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Israel Beat Hezbollah in 2006
8 December 2006The prevailing wisdom is that the war during the summer of 2006 came to a draw - some will claim that Hezbollah won and others that Israel won, but by and large, the consensus is that that nobody won. After all, things are not much different than before - sure, a few buildings in Israel and Lebanon have been destroyed and a number of lives have been lost on both sides, but are things any different politically? Well, according to The First Post, yes.
Edward Luttwak’s view is that the situation in Israel today is similar to the one in Israel 30 years ago, after Egypt and Syria tried to destroy Israel - Israel was distraught about it’s inability to completely destroy the enemy and the enemy was ecstatic that it could inflict harm upon Israel - militarily and politically. But then, after the initial euphoria of the war settled, Egypt and Syria’s “presidents”/dictators (Anwar Sadat and Hafez Assad) realized that once Israel regrouped, Egypt and Syria came dangerously close to catastrophic defeat - closer than in 1967. Thus, the two leaders realized that it was in their best interests to avoid another war with the mighty Israel. Thus, Egypts’s peace treaty and Syria’s ceasefire on the Golan Heights.
Luttwak sees Israel’s situation today in a similar lens - that although Hezbollah was able to inflict some damage on Israeli tanks and soldiers, it was the political pressure on Israel that made Israel stop it’s assault to destroy Hezbollah. If it wasn’t for the political pressure, Israel would have been able to wipe out Hezbollah. Ultimately, Israel wanted to destroy “all Hezbollah positions one by one from the rear, all the way to the Israeli border.” But alas, that was not to happen, due to the “small” number of Israeli casualties. This small number of casualties was due to the success of the IDF - had Hezbollah rockets been concentrated, they would be able to assemble concentrated barrages of Katyushas into Israeli downs and incur much more damage.
However, because of Israel’s actions, Hezbollah was forced to distribute their rockets to “village militias” which were “very good at hiding them from air attacks, and sheltering them from artillery and probing Israeli unmanned air vehicles, but quite incapable of launching them effectively, in waves against common targets.”
Thus, the Katyushas, while they unfortunately killed some innocent Israeli civilians, were ineffective. Hezbollah and Nasrallah have implicitly accepted responsibility for having started the war, which is why they are now focusing on reconstruction. The theory now is that Lebanon expects Hezbollah’s help right now in rebuilding, not another war. Perhaps Israel bought itself another 10 or 20 years? Only time will tell.
Tags:hassan nasrallah , hezbollah , israeli security , israel defence forces , lebanon , southern lebanon
