On July 12, militants from the Lebanese Hizbollah crossed into Israel, captured two soldiers, and killed three others. In response, Israel started a massive bombing of Lebanon, precipitating retaliation by Hizbollah rockets on Israeli towns. The Israeli-Hizbollah war of summer 2006 was presented in the US media as a defensive Israeli response to these events; they were, however, a mere trigger, for both sides believed a showdown was inevitable and both saw the war as waged over much larger issues.
Israel's goals were ostensibly to free its kidnapped soldiers, but it could have obtained their release in a prisoner’s swap with Hizbollah if that was all that mattered. The kidnapping on Israeli territory was, however, seen to cross a red line. Once Hizbollah began rocketing deep into Israel for the first time, Israel depicted the conflict as a matter of existential security but it could, at any time, have brought these attacks to an end by deescalating the conflict; instead it escalated it. Israel obviously had larger strategic goals in mind. Most obviously, it sought to decisively damage Hizbollah, drive it out of proximity to Israel’s border and force the Lebanese government or international intervention to disarm Hizbollah and prevent its rearmament.1
The scale of the damage inflicted on Lebanon aimed, more broadly, to restore the credibility of Israeli deterrence, weakened after Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon under Hizbollah pressure in 2000 had left the impression that force can work in dealing with Israel.2 Israel believed Hizbollah’s success had specifically inspired Palestinian militants in the West Bank and Gaza and empowered Hamas. More than that, the myth of Hizbollah would have to be destroyed if Israel was to impose its preferred settlement on the Palestinians. Finally, Israel wanted to "destroy the Iranian Western command” before Iran could go nuclear. Israel was concerned by the 10-15,000 short-range missiles in Hizbollah's arsenal that could reach northern Israel but even more so by Iranian-provided medium and long range rockets that could target most of Israel. To Israel, these represented an Iranian-Syrian proxy missile force that could be used against Israel if it or the US attacked Iran over its nuclear facilities or targeted Syria. 3
Many commentators thought Hizbollah was acting on behalf of Iran or Syria but this exaggerates its subservience to these states and its willingness to sacrifice Lebanese interests to their agendas. According to Hizbollah specialist Amal Saad Ghorayeb,4 Hizbollah has its own agenda. Its concern for Israeli-held prisoners was genuine and it had called 2006 "the year for retrieving the prisoners." Hizbollah had a past history of winning prisoner releases in exchanges with Israel. It would have seen its actions as within the "rules of the game" in south Lebanon, albeit more audacious in that it occurred on Israeli territory, not the contested Shebaa farms. Hence, Hizbollah did not seem to expect the unprecedented scale of the Israeli response. It had however, made contingency plans for a wider war and once Israel decided to escalate, Hizbollah embraced the opportunity to demonstrate its ability to defend Lebanon and inflict comparable damage on Israel. In a mirror image of Israeli attitudes, for Hizbollah the war was also about deterrence—of Israel. 5
But, like Israel, Hizbollah soon came to see wider interests and principles than southern Lebanon to be at stake. According to the ICG, Hizbollah is complex, hence, its motives are complex. Specifically, Hizbollah is a multi-faced movement, the particular defender of the Shia community and provider of extensive social services and also a Lebanese party with deputies in parliament and ministers in the government. But it also was initially fostered by and retains intimate ties with Iran and it sees itself as having an Arab/Islamic mission including helping to empower the Palestinians against the massive Israeli repression from which they have suffered. It is torn between its role as a Pan-Islamic resistance movement, in which capacity it cannot escape the risks of provoking Israel and its role as a Lebanese party in which capacity it must try to minimize Israeli harm to Lebanon. One consideration in the kidnapping was to relieve pressure on the Palestinians under Israeli siege, thereby demonstrating Hizbollah’s legitimacy as the main Arab resistance to Israel, and, in its support of Sunni Palestinians, depict itself as more than a sectarian movement.
