Israeli defense officials warn against 'potentially disastrous war with Hezbollah'

Officials in Israel's defense establishment are now strenuously contradicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's insistence that Israel maintain control of the narrow strip of land along the Gaza-Egypt border known as the Philadelphi Corridor, and warning that Netanyahu's reluctance to sign a cease-fire deal with Hamas is pushing Israel into a “potentially disastrous war with Hezbollah in Lebanon,” according to Israeli military and senior defense officials who spoke with ABC News.

A war with Hezbollah in Lebanon "is easy to start, but very hard to end," one such official said, on condition of anonymity. "We are losing the war, we are losing deterrence, we are losing the hostages."

There are also concerns about whether Israel possesses sufficient munitions and rocket/missile interceptors to defend itself in any confrontation with Hezbollah.

One senior Israeli official told ABC News that Israel's hawks, clamoring for war with Hezbollah, are “unaware of how difficult it is for Israel to procure Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) kits, necessary to convert so-called ‘dumb’ bombs into precision guided weapons that use GPS coordinates to strike a target.”

Israeli officials are also concerned that Hezbollah's estimated arsenal of over 100,000 rockets and missiles could cause widespread damage across Israel. Those officials also warn of the potential for destruction on the Lebanese side. For example, during the 2006 Hezbollah-Israel war, Israel's air force crippled Lebanon's electrical grid and flattened large swaths of south Beirut.

Israel is also contending with how to respond to a recent attack from Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, after Israel said it intercepted and destroyed a Houthi surface-to-surface missile fired at Israel on Sunday.