How Is The Israel/Hezbollah War Going?

[jyl]

How is Israel doing in its war with Hezbollah?

I'm really asking - I was working too many hours last week to read any more than the headlines. I'm sure some people here are following the war more closely.

My impression is that Hezbollah s fighting harder than some people thought, and its rockets are reaching ever deeper in Israel.

Seems to me Israel cannot accept a cease-fire until they have done very severe damage to Hezbollah including eliminating its ability to hit Haifa and points south. Otherwise all this effort simply makes Hezbollah a hero to the Arabs, Sunni and Shiite alike.

[red-beard]

And that will show weakness on the Part of Israel. Israel cannot afford to show weakness.

Israel is doing the best it can. We expect them toplay by our rules and fight an enemy who does not play by our rules.

OTOH, I fully understand why Hezbollah hides behind civilians, etc. By being attacked and then having civilian casulaties, they can claim that the Israelis are war criminals. And the world media is eating that up. That is the strength of Hezbollah and Al Queda. Using our own media against us.

[jyl]

So, how is the war going?

What progress has Israel made in destroying Hezbollah facilities and weapons caches? Is Hezbollah firing fewer rockets? How many Hezbollah towns has Israel occupied? What are Israeli losses vs Hezbollah losses? Are Hezbollah's tactics as expected or changing, is the IDF a step ahead or a step behind?

That's the sort of stuff I'm trying to find out.

[red-beard]

My opinion, Israel is not doing as well as they could, because they are trying to minimize civilian casulties. If they wanted (As pointed to Tim Russert this morning on Meet the Press) they could put 20 times as many planes in the air and really attack. But that would mean 20 times or more, civilians killed.

It's been less than 3 weeks. Limited war takes longer.

Israel has pledged to rebuild all the destroyed infrastructure in Lebanon.

[jyl]

I'm wondering if the issue isn't more Israel's willingness to commit ground forces.

Hezbollah has a huge network of deep tunnels, they've surely moved their personnel and most weapons underground by now. Israel can use all the planes it wants, but to root out Hezbollah, IDF armour and troops will have to take the towns and destroy the underground infrastructure. I haven't heard/read too much about how that is going.

[red-beard]

I would seriously doubt that

[fastpat]

The ground war isn't going much at all, Israel is conducting their terrorist raids much like the US government did against Serbia, via aerial bombardment.
http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=2254
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060729/wl_mideast_afp/mideastconflictisrael_060729185518
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,,19958619-5005961,00.html
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/cook.php?articleid=9436

(partial excerpt)
Welcome to My Parlor
by William S. Lind

Welcome to my parlor, says the Hezbollah spider to the Israeli fly. The Israeli high command continues to express its faith in the foxfire of air power to destroy Hezbollah, but, as always, it's not working. Lebanon is taking a pounding, to be sure, but Lebanon is not Hezbollah. Slowly, reluctantly, Israel is edging toward a ground invasion of Lebanon, for which Hezbollah devoutly prays. When air power fails, what other choice will Israel have?

A story in the July 24 Cleveland Plain Dealer gives a good idea of what awaits the IDF once it crosses the border in earnest. Israeli ground forces have been fighting for days to take Maroun al-Ras, a small village less than 500 yards into Lebanon. The battle has not gone well. Israel has lost five or six troops dead, with undoubtedly more wounded. It still does not control the whole village. According to the Plain Dealer piece by Benjamin Harvey of AP, officers at the scene confirmed there was still fighting to do.

"'They're not fighting like we thought they would,' one soldier said. 'They're fighting harder. They're good on their own ground….'

"'It will take the summer to beat them,' said [Israeli soldier] Michael Sidorenko….

"'They're guerrillas. They're very smart.'"

"Guerrillas" may not be exactly the right term here. As best I can determine from the wilds of Cleveland, Ohio, Hezbollah thus far seems to be waging a conventional light infantry fight for Maroun al-Ras. The line between guerrilla and light infantry tactics is thin, but Hezbollah seems to be putting up a determined fight for a piece of terrain, which guerrillas usually don't do, because they can't. The fact that Hezbollah can points to how far this 4GW entity has evolved.

