlefield success.
A key historical example is the Battle of the Marne in World War I. After the Allies managed to halt the German army’s advance towards Paris in the summer of 1914, both sides established fixed defensive lines along the newly formed front. Trench warfare extended for hundreds of kilometers, consuming the lives of nearly ten million soldiers over four years. The aim was not necessarily territorial control but rather the systematic destruction of enemy capabilities, forcing them to pay a heavy price for not surrendering.
Attrition warfare is not limited to military conflicts. The strategy of exhausting an opponent until the desired outcome is achieved is fundamental in political and economic struggles as well. This principle applies to corporate battles, stock market rivalries, and even labor strikes in the United States and Europe over the past century. These labor disputes were often intense standoffs between unions and business owners, meticulously analyzing the battlefield, margins of maneuver, and relative strengths and weaknesses.
Thus, Hezbollah’s “war of attrition,” along with lesser contributions from other factions within the Axis of Resistance—without significant involvement from Syria or Iran—can be analyzed within the broader framework of modern attrition wars. This includes examining its military, economic, psychological, and political dimensions to assess its rationality, the availability of necessary conditions, and its key turning points. Ultimately, this allows for an evaluation of the current “balance” and an attempt to predict the future of this front.
Over-Cautiousness or Uncalculated Recklessness?
This question is not only legitimate, but also necessary. A country like Armenia, for instance, could not endure a prolonged war of attrition against Azerbaijan, backed by Turkey and NATO. Similarly, it is difficult to imagine the Kurdistan regime launching an attritional war against the Iraqi government, the Popular Mobilization Forces, as well as Iran, Turkey, and several other parties simultaneously. However, when unlimited support is available—such as what has been provided to Zelensky—Ukraine can sustain an attritional war against mighty Russia for three years, despite the vast disparity in human and material losses.
This raises an important question: What criteria and factors determine the rationality of a party’s decision to engage in a war of attrition? Why not pursue alternative strategies?
Condition 1: The Role of Intelligence
Several studies conclude that one of the fundamental conditions for attritional warfare to be considered a decisive choice is “equal access to information” among the two sides. Of course, this does not imply absolute parity, especially considering that we are dealing with a resistance force that barely has a reliable and supportive depth in the region, fighting against a colonial occupying state historically backed by the collective West.
Today, Israel enjoys near-total support from the Arab and Islamic worlds. Over a year of genocide in Gaza—resulting in nearly a quarter-million casualties and the repeated mass displacement and starvation of an entire population—has failed to provoke a single million-person march in any Arab country or elicit a decisive stance from a single Muslim government, except for Iran and the rebellious government of Sanaa in Yemen.
Nevertheless, a relative balance in intelligence gathering is crucial in attrition warfare, given its prolonged temporal and spatial scope. For instance, on October 7, the Palestinian resistance launched a surprise operation that neutralized Israel’s intelligence advantage. The Israeli army was momentarily unable to leverage its vast intelligence database effectively, while Hamas effectively used its own sufficient intelligence to conduct successful operations against Israeli military positions near Gaza. However, Hamas’ attacks on settlements were less successful, primarily due to a lack of information and clear objectives (perhaps reflecting the theory that Hamas’ original plan did not include attacking settlements).
In a war of attrition, any superior enemy can fully utilize its intelligence capabilities, technological superiority, and ability to select optimal targets and timing unless forced out of its “comfort zone”—something the resistance has not succeeded in doing. The resistance, for its part, may also benefit from its intelligence database, but the asymmetry in intelligence capabilities, coupled with the imbalance in military strength, manifests in stark differences in battlefield performance and attrition dynamics.
Hezbollah’s leadership, which has managed the resistance militarily and politically for over 40 years, undoubtedly understands that its intelligence holdings are nowhere near Israel’s. Over the past 18 years since the 2006 war—during which Israel failed to assassinate a single top Hezbollah commander—major global intelligence agencies have competed to infiltrate Hezbollah, the world’s most secretive militant organization.
