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COMMENTARY
July 22, 2006
The horror ahead
The task set before the Israeli ground forces -- to remove Hezbollah from southern Lebanon, if not from the world, while hurting as few Lebanese as possible -- is huge. I should expect it to begin in the next few days; there are signs it is already beginning as I write.There will be tactical surprises on both sides. Hezbollah has shown itself to be armed with weapons, and entrenched in ways, that Israeli intelligence had not discerned. The scale on which they have (literally) dug into the south Lebanese countryside is impressive. As the Israelis discovered in one special-operations foray that nearly ended in disaster this week, the enemy can pull in reinforcements as fast as the Israelis can: and they seem to come from nowhere. The event was an incursion opposite the Israeli village of Safed. The target area was thought to have been abandoned after extensive aerial bombardment. The Israeli spec-ops were supporting sappers going in to clear explosives caches and anti-tank mines that might trip up army forces moving through later. But instead, their own arrival had been fully anticipated, and a trap had been laid for them. Within moments they were put entirely on the defensive, against severe mortaring, and their back-ups were distracted by the need to prevent Hezbollah fighters from rushing through the hole they had just made in their own border. The world holds Israel to extremely high moral standards in warfare. It holds Hezbollah to no standards at all. The latter feel free to pump rockets indiscriminately into Israeli population centres -- rockets whose high-explosive warheads are packed with ball bearings and other shrapnel, to maximize human carnage wherever they may land. Hezbollah is waiting with more surprises of that sort. But this is only the front end of difficulties that will increase as the Israelis advance. For Hezbollah is not only in the happy situation of having had five or six years to prepare -- through most of which they were freely supplied by a Syrian regime that was occupying Lebanon. They also have a line of retreat. As their positions become untenable in the south of the country, they may retreat north, pulling the battle with them into Sunni and Christian neighbourhoods. This gives them a double advantage: for not only can they frustrate Israeli attempts to contain them; they can assure constantly increasing fallout among Lebanon’s civilian population, with the media and diplomatic outcry this will occasion -- against Israel. While I am hardly privy to any Israeli battle plans, I assume the surprises from the Israeli side will be designed to negate this advantage. Much of the Israeli bombing so far, against transport infrastructure, has been obviously directed towards cutting future Hezbollah lines of retreat and resupply. But I wouldn’t be surprised to see supplementary ground measures as the battle heats up. For instance, the Israelis could scoot up the west coast to southern Beirut, start the biggest fire-fights against Hezbollah guard cells there, then begin extending and deepening a northern front line by striking east towards the Syrian border -- well north of the Litani River line that the Israelis were defending until the year 2000. This could be joined in interesting ways with the inevitable paratroop drops into the Bekaa Valley, to create further unexpected opening thrusts. The noose could then be gradually tightened from three sides -- north, west, and south -- leaving the Syrian frontier open as a free-fire zone for the Israeli air force, to blast Hezbollah fighters trying to escape through the mountain passes. Such a tactical approach -- there are several ways to do essentially the same thing -- may, however, unnerve the political leadership in the Knesset, for it assumes the north of Israel will be left open to rocket attacks longer than would be the case if the IDF advanced broadly and more conventionally. It would more quickly test the grit behind the Israeli popular determination to do something about Hezbollah, once and for all. No matter what tactics the Israeli ground forces employ, they must choose between several operational disabilities into which Hezbollah will try to force them. Of those, I think the least worrying (though serious) is over-extended supply-lines. Worse is to be lured into frontal attacks on well-prepared bunkers. And worst is to be rushed towards a premature ceasefire. The Israelis need the time to be ruthlessly methodical. They can’t afford to let any part of Hezbollah survive, to create an Iraq-style insurgency. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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