On December 3, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz went to northern Israel to meet with IDF troops and inspect the frontier. His presence came in the wake of a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon on November 27 that was designed to end Israel-Hezbollah fighting. Israel estimates that it eliminated around 2,500 Hezbollah members in two months of intense fighting that began on September 23, 2024. The end of this round of fighting leaves many other Iranian-backed fronts against Israel at a crossroads. The end of the fighting in southern Lebanon, which may be temporary, also coincided with an offensive by a Syrian opposition group that captured Aleppo from the Assad regime, illustrating the region’s interconnected security dynamics.

Katz is new to his job as defense minister. He took over from Yoav Gallant, who served as minister of defense since 2022. Gallant had advocated for a tougher line on Hezbollah since the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023, when the Lebanese paramilitary began its “solidarity” strikes against Israel. This was part of what Israel has come to see as a seven-front war. Iran has backed an array of groups attacking Israel over the last year, including Hezbollah, the Houthis, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and also militias in Syria and Iraq. 

Katz assumed control of Israel’s defense establishment as Israel marks over a year of warfare in Gaza and Lebanon. The IDF has not only severely weakened Hamas but also handed Hezbollah a series of crippling defeats. What remains of the Iranian-backed fronts is now Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and the West Bank.

I spent a night with the Israel Defense Forces on a raid targeting terror suspects in the West Bank city of Bethlehem on December 2. The forces went into two built-up areas of Bethlehem called Aida and Azza, which are historic refugee camps. These are prime recruitment zones for terrorist groups. They rely on these dense, poor urban areas for young men to support the Palestinian cause. The nighttime raid I witnessed faced no opposition from locals. Instead, people stayed inside as Israeli troops went house-to-house, seeking out suspects from a list. Several men were detained by one squad over hours of searches. In this sector, the threat that Israel faces has been reduced.

The key question now is whether this is a wider trend across the region. In Lebanon, the IDF has carried out numerous airstrikes on Hezbollah since November 27, claiming the group is violating the ceasefire. Hezbollah is still moving rocket launchers and seeking to re-arm. Will this now become the new normal in southern Lebanon, with the IDF carrying out precision airstrikes? 

Meanwhile, in Gaza, there are still up to 101 hostages held by Hamas. Some of these hostages are dead, including Omer Neutra, an American-Israeli dual citizen who the IDF recently said was killed on October 7. Hamas still holds his body. Incoming U.S. president Donald Trump has vowed to make Hamas pay a heavy price if the hostages are not released. Israeli politicians have welcomed this change of rhetoric, which they hope will reflect a shift in policy in Washington in January.

However, much can change before January 20. Syria serves as an example of how fast the course of events can shift. Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an opposition group that controls Idlib province in northwestern Syria, recently swept into Aleppo and tossed aside Syrian regime forces, who fled in disarray. How did this happen so suddenly? The Syrian regime was supposed to be solidifying itself, taking back areas, and normalizing ties with Arab states in the region after years of civil war that began there in 2011. Damascus is backed by Moscow and Tehran, but it was hoping to patch things up with Turkey and believed it might even be able to get the United States to withdraw from eastern Syria. During Trump’s previous administration, he had said he would withdraw troops who were involved in an anti-ISIS mission from Syria. Now, things have changed.

The shifting fortunes in Syria likely owe much to the hammering Hezbollah received from Israel. Hezbollah doesn’t have the men and materiel to help the Syrian regime the way it did back in 2013. Iran could rely on Iraqi militias to aid the Syrian regime. Iranian state media said on December 3 that Kataib Hezbollah had yet to decide if it would intervene in Syria. Iran’s narrative has been that the United States and Israel are somehow behind the setbacks for the Syrian regime. Iran views these developments as a threat to what it calls the “axis of resistance.”

While visiting Israel’s northern border, Defense Minister Katz threatened that if Hezbollah continues to violate the ceasefire, Israel would strike at Lebanese institutions: “there will no longer be any exemptions for the State of Lebanon. If until now we separated the State of Lebanon from Hezbollah—and the entirety of Beirut from Dahiyeh, which took very hard hits—this will no longer be the case.”

This is a crossroads for Israel, Lebanon, and the wider region. Wheels are in motion that will roll across a large swath of the Middle East. Iran has supplied Russia with drones for use against Ukraine. Russia backs the Syrian regime. Moscow may see a link between the fall of Aleppo and its own battles in Ukraine. If it wants the Syrian regime to return to Aleppo, it will need to shore it up with arms and equipment. Iran could bring in militias from Iraq, widening the war even more. Meanwhile, U.S. forces in eastern Syria, backing the Syrian Democratic Forces, appear also to be increasingly involved in clashes near the Euphrates River. Even in the wake of a fragile ceasefire, the region still stands on the brink of several more conflagrations.

Seth Frantzman is the author of The October 7 War: Israel’s Battle for Security in Gaza (2024) and an adjunct fellow at The Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Image: Gal Rotem / Shutterstock.com.