Will the next war be different?
Former National Security Adviser Giora Eiland says that the next war with Lebanon will look a lot different than the previous one.Such war would be different than the Second Lebanon War in one main aspect: It will be a war between Israel and Lebanon. The result would necessarily be great devastation in Lebanon, the destruction of its national infrastructures, and a grave blow to its military and institutions.I hope that we will hit Lebanon harder and more effectively. But as some of you may recall, when the Second Lebanon War first broke out, Israel went after Lebanon's infrastructure (Beirut Airport, some electrical plants) until then President Fouad Siniora went crying (literally) to the US, and the US told us to stop. Is that going to happen again? I hope not. Because if it does, we will be hit a lot harder by Hezbullah than the last time, but we won't be able to hit them back hard enough to do any real damage to them.
The next war being different than the previous one would not stem from a different diplomatic logic, but first and foremost from a military need. Should Israel limit its war to Hezbollah alone, the results would not be better than what we saw in the Second Lebanon War. We indeed improved greatly since that war, but so did Hezbollah.
We may be able to hit Hezbollah more successfully, yet it too would be able to hit Israel’s home front more effectively. The bottom line would not be encouraging. On the other hand, an inter-state confrontation would grant most advantages to Israel.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:31 PM
7 Comments:
Does Netanyahu wish to be known as the Israeli prime minister who betrayed Israel, for all eternity?
If he thinks he will survive this he is mistaken!
Seriously, ground penetrating radar and a hyperspectral imager (to see through the scrub) need to be deployed along there to make sure that the attack was perpetrated because of the Hariri deal and not because they have a nasty surprise stored there.
Israel should also take out the illegal dams taht Lebanon have built.
I would also bomb the Iranian Embassy (a know command and control center) and any and all Hezbollah propaganda monuments.
Lebanon has successfully been compromised by Syria and Iran via Hezbollah and now Lebanon will have to pay the price for it's acceptance of those influences.
Israel should (in the next war) not forget those targets that lie just across the border in Syria.
The secret to an Israeli success?
SPEED.
No more wasting days sending leaflets.
If a village is a problem? level it.
Do not waste human resources going door to door.
This is war...
Wake up.
If the Arabs CHOOSE to hide weapons within civilian areas they the IDF should state NOW that all military targets will be attacked, regardless of civilian losses and the Lebanese shall be held, UNDER THE GENEVA CONVENTION, for all injury and deaths.
It's time for Israel to be bold.
State the obvious,
The Geneva Convention holds those that do the hiding among civilians to be responsible PERIOD.
If Israel were smart, they should start a pysch ops NOW, giving full warning to Southern Lebanon (and the Gaza Strip) that specific towns will be targeted in the very 1st minutes of a breakout and advise them to flee now..
Create the crisis in Lebanon NOW, before the war starts.
But when the war starts? (and it will) hit hard, hit fast and do not let up until there is nothing left to pulverize.
Remember the USA, UN, Russia and the world are not on your side.
If you need a lesson on how the arabs do this?
Study the Lebanese destruction of the the Nahr al-Bared UNRWA Palestinian refugee camp.
Israel needs to annex southern Lebanon and transform it by annexing it to Israel and populating it with Jews - after the Hezbollah population and fighters are driven out, of course. Its time to stop handing enemy land back to the Arabs. It does nothing to make the Arabs see the Jews are anything other than stupid morons who have no respect for their own dead.
Its time for a change in policy towards any Arab state that attacks Israel - something Israel should have done after the Six Day War but didn't.
The first engagement in Lebanon was not the 82 campaign but the 1978 Operation Litani that included a ground component and Israeli occupation up to the Litani (then President Carter forced a withdrawal, paving the way for UNIFIL complicity with Fatah and the Sharon campaign after a terrorist bus hijacking in the north). Similarly the 1982 campaign had a massive ground component. Into the subsequent occupation and well afterwards (most disastrously in the "Second Lebanese War") Israel has attempted to win on air and rocket and artillery power--infantry operations are an afterthought. It is a fair question to ask whether the articles suggestion--a really really really big air/rocket/artillery assault, but without coordinated infantry seize and hold--will do any better. Even in WWII, where such attacks were unrestrained, ground follow-up was necessary. Think of the Pacific theater.
It occurs to me that this week's event was encouraged by the world's automatic anger at everything Israel does.
Lebanon might also have been pushing to see what she could get away with. As far as I'm concerned it was an act worthy of a terrorist outfit, and illegal for a proper army.
Annexing Southern Lebanon and repopulating it with Jews will be a stretch. Probably harder to do in practice than you might think given that Israel has yet to be able to empty out major population centers--it can do the towns and villages but not the cities.
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