Two weeks ago, the IDF brought a group of journalists to the southern Lebanese city of El-Khiam, just a few kilometers north of Metula, to show a Hezbollah tunnel buried underneath the floor panels of a clothing store.
One of the questions the officers at the scene were asked repeatedly had to do with the drone threat. And each of the officers, three to be exact, answered as if on cue that the exploding drones – which at that time had “only” killed four people and wounded another 50 since the “ceasefire” in Lebanon went into effect on April 16 – were a tactical threat, not a strategic one.
The reporters were assured that the IDF was working on solutions, and that this weapon was not impacting the IDF’s overall operations.
“The drones do not affect our operational work,” one Givati officer said. “We have made adjustments. We operate somewhat differently now, with adaptations that I won’t elaborate on. But at this point, the threat is manageable.”
Perhaps, from a purely military perspective, that is true. Israel’s northern campaign is not collapsing because of drones, nor is Hezbollah overrunning the Galilee.
But for the family of Sgt. Nehoray Leizer, who was killed by a drone in southern Lebanon on Sunday, or the family of St.-Sgt. Noam Hamburger, who was killed on Saturday by a drone at the Biranit outpost inside Israel’s northern border, that these drones are “only” a tactical problem and not a “strategic” one is no consolation whatsoever.
And the problem with “tactical” threats is that when left unanswered, they accumulate. The issue is not whether drones pose an existential threat to Israel. They do not. The issue is whether Israel is allowing a low-intensity but deadly war of attrition to continue because broader diplomatic considerations are constraining its response.
Three soldiers killed since media tour
In the two weeks since that media tour, another three soldiers have been killed, and 20 more were wounded by this weapon, bringing the number of security forces killed since the ceasefire to 11.
Nobody is saying to move the IDF out of Lebanon; the casualties have not led to a repeat of the Four Mothers movement that had such an influence in pushing Israel out of Lebanon in 2000. After the October 7 massacre, the vast majority of the country understands why you need the IDF situated between the terrorists and the civilian communities.
But what people are asking is why the army is not doing more – taking more stringent action – after each one of these drone attacks. Because what appears to be developing is a dangerous equation in which Hezbollah believes these attacks fall below Israel’s escalation threshold. And once an enemy concludes it can inflict casualties without paying a meaningful price, the attacks do not diminish. Instead, they multiply.
Eventually, the IDF will find a technological solution to this problem. If it found a way to knock ballistic missiles out of the stratosphere, it will find a way to deal with inexpensive, explosive-laden drones.
But a fiber-optic drone defense system is not built overnight, and until those solutions are perfected, deterrence must compensate for the technological gap.
In the meantime, Israel cannot tolerate a steady drip-drip of morning news bulletins, beginning with the dreadful words “permitted to publish,” followed by the reading of another person killed by this weapon.
It is unconscionable to have additional tools available and not use them, leaving soldiers in the field badly exposed. And Israel does have more tools.
The growing sense within Israel’s security and political establishment is that Jerusalem’s freedom of action in Lebanon is being constrained by Washington’s desire to preserve diplomatic momentum with Iran, as well as Washington’s concern that a major Israeli escalation in Lebanon could derail those efforts.
What are those tools?
Israel’s disproportionate use of force is one such tool, namely, responding to every drone attack with strikes on the beating heart of Hezbollah in Beirut’s Dahiya quarter or in the Bekaa Valley.
The logic behind disproportionate retaliation is not revenge. It is deterrence. It is to convince Hezbollah that every drone attack carries consequences so painful that the tactical gain no longer justifies its cost.
Since the beginning of the ceasefire, those attacks – commonplace until Hezbollah entered the war on Iran’s side on March 2 – have largely halted. Concurrently, the drone attacks have only increased, with increasingly deadly results.
Smotrich: Destroy Beirut's buildings in retaliation for drones
IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir reportedly articulated this sentiment at a security consultation on Monday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying that the IDF should be attacking buildings in Hezbollah’s Beirut stronghold in response to the attacks. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich echoed that sentiment, saying: “We should bring down 10 buildings in Beirut for every 10 drones.”
According to Brig.-Gen (res.) Erez Winner, a former head of the operational planning team in Southern Command and now a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, the right way to deal with this type of threat is to keep the enemy busy with other matters.
“That means attacking more, rather than looking for technological solutions, which are important but take time and are not an immediate answer,” he told Army Radio.
The drone operators are not sitting in Dahiya, but rather in southern Lebanon, “where the IDF can and needs to operate much more aggressively,” Winner said. “The key is attack and not defense. The key is that a village from which a drone was sent needs to come under fire and operations [on such a scale] that it is impossible to carry on with regular life.”
That phrase, “the key is attack and not defense,” increasingly appears to be at the heart of this debate.
To be sure, harsher retaliation carries the risk of escalation. Hezbollah could respond more forcefully. Northern residents could again find themselves under heavy rocket fire. And broader regional diplomacy, especially regarding Iran, could become more complicated.
But the current approach equally carries risks as well, specifically normalizing a deadly war of attrition in which Hezbollah continues to extract a steady price while Israel absorbs the blows and waits for technological solutions.
As the October 7 massacre so painfully illustrated, sometimes the price of inaction is greater than the risk of action.
Israel knows how to act against American opposition when necessary, as it did when it operated in Rafah in 2024 despite heavy US pressure and objections, Winner said.
Democracies everywhere eventually reassess policies that impose a steady human cost without a clear strategic payoff.
Thirteen American service members have lost their lives since the beginning of the current campaign against Iran began on February 28, and that number has been repeatedly cited in the US by those wondering whether the war is worth the cost.
Eleven members of Israel’s security apparatus have been killed in attacks in Lebanon or emanating from Lebanon since April 17.
There is no reason why that same sensitivity should not trigger a reassessment here as well – not toward withdrawal but toward stronger action. Because the results suggest the current tactics are not working, and more needs to be done to prevent Hezbollah from launching these drones and exacting an unacceptable daily price.