Self-Inflicted Security Risks: A “Free Service”
Likewise, the resistance took steps that inadvertently provided free services to American and Israeli intelligence agencies. Perhaps the most significant of these was the leadership’s decision to make a broad shift toward automation or mechanization—expressed in some of its public threats by stating that ‘the press of a button separates war from peace.’ This shift required the development of communication mechanisms reliant on an accessible internal database, exposing the resistance’s capabilities, particularly its secret and strategic ones.
If this assumption is incorrect, and it might be as none of this was officially stated by the resistance or by Israel, this will lead us to discuss other possible factors that might have helped Hezbollah provide free services to its enemies. But if it was, then centralizing this information within specific entities—and, even worse, storing it on electronic devices and digitizing it, as conventional armies do—posed a major risk against an enemy with technological capabilities beyond what even the brightest minds in this region could imagine, let alone grasp in terms of scale and potential.
In the near future, a masked Israeli officer will likely take the stage or appear in an interview with a prestigious American TV host, speaking with pride and gloating over how the Israelis accessed all this information. He will describe how this intelligence enabled them to conduct this war very differently from previous ones, dismantling several layers of Hezbollah’s military and security structure, crippling its capabilities, and eliminating the remaining leadership—all within two weeks. The leadership that had already been severely weakened over 11 months of war, a “should have been predictable” cost for such a war of attrition.
Without looking into a crystal ball, I presume his words will not highlight miraculous Israeli capabilities or legendary achievements. Instead, it will focus on how Israeli intelligence operatives exploited major vulnerabilities in the resistance’s security infrastructure—gaps left by a level of precaution that did not match the nature and scale of the threat coming from the side of Tel Aviv and Washington.
Condition 2: The Challenge of Updating the Strategic Assessment
Similarly, the significant disparity in mutual informational exposure between the two sides places a heavy burden on the leadership’s ability to assess the scale of losses resulting from a war of attrition and to continuously evaluate the overall situation in the war. In a recent article by researcher Dr. Hossam Matar in the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, titled “The War of Attrition: The Israeli Theory,” he noted that “attrition can achieve battlefield decisiveness by accumulating losses on the enemy, thereby weakening its political motivation for violence and halting the fighting,” citing the July 2006 war as an example. This reveals a problem in the understanding of a war of attrition among the thinkers who align with the resistance in Lebanon.
In reality, the combat strategies of the July 2006 war were not purely attritional for either side. What halted the war in July was Israel’s realization of a significant informational gap necessary to overcome the resistance. Only during the 33 days war did Israel gradually discover the existence of serious anti-tank guided missiles, naval missiles and air defenses when the resistance struck a warship and downed a military transport helicopter after destroying dozens of Merkava III Tanks on the outskirts of Border villages in South Lebanon. But this time, the resistance needed to first assess the extent of the enemy’s losses to gauge its overall stance and determine its updated position within the balance of war.
For instance, the inability to determine the number of Iron Dome launchers, backup radars, and available Tamir missiles prevented an accurate assessment of how much Israel’s missile defense systems had been or even can be depleted. These defenses continued to function effectively until the final day of the war. Meanwhile, for various reasons, the resistance was unable to implement the “missile downpour” tactic it had assumed would be sufficient to overwhelm these defenses.
Arguably, Israel’s failure to accurately assess the threat posed by Hezbollah’s suicide drones—which successfully bypassed multiple layers of surveillance and defense throughout the war—led to major breaches. These included striking the dining hall of a pseudo-secret Golani Brigade base south of Haifa during a gathering of soldiers, directly targeting Benjamin Netanyahu’s bedroom, and hitting bases in Tel Aviv and Gush Dan. These attacks reshuffled the Israeli leadership’s assessment of Hezbollah’s resilience in attrition warfare after their initial air campaign, shaping the battlefield for years to come.
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