most conflicts in world history are about concrete financial or resource concerns that can be negotiated and do not require violence to resolve. the israel-iran conflict is not like that, it is one of a much smaller number of conflicts that is about ideology, religion and race and has to actually be fought and one side has to lose and be conquered and be vanquished from history. israel doesn't have a choice but to try to minimize hezbollah's ability to strike, any way it can.

but, declaring "total war" against lebanon is not a good strategy.

israel needs to do the following:

1) build allies in lebanon with christian groups and maybe even try to reach out to the kurds, assyrians, armenians and other minorities in the middle east

2) try to push hezbollah out of power democratically

3) continue to sabotage hezbollah as much as possible

4) increase cross-border strikes to take out weapons depots and leaders as much as possible

it does not want a conventional war involving ground troops and it does not want to try to occupy lebanon without identifying a strong ally on the ground, first.

israel has to retaliate for the crazy missile strike from iran, and the way to do that is absolutely to dismantle hezbollah, but it has to be smart about it.