The ferocity of the Israeli response quickly made Hizbollah realize that this was a struggle over the whole future of the region which Hizbollah could use for wider ends: to rekindle the spirit of resistance, discredit US-allied Arab regimes for their complacency over the face of repression in Palestine and help heal the Sunni-Shia sectarian conflict in Iraq by demonstrating cross-sectarian Islamic solidarity in the face of common enemies.6 Additionally, Hizbollah had long feared that the US would try to use an Israeli attack to implement the UN resolution 1554 of 2005 for disarming Hizbollah; once the US refused to support a ceasefire and talked of the war as a way of remaking a “new Middle East,” Hizbollah saw Washington as the primary instigator of the war. Just as President Bush characterized the war as one between the forces of terrorism and freedom, so Hizbollah saw it as a test of whether the US could destroy the last obstacle to its hegemony in the Middle East, the Iran-Syria-Hizbollah axis. The first step in destroying this resistance would be to turn Lebanon into a US-Israeli client state. 7 This would advance Israel's unilateral settlement in the Palestinian territories allowing preservation of its settlements and annexation of parts of the area while reducing the Palestinian state to a “bantustan.” As Nasrallah put it: "the goal of the war against Lebanon is to eliminate the Palestinian issue."8 The Intifada in Palestine had been inspired by Hizbollah’s struggle in Lebanon and if it could be destroyed "the message to the Palestinians would be that they should despair." Additionally, he argued, "If a confrontation breaks out with Iran, Hizbullah might intervene in Iran's favour. So striking Hizbullah now would weaken, rather than strengthen, Iran on the nuclear issue." Both those for and against Hizbollah agreed that Lebanon had become the battlefield between American-Israeli and Syrian-Iranian axes. For Iran, the war was part of Washington’s project to secure Israel's interests and the region's oil 9
Syria and Iran were widely blamed for Hizbollah’s actions, especially by US and Israeli politicians, but also by pro-US Arab leaders and the anti-Syrian Lebanese bloc which accused them of trying to divert attention from the Hariri investigation and Iran's nuclear issue. They may indeed have see the war, once started, as a way of reminding the world that they could make trouble if the West continued to push them to the wall over these issues; but actually initiating one would have been a risky strategy since the war was used by the US to demonize them further as pariah states. Hizbollah expert Amal Saad-Ghorayeb argued that Syrian influence over Hizbollah had plummeted since its forced withdrawal from Lebanon. Interestingly, Israeli analysts told Cordesman they did not believe that Syria or Iran had ordered the attack but that Hizbollah's actions had caught them in a situation where they were bound to support it. As the war escalated, Iran and Syria provided weapons and intelligence; indeed Israel was surprised at the scale of weaponry provided by Syria in particular. Syria claimed that the war provided a lesson for Israel, namely, that without returning the occupied territories （especially the Golan Heights as well as the Palestinian territories） it could not have peace, and that it could not unilaterally impose a settlement by force. Syria hoped that the struggle would arouse the Shia across the region against Israel and the US and shake the pro-Americana Arab regimes that were, in its view, trying to isolate Syria and promote a culture of defeatism.
US and Israeli goals seemed barely distinguishable except that the US administration, not having to do the actual fighting, seemed more hawkish than Israel and had wider regional ambitions which it thought Israel's war might serve. According to the ICG, the stage was set for the war by Washington's perception of all Lebanese events through the prism of its campaign to de-stabilize the Syrian regime, to disarm Hizbollah and to make Lebanon a stage for remaking the Middle East region--rather than working to stabilize Lebanon. Seymour Hersh reported that the Israelis first proposed an attack on Hizbollah well before the 12 July kidnapping, which was merely the pretext for implementing it. Israeli officials had visited Washington "to get a green light" and "to find out how much the United States would bear." According to an administration insider, "the Israelis told us it would be a cheap war with many benefits." For the neo-cons, it presented an opportunity to rescue their faltering project for a pro-Israeli Pax Americana in the region, stymied by the resistance in in Iraq and the reluctance of the US military to attack Iran, the greatest beneficiary of the war on Iraq. So, in contrast to historic US policy of restraining Israel, parts of the Bush administration embraced the plan with enthusiasm. Vice President Cheney saw it as a dry run for an attack on Iran: to see how much could be accomplished from the air at low cost and since prior to any such military attack the United States had to get rid of the weapons Hizbollah could use in potential retaliation against Israel.10 US neocons also encouraged Israel to attack Syria but some Israeli officials considered this "nuts" and Israel declined.11 The US also saw the war as an opportunity to enlist its Arab allies against Syria and Hizbollah.