Operationally, Hezbollah's rocket attacks on Israel are the matador's cape. That too is working. What of the strategic level? The Arab street is cheering for Hezbollah, often across the Sunni-Shi'ite divide, while the governments of states such as Egypt hide under the bed. The goal of Islamic fourth generation forces is the destruction of most, if not all, Arab state governments, so Hezbollah is winning strategically as well. One can almost watch the legitimacy drain away from the region's decrepit states, with incalculable consequences for American interests.http://www.antiwar.com/lind/?articleid=9435

Edit:
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/15130877.htm-newsnationworld-hed

[fintstone]

Israel is doing quite well considering the enemy hides among women and children. Their big mistake was to allow Syria and Iran several years to train and equip the terrorists...They are formidable (and also sworn enemies of the US)...so they need to be dealt with sooner rather than later. Leaving them alone has been poor strategy for us and Israel.

[fastpat]

Originally posted by fintstone
Israel is doing quite well considering the enemy hides among women and children. Their big mistake was to allow Syria and Iran several years to train and equip the terrorists...They are formidable (and also sworn enemies of the US)...so they need to be dealt with sooner rather than later. Leaving them alone has been poor strategy for us and Israel.

The "hiding among civilians" myth
Israel claims it's justified in bombing civilians because Hezbollah mingles with them. In fact, the militant group doesn't trust its civilians and stays as far away from them as possible.

By Mitch Prothero

Jul. 28, 2006 | The bombs came just as night fell, around 7 p.m. The locals knew that the 10-story apartment building had been the office, and possibly the residence, of Sheik Tawouk, the Hezbollah commander for the south, so they had moved their families out at the start of the war. The landlord had refused to rent to Hezbollah when they requested the top floors of the building. No matter, the locals said, the Hezb guys just moved in anyway in the name of the "resistance."

Everyone knew that the building would be hit eventually. Its location in downtown Tyre, which had yet to be hit by Israeli airstrikes, was not going to protect it forever. And "everyone" apparently included Sheik Tawouk, because he wasn't anywhere near it when it was finally hit.

Two guided bombs struck it in a huge flash bang of fire and concrete dust followed by the roar of 10 stories pancaking on top of each other, local residents said. Jihad Husseini, 46, runs the driving school a block away and was sitting in his office when the bombs struck. He said his life was saved because he had drawn the heavy cloth curtains shut on the windows facing the street, preventing him from being hit by a wave of shattered glass. But even so, a chunk of smoldering steel flew through the air, broke through the window and the curtain, and shot past his head and through the wall before coming to rest in his neighbor's home.

But Jihad still refuses to leave.

"Everything is broken, but I can make it better," he says, surrounded by his sons Raed, 20, and Mohammed, 12. "I will not leave. This place is not military, it is not Hezbollah; it was an empty apartment."

Throughout this now 16-day-old war, Israeli planes high above civilian areas make decisions on what to bomb. They send huge bombs capable of killing things for hundreds of meters around their targets, and then blame the inevitable civilian deaths -- the Lebanese government says 600 civilians have been killed so far -- on "terrorists" who callously use the civilian infrastructure for protection.

But this claim is almost always false. My own reporting and that of other journalists reveals that in fact Hezbollah fighters -- as opposed to the much more numerous Hezbollah political members, and the vastly more numerous Hezbollah sympathizers -- avoid civilians. Much smarter and better trained than the PLO and Hamas fighters, they know that if they mingle with civilians, they will sooner or later be betrayed by collaborators -- as so many Palestinian militants have been.

For their part, the Israelis seem to think that if they keep pounding civilians, they'll get some fighters, too. The almost nightly airstrikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut could be seen as making some sense, as the Israelis appear convinced there are command and control bunkers underneath the continually smoldering rubble. There were some civilian casualties the first few nights in places like Haret Hreik, but people quickly left the area to the Hezbollah fighters with their radios and motorbikes.

But other attacks seem gratuitous, fishing expeditions, or simply intended to punish anything and anyone even vaguely connected to Hezbollah. Lighthouses, grain elevators, milk factories, bridges in the north used by refugees, apartment buildings partially occupied by members of Hezbollah's political wing -- all have been reduced to rubble.

In the south, where Shiites dominate, just about everyone supports Hezbollah. Does mere support for Hezbollah, or even participation in Hezbollah activities, mean your house and family are fair game? Do you need to fire rockets from your front yard? Or is it enough to be a political activist?

