LEARNING LEBANON II’S LESSONS
Liat Collins
Jerusalem Post, July 9, 2011
Time flies not only when you’re having fun.
Proof: On July 12, it will be five years since the Second Lebanon War broke out, and the intervening years seem to have gone quickly. Perhaps it was because they were so packed with action.
Lebanon II has since been overshadowed by Operation Cast Lead, reluctantly launched after missiles rained down on the South at the unignorable rate of 80 a day in the winter of 2008. This means that residents in a huge part of the country have within the last five years known that peculiar shaky feeling you get under missile fire. The South is still hit periodically and unpredictably by projectiles.
What does this do our collective psyche? Ask the inductees who are now going into the army—those who were roughly bar/bat mitzva age when Lebanon II and the Gaza campaign were taking place.
My guess is they take the “defense” part of the term Israel Defense Forces very seriously. Every soldier wants to protect his mother just as every mother is naturally protective of her child. Among the lessons of the Second Lebanon War is that the home front is the front in modern warfare. This year’s recruits have also grown up aware of the fate of Gilad Schalit, demonstrating particularly poignantly just how long the IDF soldier has been held in captivity.…
Five years offer a certain perspective. The war took the lives of 119 soldiers and 44 civilians, and the country as a whole underwent a process similar to that in a bereavement including denial, anger, and finally acceptance. The physical evidence of the war is barely perceptible, but the psychological scars are still there, unfelt as long as circumstances don’t jog the unpleasant memories.
For the most part, we have gone on with our lives. The Galilee and Golan are popular destinations for pastoral vacations; Haifa is continuing to transform itself into a major tourism magnet; Karmiel is holding its annual dance festival. Politically, the country also moved on.…
[But] Operation Cast Lead was influenced by Lebanon II at several levels. That it took the government so long to act in the South can be ascribed to [then P.M.] Olmert’s obvious fear of a having a second war, in which the main diplomatic and military objectives were not achieved, on his watch. Since Lebanon II, however, Israel has learned not to rely solely on air power as a wartime strategy while also realizing the importance of defense projects, such as the Iron Dome anti-missile missile.
Eventually, being prepared might even become a proper part of the defense doctrine.
The outbreak of the war on July 12, 2006, came as a bolt out of the blue—with the same brutal suddenness of the Katyusha rockets, and the deaths of eight soldiers and abduction of two more. The way Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev were snatched from across the border a month after Schalit—or more to the point, the way they were returned in coffins two years later in exchange for the release of Palestinian and Lebanese terrorists—also changed the way the country sees things.…
Hezbollah, backed by Iran, is believed to have tripled its missile and rocket arsenal since Lebanon II. Meanwhile, the UN forces proved unable or unwilling to stop this rearmament, and also ineffective at preventing the mass infiltration by “refugees” on the northern borders in the highly publicized, recent Nakba and Naksa day events.
War, as noted by Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, can take many forms. Lately, it has assumed the shape of self-professed peace activists, who demonstrably want to express their solidarity with Palestinians (and to hell with the rest of us).…
Last week, when a UN tribunal issued indictments implicating four members of Hezbollah with the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri in 2005, the organization’s leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, immediately claimed that Israel was behind the murder. It is some small comfort that Nasrallah was talking, as usual, from an undisclosed location—apparently fearful that Israel is capable of seeking him out and killing him.…
I like the thought of Nasrallah having to move every few days, as Post defense reporter Yaakov Katz noted in an analysis last week. He should feel like a criminal on the run. I just hope that he is fleeing from bunker to bunker, and not sleeping in pleasant surroundings in an opulent Beirut home. Five years on, it is appropriate to remember that it is Nasrallah who was to blame for the conflict.
The war was not considered a success by Israel, but the fact that it’s the Hezbollah leader hiding in a shelter this year and not Israeli children, suggests that it was not a total loss either. Force plays a role in the Middle East, but never underestimate the power of deterrence.
(Mrs. Collins is editor of The International Jerusalem Post.)