Once the war started, the US obstructed UN ceasefire resolutions that would have ended it before American and Israeli goals were accomplished, provided intelligence and munitions, and made sure the eventual ceasefire resolution was chiefly protective of Israel’s interests. US politicians had no criticism of Israel’s attacks on civilians and infrastructure and the American media conveyed the image of an Israeli defensive fight against evil.12 According to the prestigious US professors of International Relations, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, the US Government's unbalanced support for Israel's war in Lebanon once again placed the agenda of the Israeli lobby ahead of US strategic interests.13
Although Hizbollah initiated the conflict by kidnapping Israeli soldiers, Hizbullah fired after and in response to Israel’s massive bombing of civilian areas in Lebanon. The Israeli chief of Staff boasted he would “turn the clock back in Lebanon by 20 years.” According to Amnesty International, Israel’s strikes on civilian buildings and infrastructures went beyond "collateral damage" and amounted to indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks under the Geneva conventions on the laws of war. The bombardment of power and water plants and transport links was "deliberate and an integral part of a military strategy." Israel launched more than 7,000 air strikes and 2,500 naval bombardments against Lebanon. Around one third of the 1,183 Lebanese killed were children, while 4,054 people were injured and a million displaced. Up to 90% of some towns and villages in southern Lebanon were destroyed. Civilian deaths on the Israeli side totalled 43.14
Hizbollah attempted a measured response to Israel's continuing escalation as Jonathan Cooke details. For the first day and a half of Israel's bombardment, Hizbollah limited its missile strikes to military sites and the northern borders areas where civilians were well protected. Only on the second day of the fighting did it attack Haifa-- where ports and financial centres were effectively closed for more than a week--with the aim of giving Israelis “a small taste of the disruption of normal life that was being endured by the Lebanese.” This also aimed at undercutting public confidence in the ability of Israel's military to protect its security.15 Israel’s leaders had not planned on such a large scale dislocation of its own population. But Hizbollah never fired its longer-range missiles, which it had promised to use if Beirut was attacked.
Despite Israel's attempt to justify tactics on the grounds that
Hizbollah was deliberately using human shields, Human Rights Watch
found no such cases, unsurprising since Hizbollah fighters are
recruited from the villages Israel targeted. According to Malley,
Israeli targeting was disproportionate, but not indiscriminate for it
created a "humanitarian catastrophe of almost unimaginable proportions"
for Lebanon's Shiite population, Hezbollah's base of support. 16 The
aim was to undermine Hizbollah within its own constituency. Cordesman
sums up the other rationale for Israel’s lack of restraint: “Israel's
strategy appeared to be to escalate until the international community
acted on Israel's terms.”
17
Meanwhile, the “international community” was either paralysed by US obstruction or complicit with Israel since instead of demanding an immediate cease-fire, its inaction gave Israel time to try to militarily impose a new balance of forces. Hizbollah opposed a conditional ceasefire that would enable Israel to get political gains and initially rejected an international force. However it finally accepted the ceasefire, conditional on withdrawal of Israeli troops in Lebanon. Nasrallah castigated the first American-French UN draft resolution as "unfair and unjust" in that it responded chiefly to Israel's interests. However, he ended up assenting to the Lebanese government plan to deploy 15,000 troops in the south, owing to the need to end the suffering and to head off American efforts to get a large international force deployed. However, UN Security Council 1701 called for the deployment of Lebanese and international forces in the south, a Lebanese state monopoly of weapons, and an embargo on arms deliveries to Hizbollah （from Syria and Iran）--on the face of it, a diplomatic defeat for Hizbollah and its backers.