The Israelis are consistent: They bomb everyone and everything remotely associated with Hezbollah, including noncombatants. In effect, that means punishing Lebanon. The nation is 40 percent Shiite, and of that 40 percent, tens of thousands are employed by Hezbollah's social services, political operations, schools, and other nonmilitary functions. The "terrorist" organization Hezbollah is Lebanon's second-biggest employer.

People throw the phrase "ghost town" around a lot, but Nabatiya, a bombed-out town about 15 miles from the Lebanon-Israel border, deserves it. One expects the spirits of the town's dead, or its refugees, to silently glide out onto its abandoned streets from the ruined buildings that make up much of the town.

Not all of the buildings show bomb damage, but those that don't have metal shutters blown out as if by a terrible wind. And there are no people at all, except for the occasional Hezbollah scout on a motorbike armed only with a two-way radio, keeping an eye on things as Israeli jets and unmanned drones circle overhead.

Overlooking the outskirts of this town, which has a peacetime population of 100,000 or so -- mostly Shiite supporters of Hezbollah and its more secular rival Amal -- is the Ragheh Hareb Hospital, a facility that makes quite clear what side the residents of Nabatiya are on in this conflict.

The hospital's carefully sculpted and trimmed front lawn contains the giant Red Crescent that denotes the Muslim version of the Red Cross. As we approach it, an Israeli missile streaks by, smashing into a school on the opposite hilltop. As we crouch and then run for the shelter of the hospital awning, that giant crescent reassures me until I look at the flagpole. The Lebanese flag and its cedar tree is there -- right next to the flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

It's safe to say that Ragheh Hareb Hospital has an association with Hezbollah. And the staff sports the trimmed beards and polite, if somewhat ominous, manner of the group. After young men demand press IDs and do some quick questioning, they allow us to enter.

Dr. Ahmed Tahir recognizes me from a funeral in the nearby village of Dweir. An Israeli bomb dropped on their house killed a Hezbollah cleric and 11 members of his immediate family, mostly children. People in Lebanon are calling it a war crime. Tahir looks exhausted, and our talk is even more tense than the last time.

"Maybe it would be best if the Israelis bombed your car on the road here," he said, with a sharp edge. "If you were killed, maybe the public outcry would be so bad in America that the Jews would be forced to stop these attacks."

When I volunteered that the Bush administration cared little for journalists, let alone ones who reported from Hezbollah territory, he shrugged. "Maybe if it was an American bomb used by the Israelis that killed an American journalist, they would stop this horror," he said.

The handful of people in the town include some from Hezbollah's political wing, as well as volunteers keeping an eye on things while the residents are gone. Off to the side, as we watch the Israelis pummel ridgelines on the outskirts of town, one of the political operatives explains that the fighters never come near the town, reinforcing what other Hezbollah people have told me over the years.

Although Israel targets apartments and offices because they are considered "Hezbollah" installations, the group has a clear policy of keeping its fighters away from civilians as much as possible. This is not for humanitarian reasons -- they did, after all, take over an apartment building against the protests of the landlord, knowing full well it would be bombed -- but for military ones.

The Hezbollah guys, on the other hand, know that letting their fighters near outsiders of any kind -- journalists or Lebanese, even Hezbollah supporters -- is stupid. In three trips over the last week to the south, where I came near enough to the fighting to hear Israeli artillery, and not just airstrikes, I saw exactly no fighters. Guys with radios with the look of Hezbollah always found me. But no fighters on corners, no invitations to watch them shoot rockets at the Zionist enemy, nothing that can be used to track them.

Hezbollah's political members say they have little or no access to the workings of the fighters. This seems to be largely true: While they obviously hear and know more than the outside world, the firewall is strong.

Israel, however, has chosen to treat the political members of Hezbollah as if they were fighters. And by targeting the civilian wing of the group, which supplies much of the humanitarian aid and social protection for the poorest people in the south, they are targeting civilians.

So the analysts talking on cable news about Hezbollah "hiding within the civilian population" clearly have spent little time if any in the south Lebanon war zone and don't know what they're talking about. Hezbollah doesn't trust the civilian population and has worked very hard to evacuate as much of it as possible from the battlefield. And this is why they fight so well -- with no one to spy on them, they have lots of chances to take the Israel Defense Forces by surprise, as they have by continuing to fire rockets and punish every Israeli ground incursion.



