Israel launched a ground incursion that risks repeating its past mistakes in Lebanon. From 1985 to 2000, Israel occupied a 15-mile-wide "security zone" in southern Lebanon, ostensibly run by a Lebanese Christian faction backed by IDF troops. Israel returned in 2006, when 30,000 Israeli troops crossed the border in retaliation for a Hezbollah ambush of IDF troops in northern Israel. AdvertisementAs Israel's prime minister in 1998, Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to keep troops in southern Lebanon "whatever the cost." Currently two IDF divisions are operating in southern Lebanon, to dismantle Hezbollah infrastructure there.

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