Israel did not destroy Hizbollah as a fighting force. Israel claims it killed 500 Hizbollah fighters but had sharply underestimated the number and quality of fighters at war's start so this figure may represent perhaps 20% of Hizbollah strength; the conflict also precipitated a wave of new recruitment to the movement. Israel’s high tech weapons and sensors enabled it to attack Hizbollah missile launchers and it seems to have destroyed many medium and long-range missiles but many shorter-range missiles survived. Hizbollah fought a sophisticated guerrilla war using advanced but light and cheap equipment including anti-tank weapons, which made the land war quite costly for Israel. According to Robert Fisk, far from driving Hizbollah north across the Litani River, Israel has entrenched its fighters in their Lebanese villages as never before.18 Israel's reluctance to take the casualties needed to continue the land war showed the limits of its military capability and it's towns were shown to be vulnerable to rocket attacks. Israel's high command was overconfident of the efficacy of air power and unprepared for ground warfare. The Israel public wanted victory at little cost which the government and army did not deliver. Hence, as the war went on, support for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declined significantly; Lebanon proved once again to be a losing proposition for Israeli politicians.
It is, therefore, far from clear whether Israel has restored its deterrence capability. It believes the massive scale of the destruction will make for a deterrent against future Hizbollah or other challenges but underestimates the anger its action created. It did not deter Syria and Iran from a major resupply operation during the war. On the other hand, given the incredible destruction suffered by the Shiite community, Hizbollah is likely to be more cautious in future and the myth of its missile deterrent against Israel may have been discredited.
The big issue is whether Israel can prevent Hizbollah’s military re-supply after the war and get it pushed back from the border. Since Israel decided against staying permanently in southern Lebanon, where its forces would be targets of a war of attrition, it can only win the war if the Lebanese army and international forces do its work for it.19 From an Arab point of view, Israel failed in its military objectives, but by systematically destroying Lebanon, it blackmailed the world community into unbalanced UN resolutions that mandated peacekeepers whose mission would serve Israeli security needs.
Lebanon: For newly reborn Lebanon, led by a West-leaning government that sprang from last year's anti-Syrian Cedar Revolution, the war represents an incalculable loss.20 Whether Hizbollah is politically weakened or strengthened by the war will depend on whether the Lebanese blame Israel or Hizbollah for the destruction. The country is likely to be polarized on this issue. The Lebanese public rallied to Hizbollah, including many Christians after Israel bombed their neighbourhoods and Lebanon's infrastructure. Israel was seen as attempting to destroy the nation, not just Hizbollah. Though the Shia bore the brunt of the attack they have not turned against Hizbollah and Sunni Islamists have aligned with it. Some Lebanese leaders, especially the Maronite Lebanese Forces, welcomed an Israeli destruction of Hizbollah but they were silenced by Hizbollah’s successes. Fearing it has been strengthened, they are seeking to get international forces to curb it. In this lies the potential to re-ignite Lebanon's civil war. Polls show the Lebanese split evenly on the contentious issue of Hizbollah’s disarmament 21
The Arab -Islamic World: The war became a test of strength between pro-American Arab regimes such as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia and the Syrian-Iranian alliance. The former fear an Iranian-led Shia axis, possibly in alliance with radical Sunni Islamists, and targeting Sunni regimes. At the war's outset, they blamed Hizbollah for recklessly provoking it, thereby providing what the United States and Israel took as approval for continued attack on Lebanon. Some Saudi clerics disputed Hizbollah's credentials as a resistance movement and were accused by Iran and Syria of serving imperialism's effort to split the Arabs along sectarian lines. However, Israel's scorched earth tactics forced moderate Arab regimes to disassociate themselves with the war and the US stance on it. At the popular level, Hizbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah emerged as a hero throughout the Arab world, radical Islamist militancy was fostered and the legitimacy of pro-American governments further undermined.22 Far from humiliating Iran and Syria, which was the Israeli-American plan, these two states have been left untouched. In Syria’s view indeed, the "defeatist" approach of pro-US Arab regimes had been refuted by Hizbollah’s performance. But many Arab commentators continue to blame Syria and Iran for the war and at the elite level, the Arab world is split over it.
