The Fifth D - Dominance for Disarmament in Israel’s Defense Strategy

Is Israel Annexing South Lebanon? Or has it devised a new strategy to defeat Hezbollah and Hamas?

Map of the current Israeli buffer zone in southern Lebanon

On April 19, nearly 2 months after Hezbollah launched missile and drone strikes on Israel, in defense of its patrons in Tehran, the IDF issued a map showing its new “forward defense line”, a buffer zone some 8-10 kilometers into South Lebanon. Contrary to claims by Hezbollah propagandists and apologists, this is hardly an Israeli attempt to annex territory in South Lebanon. Rather, when taken together with Israel’s Gaza buffer zone, lends to a new Israeli strategy (not yet a doctrine) of how to weaken and face non-state or sub-state terror militias on one’s border. That is, in the face of the intransigence of these actors, and the impotence of those responsible to fundamentally solve this issue. Of the 5 D’s of Israel’s Defence strategy - Deterrence doesn’t work - taking land is a tangible and last recourse. Essentially, Israel is seeing if a 5th D - Domination for demilitarization (we’re trying here - in Hebrew it works much better with the letter “Hey”) can help where the others have failed.

The Failure of Deterrence, the faultiness of Early Detection and the elusiveness of decisive victory

October 7, and the ensuing war on Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon has led Israel to ditch its tried-and-failed deterrence strategy against non state actors. Instead, Israel is now implementing a new (old) strategy used over centuries to deal with persistent terror threats from weak and failed states or bordering entities. Basically, Israel is now saying two key statements: “we care about capabilities and not intent”, and “we will stay here and you can’t come back until you clean your S$*$T up”.

Israel’s track record at fighting sub-state or non-state actors from neighboring territories can hardly be described as successful in its short history. And this shouldn’t surprise anyone.

The story of superior state actors unsuccessfully fighting against non-state actors runs a similar pattern. Israel’s experience with the Palestinians since 1967 has shown that such strategies are possible, given total territorial control, significant overwhelming force and population asymmetry, and enough cooperation from the local population. But even Gaza, with its 360 square kilometers and 2 million people shows how difficult such a strategy is to execute. Lebanon with its 10,000 square kilometers and 5 million people is that much more difficult, given Israel is only roughly twice its size.

Until October 7, Israel had long rested on a 4-D defense strategy - deterrence, detection (intelligence), decisive victory and since the introduction of the ballistic threat to Israel, a fourth “D” was added: defense (both passive and active) of the homefront.

However, the age of Israel fighting rational state actors that can accept defeat on rational terms (and preserve state or territorial integrity) is long over; the last enemies to surrender to Israel were Egypt and Syria in 1973. Israel has since faced primarily asymmetric Jihadist actors who for a number of reasons will not accept defeat - primarily because the rational levers and pressure mechanisms through which actors were defeated militarily do not apply to Jihadist actors. Moreover, and importantly, these actors hide in and among civilian populations, manipulating international public opinion to stop Israel from achieving a decisive victory; actors like Hezbollah (and Hamas) utilize this cynically to great effect.

In the same manner, Deterrence, as October 7 and now March 2 2026 shows us, also doesn’t work, for much the same reason. While detection - that is early detection of imminent attacks via intelligence capabilities - can sometimes work, October 1973 and October 7 2023 show us that it can hardly be counted on, even in today’s age of technological superiority by Israel (and perhaps because of it).

Lastly, Defense has served Israel remarkably well in the modern era. By developing and implementing a highly advanced system of passive and active defense, which includes geographically accurate warning systems, bomb shelters and active missile defense systems, Israel has managed to achieve strategic breathing room for the homefront. After all, one of Hamas’, Hezbollah’s and now Iran’s strategies within its asymmetric framework is to build pressure on the homefront in order to halt the military strikes, which they cannot. One of the main impetuses for the US/Israeli attack on Iran this February, and the expanded Israeli efforts in Lebanon in 2024 and again now in March (even though “Hezbollah started it”) was to roll back the missile capacity - which was soon reaching a point where Iran or Hezbollah would overwhelm and saturate Israel (or the Gulf Countries) missile defense systems, thus giving them a strong upper hand.

The problem with the 4 D’s when facing Jihadist insurgent militias

The challenge that normative state militaries have when facing Jihadist militias is then compounded here, leaving the 4 D’s of Israel defense strategy lacking.

1- While Detection, i.e. advanced intelligence often works, it sometimes doesn’t, as October 7 reminded us.

2- Deterrence also has clearly failed as a Jihadist entity’s calculus is not based on earthly rational considerations. As an Arab Muslim friend once joked, “the problem with fighting a Jihadist is there is no concept of defeat - they kill you, they win. They die fighting you - they go to heaven a martyr - their civilians are killed as bystanders including purposefully by their design - it is a worthy sacrifice and they will enter paradise a martyr too”.

3- Decisive victory is possible to an extent, but given Hezbollah and Hamas’ propensity to hide among civilians, and weaponize the media and social media space to squeeze world opinion on Israel, the cost of achieving such victory has become higher than international opinion allows. At the same time, there is a high domestic political price as Israeli soldiers get entangled in dense urban combat scenarios where casualty numbers can climb and a significant toll is taken on the economy.

