IDF: We need another week
The Jerusalem Post is reporting that the IDF has destroyed 40-50% of Hezbullah's capabilities, and needs another week - which it believes it will get - to complete the job.
Operations in Lebanon, the Post has learned, are costing Israel NIS 50-100 million a day. [I believe that figure is the army's direct costs and does not count costs to the economy from worker absenteeism due to reserve duty, nor does it account for the damages to the northern part of the country from Hezbullah's rockets. CiJ]
Only Tuesday afternoon, IAF aircraft attacked two weapons-filled trucks parked on the coastal road in the town of Byblos, north of Beirut. They also hit two similar trucks on the narrow mountain road between Beirut and Syria, which has become the main route to Damascus since the air attacks made the highway unusable.
The IAF has recently begun targeting vehicles in Lebanon it suspects of transporting missiles for Hizbullah.
Television showed pictures of one truck on fire and another damaged on the mountain road. One driver was reported wounded.
In other attacks Tuesday, IAF jets carried out two raids on southern Beirut - where Hizbullah is known to occupy many buildings - and the eastern city of Baalbek.
Earlier, Deputy IDF Chief of General Staff Maj.-Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky said in an interview to Army Radio that the offensive against Hizbullah would reach its completion "in a matter of weeks."
Meanwhile, Defense Minister Amir Peretz approved a call-up of three additional reserve battalions.
The reservists are set to replace troops currently operating in the West Bank, allowing those soldiers to be deployed in the north, to assist in the conflict with Hizbullah. The orders were expected to be distributed on Tuesday. [The soldiers being sent north are conscripts in the middle of their mandatory terms of duty. The soldiers who were called up this morning were called up by Tzav 8 - order number 8 - which is an emergency order. They were given four hours to report. CiJ]
Nevertheless, Kaplinsky said a massive ground incursion was not necessary at the moment.
"At this stage we do not think we have to activate massive ground forces into Lebanon but if we have to do this, we will. We are not ruling it out," Kaplinski told Israel Radio.
The deputy chief of staff added that Hizbullah had a very large system of different types of rockets. "The (group) still has the ability to fire at the north and residents still feel this. We will do everything to shorten this suffering," he said.
On Monday night, the IDF continued its assault on Lebanon, attacking some 100 targets throughout the country, including five rocket launching sites. The IAF bombed bunkers in the neighborhood of Dahiya in southern Beirut. Also, a weapons cache and trucks used to carry arms were also hit near Ba'al Bek in eastern Lebanon.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:58 PM
1 Comments:
If Israel stops after just a week of wiping the floor with Hizbollah, then it will be nothing less than a complete utter defeat for Israel in the long run.
Hizbollah will simply lick it's wounds, recover, and then start rocketing Israel again, six-ten-fifteen years from now.
Israel needs to simply take the gloves off, drive north in full force; destroy the Lebanese Army along with the Syrian Army, and drive on Damascus; executing a campaign of scorched earth tactics reminiscent of Sherman's March to the Sea.
The Arabs will simply keep attacking Israel through their terrorist proxies until a complete, utter defeat is handled to them; by which I don't mean killing a few ten thousand of them on the battlefield like what happened in 1967 and 1973. The governments in those countries can then simply whitewash away everything as a "victory" for Arab arms, as in, "our brave soldiers, allah praise them stopped the Israelis in Lebanon", conviently leaving out the fact that 95% of them died.
However, it is impossible to ignore a Star of David flying over Damascus for about a week, before the city is burned down and the Israeli Armed forces withdraw back into Israel.
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