Israeli Security Strategies and Hezbollah: The Resilience of Hybrid Actors against Military Superiority

This study examines why Israeli conventional security strategies have failed to neutralise Hezbollah, despite Israel’s enduring military superiority. Adopting a qualitative case-based approach, it analyses three critical turning points in the Israeli-Hezbollah confrontation: the 1982 invasion, the 2000 withdrawal, and the 2006 war. The analysis demonstrates that deterrence-centred strategies misinterpret the cumulative logic of hybrid power, in which Hezbollah’s military, social, and political wings interact to transform coercive pressure into renewed legitimacy. By linking the frameworks of hybrid warfare, asymmetric conflict, and the terror trap, the study finds that Israel’s reliance on force reproduction generates governance vacuums and identity mobilisation that strengthen, rather than weaken, hybrid actors. The findings suggest that sustainable security requires calibrated coercion integrated with political inclusion, welfare provision, and narrative competition.