4- Even Defense becomes problematic if the enemy can amass enough projectiles to be able to overwhelm your defenses.

The ideal solution to defeating non-state actors

Ideally, the solution to defeating Hezbollah lies in the Lebanese state exercising its sovereignty that there should be no non-state armed actors in the country, certainly those pushing a different country's (Iran) agenda. This has been, notably, articulated by leading Lebanese politicians for the first time but no practical actions have been taken to disarm Hezbollah.

Moreover, it is widely assumed that Hezbollah, although weakened by Israel, remains more powerful than the Lebanese Armed Forces and has threatened a civil war should Beirut attempt to implement this decision. The international community as well, has been at best feckless and at worst complicit with Hezbollah. UNIFIL, the UN mandated international force in place since UNSC 1701 from 2006, has allowed the militia to arm itself and build and expand its terror infrastructure up to the Israeli border. Even during this current escalation, Hezbollah regularly uses UNIFIL posts as cover for its rocket fire against Israel.

The Hamas challenge differs to a large extent because unlike in Lebanon, Hamas is the governing entity of Gaza, which itself is not a sovereign political entity. Moreover, while Hezbollah is certainly situated in major Lebanese cities such as Beirut, Tyre and Sidon, it is spread throughout dozens of villages in south Lebanon (as well as in the Beka’a valley and to the North as well). While civilians were cleared from fighting zones in Gaza, its density created a situation that made it difficult to move civilians around, while in Lebanon, such a strategy has been more effective, if not uncomfortable for the Lebanese population of the south. Hence, civilian casualties in Lebanon have been exceedingly low compared to combatants. Disarming Hamas will somehow prove even more of a challenge as it would require an outside force to take over Gaza - be it the Palestinian Authority, the Board of Peace international force or Israel.

Enter the 5th D - Dominance (or Deployment) for Disarmament

Okay, maybe Dominance is a bit of a stretch, but we needed to stick with the “D” model. In Hebrew this actually works better, as we refer to the 4 “Heys” - Hatra’ah (Detection), Harta’ah (deterrence), Hachra’ah (decisive victory) and Haganah (Defense). Therefore, we could label the 5th “Hey” as “Hachzakah” or holding on to territory. But alas English leaves us with “Dominance” and “disarmament”; perhaps “deployment is better- the reader is welcome to suggest another word.

Following the Gaza ceasefire, and after all the hostages were returned, Israel succeeded in implementing a novel interim approach until Hamas is disarmed. Israel would continue to hold the territory it had already taken control of and cleared of Hamas’ presence. It would implement a buffer zone in which few Palestinians lived, and hold it until Hamas is disarmed, according to the ceasefire agreement put forth by President Trump and agreed upon by the Arab League and the UNSC. In the meantime, Israel continues to hold the new “yellow line”, while conducting pin-point strikes on Hamas militants. It is not an ideal scenario, by any means, but keeps Hamas from re-arming, keeps it from getting back near the Israeli border, and creates an incentive - no reconstruction without disarmament.

Map of Israel's buffer zone in Gaza, BBC

In Lebanon, Israel said it plans to maintain a narrow strip to keep Hezbollah away from the border (where it had developed underground tunnels and prepared Shi’a villages to launch rockets). In the meantime, Israel seems to be implementing a policy of flattening Shia’a villages that served as terror-launch pads, while allowing Christians and Druze to remain. At the same time, it continues to conduct pinpoint strikes on Hezbollah targets past the current ceasefire line. It is yet to be determined how and if the ceasefire continues or progresses to a more comprehensive solution between Israel and the State of Lebanon. However, in the meantime, Israel will continue to “Dominate” a buffer zone in south Lebanon until Beirut, likely with international and regional support can find a comprehensive solution to Hezbollah and force the militia to disarm.

In this sense, Israel recognizes that even overwhelming force has limited effect on Jihadist groups, and therefore it must affect those groups’ capabilities to escalate and launch attacks. Moreover, holding territory might actually serve as a bigger deterrent to such organizations, whose end goal is expansion and conquest, than loss of life or property damage.

In the Middle East, and perhaps in modern asymmetric warfare, neat victories and clean endings to war seem more distant than ever. But perhaps Israel’s new “Fifth D” (the Fifth Hey in Hebrew sounds better) is an ample interim solution - it allows to keep persistent enemies away from Israel’s borders, maintain a sense of control of the territory and keep it clean of enemy capabilities. More importantly, it creates an incentive to disarm while staying under the threshold of open warfare, by forcing the responsible entities to enact their sovereignty.

Rather than put Israel in the impossible scenario of watching its foes re-arm and creep back up to and under its border, careful to act due to international constraints, this does something Israel has yet to try, put the ball in someone else’s hands. Israel should be exceedingly careful here, of course - its 18-year occupation of South Lebanon (1982-2000) teaches us that. But perhaps when so many of the pillars of Israel’s defense strategy are less relevant to modern asymmetric warfare, “Dominance”, or “Hachzakah” for the sake of disarmament provides the critical and missing element to break the status quo of the cycle of violence.

Dan Feferman is the co-founder and co-editor of Middle East 24. He is a major (res.) in the Israel Defense Forces, where he served as a foreign policy analyst and advisor, and in various intelligence capacities.