Part of the deal, in this recent conflict, was to eliminate (or seriously degrade) the Hizbollah "command and control" structures.

Consider, that Hizbollah is far more than just a paramilitary organization. They are a legitimate political body, they're fully and effectively organized at the local and regional level (to be able to provide social services, for example, that even the government of Lebanon finds intractable), they're a conduit of massive amounts of money from various neighboring countries (about half a billion dollars last year alone), and so on - in other words, they're a very large organization, with a lot of pokers in a lot of fires.

Basically, what this latest assault means, is that Hizbollah will probably have to turn its attentions "inward" for a while, focusing on things like rebuilding infrastructure, providing needed food and water and medicine to the people at large, and so on. Like every large organization, Hizbollah is resource-dependent, and therefore any shift towards services necessarily means a shift away from the military.

Secondarily, as an entirely separate issue, we have the ease with which neighboring countries can ship weapons into Lebanon. Now that all the access paths have basically been destroyed, anything that comes in will have to do so under the watchful eyes of the Israelis. So my guess is, they'll let Hizbollah rebuild for a while, and then they'll have to take them down again (another notch or two - look at it like a recurring "maintenance" activity).

It seems to me, that Israel has given up any hope of actually occupying southern Lebanon, they tried that for eighteen years and it didn't work, and when it became clear that's where the fight was going again, they backed away and found a way to become satisfied with whatever little they'd achieved.

Next time though, Lebanon as a nation is in serious trouble, or at least it "could" be, if Israel chooses to go down that path. There's no doubt that Israel could completely wipe Lebanon off the map, if it chose to do so. The alternatives might not be very desirable though, and hence the cautiousness on Israel's part. At least now, there's some semblance of actual government in Lebanon - but if that goes away, there's no telling what might happen.