WHAT IT MEANS TO ENGAGE HEZBOLLAH
Omri Ceren
Contentions, July 11, 2011
There are a number of signs the Obama White House is ready to establish something more than a modus vivendi with Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon. From siding with Beirut over Jerusalem regarding maritime resources to providing weapons to the Hezbollah-infiltrated LAF on the thinnest pretexts, the administration seems intent on “biting the bullet,” “living in the real world,” “negotiating with enemies not friends,” or whatever leaden catchphrase we’re using this week to justify bringing into the tent fanatics who want to destroy us.…
But let’s all keep in mind what Hezbollah is, because there was a time when even the echo of something like national honor would have precluded sitting across the table from them or anyone who refused to repudiate them. We owe more than a few Hezbollah leaders death sentences, and we owe the organization itself nothing less than unremitting hostility until we or they lose (as the world’s only hyperpower, in theory I like our odds). Instead the White House is actively searching for loopholes to maintain or enhance bilateral relations with Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon. So it’s worth reviewing how in 1984 Hezbollah kidnapped CIA Lebanon Station Chief William Buckley as he was leaving his house in the morning. They tortured him continuously for 15 months, occasionally sending videos of him naked and screaming to U.S. bureaus and agencies in Europe, until his body gave out. In the meantime, Hezbollah used the information he provided to dismantle U.S. intelligence assets in the Levant.…
In 1988, a few years after Buckley’s torture and murder, Hezbollah kidnapped U.S. Marine Colonel Rich Higgins. Higgins, who at the time was serving as a UN military observer, was tortured and eventually murdered.…
And of course, there are the 63 people Hezbollah murdered when they bombed our Beirut embassy in 1982, the 241 Marines they killed in their barracks in 1983, and the 18 serviceman they killed near the Torrejon Air Force Base in 1984. These might all be water under the bridge to the reset-philic neophytes who inhabit the White House, but the Hezbollah leaders who committed these atrocities are very much aware of who is coming to whom asking for talks, and under the shadow of what crimes. Americans should be as well.…
With the possible exception of al Qaeda, and driven by their state sponsor Iran, there is no terrorist organization more thoroughly committed to undermining American interests globally. What is the White House possibly thinking?
ASSESSING QUIET ON LEBANON FRONT, 5 YEARS AFTER 2006 WAR
Yaakov Katz
Jerusalem Post, July 12, 2011
On Monday, Maj.-Gen. Yair Golan took up his post as head of the Northern Command in a ceremony in Tel Aviv, replacing Maj.-Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, who after almost five years stepped down ahead of his appointment in a year as deputy to Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz.
Until a month ago, Golan was the head of the Home Front Command, experience that some senior officers said recently would prove to be beneficial to the head of the Northern Command.
At the Home Front Command, it was Golan’s job to prepare the country for the missile onslaught that it will face in a future war with Hezbollah, which is believed to be capable of firing hundreds of missiles a day into Israel. At the Northern Command, it is now Golan’s job to prevent that from ever happening. “Knowing the devastation and destruction the war you are asked to plan and fight will have on Israel before it even occurs is a humbling experience,” one of the officers explained.
For the IDF, there are two ways to evaluate the five years that have passed since the Second Lebanon War. On the one hand, they have been very quiet—10 rockets have been fired from Lebanon into Israel but not a single one by Hezbollah. On the other hand, it is impossible to ignore Hezbollah’s massive and unprecedented military buildup amounting to around 50,000 missiles and rockets.
While some Israeli politicians and defense officials—particularly those who served in key positions during the conflict in 2006—argue that the quiet along the border is the result of the war, according to Military Intelligence assessments things are more complicated.
Yes, the war had a major affect on Hezbollah, which lost major infrastructure and hundreds of fighters, but the current quiet along the border is understood to be more the result of the control Iran has over the terrorist organization, as well as of its political metamorphosis.
Since the war, Iran has given Hezbollah between $500 million and $1 billion annually.
The money came with strings attached and Iran has bolstered its presence in Lebanon and installed key officials within the organization’s top hierarchy. This makes it almost impossible for Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah to embark on military adventures that do not fit Tehran’s interests—adventures like the kidnapping of reservists Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser on the border on July 12, 2006.
Another restraining factor is the economy in Lebanon, which comes in third place in the Middle East after Israel and Saudi Arabia, and has seen 7 percent growth in GNP since the war in 2006. If another war breaks out, Hezbollah will likely be blamed, all the more so due to its and its allies current majority in the Lebanese cabinet.
In the five years since the war, Hezbollah has tripled in size, and according to Israeli intelligence today has bases and missile launchers in at least 100 Shi’ite villages scattered throughout southern Lebanon. It has longer-range missiles in the center, mostly in Beirut and the Bekaa Valley, and is also believed to maintain strategic assets in Syria, which according to news reports, might be on their way to Lebanon due to concern that President Bashar Assad’s days are numbered.
Iran wants to retain Hezbollah as a sword over Israel’s head, to deter Israel from attacking its nuclear facilities.… [But] Israel has also made advances. It has boosted training, increased its development and procurement of new technological capabilities that will provide it with an edge on a future battlefield, and invested heavily in creating target banks that it can immediately attack in the event that war erupts.…
For Israel, [the 2006 Lebanon war] was a wakeup call and helped it realize that the war of the future is usually nothing like the war of the past. That lesson needs to be remembered.
THE PATH TO THE NEXT LEBANON WAR
Caroline B. Glick
Jerusalem Post, July 11, 2011
Five years ago this week, Iran’s Lebanese proxy opened war with Israel. The war lasted 34 days, during which Hezbollah launched more than 4,000 missiles against Israel. Now five years later, under US President Barack Obama, America is pushing a policy that drastically escalates the chance that a new war between Israel and Iran’s Lebanese army will break out again in the near future.
Back in 2006, Israel’s response to Hezbollah’s aggression was swift but incompetent. While Israel scored some blows against the Iranian proxy force, the war ended with Hezbollah still shooting. Israel failed to defeat the terror army. And because Hezbollah survived, it won the war.