-- By Mitch Prothero
http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/fairenough/salon025.html

[fintstone]

Not much value in that article. It is clear that the terrorists are hiding in the towns and cities....not in the open countryside. Weapons and intelligence are not so precise that the Israeli can locate a terrorist on a toilet and manage to take out only that stall. It is a war zone and the residents have been warned to leave. They stay among the terrorists at their own peril.
Contrast that to the terrorists who indiscriminately lauch missiles into civilian areas where there is no military presence.

[jyl]

Is doing quite well good enough?

Israel does not have an unlimited amount of time to conduct this war. The pressure is growing for a ceasefire, which at this point would be a big victory for Hezbollah. The US is stalling as hard as it can to buy Israel more time, sending Rice around to urge peace while blocking action. But that will buy Israel weeks, not months.

It seems to me that Israel needs to be on a path that will achieve success in at most one month. If airstrikes won't eliminate Hezbollah's ability to rocket Israeli cities and cross Israeli borders, then Israel must escalate, and escalate rapidly. That is my opinion, anyway.

I'm not talking about what's moral or "right", although I have my opinion there. I'm talking about what is practical. From a practical standpoint, I am thinking that Israel's leaders are making the mistake of being timid.

[fintstone]

I agree.

[red-beard]

Originally posted by jyl
Is doing quite well good enough?

Israel does not have an unlimited amount of time to conduct this war. The pressure is growing for a ceasefire, which at this point would be a big victory for Hezbollah. The US is stalling as hard as it can to buy Israel more time, sending Rice around to urge peace while blocking action. But that will buy Israel weeks, not months.

It seems to me that Israel needs to be on a path that will achieve success in at most one month. If airstrikes won't eliminate Hezbollah's ability to rocket Israeli cities and cross Israeli borders, then Israel must escalate, and escalate rapidly. That is my opinion, anyway.

I'm not talking about what's moral or "right", although I have my opinion there. I'm talking about what is practical. From a practical standpoint, I am thinking that Israel's leaders are making the mistake of being timid.

I'm actually a little surprised that Israel is holding back at all. But I agree as well. If they are going to achieve sucess, they need to ramp it up. And fast, world opinion be damned.

[fastpat]

Originally posted by red-beard
I'm actually a little surprised that Israel is holding back at all. But I agree as well. If they are going to achieve sucess, they need to ramp it up. And fast, world opinion be damned.

Your proposed strategy will further expose Israel's terrorist activities for all to see, and more importantly, make Hezbollah much stronger than they already are.

The Shi'ia Crescent, that the Jordanian king warned about, is being furthered by Israel's actions.

[techweenie]

Israel blew it.

Arabs were for the most part, not on Hezbollah's side. But two weeks of random terrorism against tourists, UN observers, innocent civilians and, hopefully, some Hezbolah have turned the tide. Now there is Arab admiration for the toughness of Hezbollah.

Israelis have bombed Lebanese power plants, bridges, at least one airport and the ports -- in one case creating an environmental disaster in the Mediterranean.

It's an over-reaction to a reaction to a reaction, ad infinitem.

There are no 'good guys' in this fight, but the US is sending weapons and money to one side while condemning Syria and Iran for sending weapons and support to the other.

In most of the world, Bush/Blair's pleas for a cease fire are seen as insincere as well as ineffective.

[fintstone]

Originally posted by techweenie
...There are no 'good guys' in this fight, but the US is sending weapons and money to one side while condemning Syria and Iran for sending weapons and support to the other. ..

Ah....but only one is acting in self-defense...I'll give you a clue which one....it is not the guys firing unguided rockets daily into civilian population centers.

[turbo6bar]

I agree with jyl's call for total war. If it's worth going to war, civilian casualties should be expected and tolerated. This concept of war without collateral damage is ridiculous. This is the cost of today's form of projecting power: government-sponsored entities.

[red-beard]

I am not going to argue the morality of total war, but everytime limited war is used (WWI, Vietnam, Gulf War I, etc) it is not effective.

[fastpat]

Originally posted by red-beard
I am not going to argue the morality of total war, but everytime limited war is used (WWI, Vietnam, Gulf War I, etc) it is not effective.

I think calling World War One, Vietnam, or the Gulf War I limited is a bit of a mistake. None of them were limited.