The USA: On the face
of it, the US neo-con project to impose a
pro-Israeli Pax-Americana on the Middle East appeared to suffer a
setback. Washington's blatant lack of concern for Lebanese life and
property cost it further ground in Arab public opinion and embarrassed
its supporters among Arab liberals and Western-dependent rulers, for
whom deference to the US is an increasing liability at home. Nasrallah
was able to lecture Lebanese and other governments that relied on the
US not to forget how the US sacrificed Lebanon to Israeli interests.
Having alienated their own people, many Arab regimes cannot, of course,
dispense with US support. According to CIA al-Qaida expert, Michael
Scheuer, Lebanon is "[V]alidation for Muslims of Osama bin Laden's
assertion that the West considers Muslim lives cheap and expendable.
They will see that three kidnapped Israeli soldiers and several dozen
dead Israelis are worth infinitely more to the West than the thousands
of Muslims held for years in Israel's prisons, the hundreds already
killed in Lebanon, and the eradication of Lebanon's modern
infrastructure.” Just as with the US invasion of Iraq, this war was
accompanied by grandiose American rhetoric about remaking the Middle
East against the wishes of its people, which was certain to arouse deep
animosity.23 As one
pro-Israeli analyst recognized, "in the absence
of a clear-cut Israeli victory, the United States will find it hard to
gain political momentum."24
The longer-term outcome will be determined by the struggle over the mission and behaviour of the multinational force and the Lebanese army that is deploying in the south of Lebanon and on its coasts. For Israel, the war could still be a success if the Hizbollah threat is ended; conversely, from the point of view of Hizbollah, Syria and Iran, Israel will have won if Hizbollah is neutralized as a deterrent force against American and Israeli aggression.
If the UN resolution is implemented Hizbollah, Iran and Syria would be the losers.25 Having accepted a UN resolution that theoretically imperilled its status, Hizbollah set out to neutralize it by getting the Lebanese government to eschew any intention to disarm it. Nasrallah insisted disarmament was only possible within the context of a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace and that in its absence, Hizbollah is the main Lebanese defence against Israel since the conventional Lebanese army could never confront Israel. The army, sympathetic to Hizbollah, has made its move south conditional on Hizbollah acceptance, and with 40% of its conscripts Shiite, it is keen to avoid a predictable split long sectarian lines from any confrontations with Hizbollah. If the army largely coordinates with and even comes to incorporate Hizbollah, the outcome may be very different than Israel expects.
Nor, experts on Lebanon and UNIFIL contend, are the
multi-national forces likely to attempt actual disarmament of so
formidable a fighting force as Hizbollah. Because of opposition
from the Lebanese government, which includes Hizbullah cabinet
ministers, the UN resolution did not, despite US efforts, give the
force peace enforcement powers under Chapter VII, although article 12
states that UNIFIL is “authorized to take all necessary action to
ensure that its area of operations is not utilized for hostile
activities, and to resist attempts by forceful means to prevent it from
discharging its duties." According to former UNIFIL spokesman Timor
Goksel, “The whole thing missing in this debate is a sense of
realism….It's mind-boggling how naive this plan is...You can't sustain
it because you'd be taking on the local people and then you become part
of the problem, not the solution."27
"Everybody understands
that the disarmament of Hizbollah as a whole is not going to be done by
force," said UN Spokesman Edward Mortimer.28 Ausseberg
argues that
a military solution is untenable. Hizbollah is not only a social
movement deeply rooted in Lebanon's largest community, but is the
best-organized force in Lebanon.29 As for the
mandate of the UN to
police a buffer zone in the south, the last attempt to establish one
had no legitimacy and could not be sustained even by Israeli power. Any
attempt to enforce an arms blockade of Hizbollah from Syria and Iran is
even more problematic. The latter mission is dependent on a request of
the Lebanese government in which Hizbollah is represented and which has
apparently declined to ask for forces on its long border with Syria.