This truth is exposed in all its ugliness by the political and military realities five years on. Today, Hezbollah is not simply in charge of Israel’s former security zone in South Lebanon. It is in charge of all of Lebanon. The Hezbollah-controlled government controls all aspects of the Lebanese state that it wishes. These include the military, the telecommunications networks, and the international borders, airports and sea ports, among other things.
Today, Hezbollah has not merely refilled its depleted missile arsenals. It has tripled the size of its missile arsenals. In 2006, IAF strikes in the first 24 hours of the war knocked out all of Hezbollah’s long-range missiles. Today, not only have those stocks been replenished, Hezbollah’s arsenal includes missiles with ranges covering all of Israel, with larger payloads and many with guidance systems.
The lessons of the war are easy to see. And the Israeli public, which learned them five years ago, still hasn’t forgotten them.
Generally speaking, the war taught us three lessons. The first lesson is that you can’t convince terrorists to lay down their arms simply by walking away. Israel withdrew from its security zone in southern Lebanon in 2000. The withdrawal was a precursor to its withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. In 2006, Israel was attacked from both territories.
In the lead-up to both withdrawals, Israel’s national leadership told the public that the only reason terrorists from these territories were attacking us was that we were there. If we went away, they would stop hating us and we would be safe. We were the problem, not them, so we could solve the problem by giving them what they wanted.
Although then-prime minister Ehud Olmert and then-foreign minister Tzipi Livni continued to push appeasement through their insistence that Israel surrender Judea and Samaria, the war of 2006 showed the public the folly of their plans. And at first opportunity, the public elected the Likud and other right-wing parties—which oppose appeasement—to form the current government.
The second lesson the public learned is that when a nation goes to war against an enemy that seeks its destruction, it must fight to win. You cannot fight a half-war against an implacable foe. And if you fail to win, you lose.…
In the event, there was only one way for Israel to defeat Hezbollah—by regaining control over southern Lebanon. Any other conclusion to the war would leave Hezbollah standing. And simply by surviving intact, as Lebanese Druse leader Walid Jumblatt warned at the time, the road would be paved for Hezbollah to take over Lebanon.…
The third lesson of the war…is that once a leader is ideologically committed to a policy of appeasement, he is unable to allow rational considerations to permeate his thinking.
The Olmert government was elected in 2006 on the basis of its plan to repeat the Lebanon and Gaza withdrawals in Judea and Samaria.… If Israel had retaken control of southern Lebanon, Olmert would have had a chance of convincing the public that unilateral withdrawal was a viable strategy. He would have been able to argue that just as the IDF retook control of southern Lebanon, so it would retake control of Judea and Samaria if the Palestinians used the vacated lands to attack the rest of the country.
But because he was committed to appeasement, Olmert could not fight to win in Lebanon. The appeasement agenda is predicated on the disavowal of the notion of military victory and the embrace of the mantra, “There is no military solution.…”
Instead of fighting to win, Olmert and Livni sued for a cease-fire. That is, they sought a diplomatic solution to a military problem. And since by not losing, Hezbollah won the military contest, it also came out the victor in UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which set the conditions of the cease-fire…[and] placed the international terror group run by Iran on equal footing with Israel, a sovereign state. The security arrangements in the resolution were an invitation for Hezbollah to rearm.…
The Israeli public learned these lessons and elected a government that understands them. Perhaps if the American people had elected Senator John McCain to succeed George W. Bush in 2008, the US government would have learned these lessons as well. And then maybe together the Israeli and the US governments might have set about fixing at least some of the damage the war caused them both.
But in their wisdom, the American people elected Barack Obama.…
Far from recognizing the nature of Hezbollah, the Obama administration has tried to wish away its implacability. Last May, Obama’s counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan spoke of the administration’s plan to cultivate “moderate elements” in the Iranian-run jihadist organization.…
The dangers of Obama’s rejection of these basic truths were exposed this week. Sunday the government approved the demarcation of Israel’s territorial waters along the border with Lebanon. The borders will be submitted to the UN. Israel’s move was forced on it by the Obama administration.
The dispute over the sea border arose after Israel discovered massive quantities of natural gas in its territorial waters in 2009. Acting on orders from Hezbollah and Iran, the Lebanese government immediately claimed erroneously that the waters belonged to Lebanon. Last August, Lebanon submitted its claim to the UN.… In staking this false claim, as it did with the Shaba Farms on Mount Dov in the Golan Heights in 2000, Lebanon is setting up a casus belli against Israel.
Under the circumstances, the only rational policy that the US can possibly adopt is to loudly and strenuously back Israel’s claim and reject all Lebanese contentions to the contrary.… Rather than do this, guided by its appeasement ideology, the Obama administration has refused to take sides. It urged Israel to submit its counter-claim to the UN—where it can bully Israel into accepting arbitration of the dispute by the inherently anti-Israel UN.…
What the last war taught us is that this sort of behavior is what emboldens aggressors to attack. Obama’s even-handedness in the face of a US enemy’s aggression against a US ally is placing Israel and Lebanon on a straight path to a new war.