The "international community" and the UN do not enjoy the confidence of
Hizbollah which views them as subservient to US and Israeli pressures.
Syria warned that a multinational force, trying to isolate Lebanon from
Syria would be regarded as an occupation force by the resistance and
warned the Lebanese government that such a move would destroy relations
with Syria for which it would bear the consequences; Syria could
inflict great harm by closing the transit routes from Lebanon to the
Arab hinterland.30
The ICG warns that the UN force must stick to
verifying the ceasefire and not become a party to the conflict.
Ausseberg argues that the mission will fail if it does not accommodate
the legitimate interests of all sides, including Syria and Iran, and if
it addresses only the symptoms, not the root of the problem, namely the
Israeli occupation of Arab territories. Indeed, the UN force
risks becoming an instrument of the one state, Israel,
which stands in violation of the most UN resolutions. If the
"international community" allows itself to be dragged into a war with
Hizbollah, it will contribute to the unfolding "clash of
civilizations."
1. Iraq Crisis Group, “Israel/Palestine/Lebanon: Climbing Out of the Abyss,” Middle East Report No 57, 25 July 2006.
2. Israeli officials’ explanation to Anthony Cordesman cited in “Preliminary ‘Lessons’ of the Israel-Hizbollah War,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, August 17, 2006.
3.Anthony Cordesman, ibid.
4. Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, “Hizbollah’s Outlook in the Current Conflict,” Policy Outlook, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, August 2006.
5.Iraq Crisis Group, ibid.
6.Iraq Crisis Group, ibid
7.Saad-Ghorbiyeh, ibid
8.Hassan al-Nasrallah, interview, al-Jazira July 24, 2006.
9.IRNA （Iran）, July 16, 2006）.
10.“US Involved In Planning Israel's Operations In Lebanon” Agence France Presse, 8/13/06; Ramzy Baroud, “The Neocons' Battle for a New Middle East,” Islam Online, Aug. 14, 2006.
11.csmonitor.com, August 9, 2006.
12.Independent, 15 August 2006.
13.John Mearsheimer and Stephan Walt, “The Israeli Lobby and the US Response to the War on Lebanon,” National Press Club, Washington, D.C. August 28, 2006.
14."Amnesty Report Accuses Israel Of War Crimes ,"Guardian, 8/23/06.
15.Jonathan Cook, Five Myths That Sanction Israel's War Crimes
July 26, 2006 http://www.antiwar.com/orig/cook.php?articleid=9407,）
16.Robert Malley, “A New Middle East,” New York Review of Books, Volume 53, Number 14, Sept. 21, 2006.
17.Cordesman, ibid.
18.15 August 2006 http://news.independent.co.uk
19.Cordesman, ibid.
20.Gilles Kepel, Newsweek International, 7/31/06.
21.Michael Young,”Hezbollah's Other War,” Daily Star, August 4, 2006; Turi Munthe, “Après Le Déluge,” Royal United Services Institute For Defence And Security Studies, August 2006.
22.Neil Macfarquhar New York Times, July 27; Rashid I. Khalidi, “Anger in the Arab World,” The Nation, August 14, 2006; Rami Khouri “A New Man for The Mideast?” Newsweek International, Aug. 21-28, 2006.
23.Amr Hamzawy Al-Ahram Weekly, August 10-16, 2006.
24.Harvey Sicherman, “Lebanon: The Two-In-One Crisis,” Foreign Policy Research Institute, August 8, 2006.
25.Paul Salem, “Middle East: A Look at Who Gained, Who Lost,” Radio Free Europe, August 15, 2006..
26.Thomas Milo and Augustus Richard Norton, “The peacekeeping challenge in south Lebanon,” International Herald Tribune, 25 August 2006.
27.Christian Science Monitor, August 25, 2006
28.BBC 26 August 2006.
29.Muriel Ausseberg, “An International Force for Lebanon,? SWP Comments, German Institute of International and security affairs, August 2006.
30.al-Ba'th （Syria）, July 27, Tishreen （Syria）, July 29, 30, 2006.
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