Just a week after the cease-fire, many of the troops are
still in Lebanon, and the protests are getting stronger and
stronger.
Dozens of reservists fresh from the front lines came to
Jerusalem on Monday to express their frustration with the war
and the leaders. Some settled down for an extended
protest.
There was clearly widespread discontent with the war and the
way it was conducted overall, and many smaller complaints
about the way it was conducted at the individual level
experienced by the reservists.
A petition said to have been signed by hundreds of soldiers,
complained, "The `cold feet' of the decision-makers were
evident everywhere. . . . The heavy feeling that in the
echelons above us there is nothing but under-preparation,
insincerity, lack of foresight and inability to make rational
decisions, leads to the question: Were we called up for
nothing?"
Politicians have been calling for a tough commission that
would have broad powers and the ability to make wide ranging
recommendations. So far the prime minister and the defense
minister have been resisting appointing a fully independent
state commission of inquiry. The defense minister quickly
appointed a ministry commission composed mainly of his
cronies, apparently to try to ward off the formation of a
more independent commission, but it has stopped its work
already in anticipation of another more powerful committee
being appointed.
The guns and rockets have stopped, but none of the issues
over which Israel went to war were resolved. The Israeli
prisoners taken illegally and without provocation were not
returned. Hizbullah is not disarmed. It is not ready to lay
down its weapons and there is no other force that can make
them do it. The International Force under UN supervision is
having trouble getting off the ground. Italy is being asked
to lead it, but it does not seem that it will even be fully
staffed.
Israel intends to do its best to keep Iran and Syria from
rearming Hizbullah, a senior Israeli commander said Friday to
the New York Times. International commitments to
exclude Hizbullah from southern Lebanon and to disarm it
already seem hollow, said the commander.
Nonetheless, serious military analysts, including the
commander who spoke with the New York Times, have said
that Hizbullah did take a severe beating, and that the threat
and the fighting ability of Hizbullah were severely
diminished. Sheik Nasrallah remains a military target as the
leader of a terrorist group.
The Israeli Army feels it fought well and it believes that
the Israelis won every battle with Hizbullah. Even if
Hizbullah still talks tough, they believe that it will be
loathe to start up another round in the near future.
Some Israeli officials claim that an important achievement is
that the Lebanese government took official control of
southern Lebanon. They are a country and a government, as
opposed to the previous situation when Hizbullah was in
charge.
There world does not understand clearly that there is no
decisive victory against terrorism since the fighters melt in
and out.
Intelligence allowed the Israeli Army to knock out up to 80
percent of Hizbullah's medium- and long-range missile
launchers in the first two days of the air war. Israel was
also able to destroy smaller launchers within 45 seconds
after they were used.
But the war dragged on, the government seemed indecisive and
Hizbullah fought well.
Writing in the Jerusalem Post, Edward N. Luttwak said
that the Arabs claim that the "myth of Israeli invincibility"
has been shattered. However exactly the same claim was made
after the 1973 Yom Kippur war. Egyptian then crossed the Suez
Canal, and the Syrian offensive swept across the Golan
Heights. The Israeli air lost fully one-quarter of its combat
aircraft to ground fire, and hundreds of Israeli tanks were
damaged or destroyed by brave Egyptian infantrymen with hand-
carried missiles and rockets. Israeli political and military
chiefs were blamed for the loss of 3,000 soldiers in a war
that ended without a clear victory.
Prime Minister Golda Meir, defense minister Moshe Dayan, the
chief of staff, David Elazar and the chief of military
intelligence were all soon replaced.
However, claims Luttwak, both Egypt's president Sadat and
Syrian president Assad soberly recognized that their
countries had come closer to catastrophic defeat than in
1967, and that it was absolutely imperative to avoid another
war. That led to Sadat's peace and Assad's 1974 cease-fire on
the Golan Heights, never violated since then.
Israel had been caught by surprise in 1973. The Egyptians had
an excellent war plan and fought well. Syrian tanks advanced
boldly. Israel seemed on the verge of defeat on both fronts.
But as soon as the army was fully mobilized, it turned out
that they could stop both the Egyptian and Syrian armies in
their tracks, and start their own advance almost immediately.
The war ended with Israeli forces 70 miles from Cairo, and
less than 20 miles from Damascus.
That was the real military balance of the 1973 war, which was
obscured by the tremendous shock of surprise, emotional
overreaction, and the plain difficulty of seeing things as
they are through the fog of war.
It is the same now, says Luttwak, with Lebanon. Even the
heaviest and best-protected of battle tanks are sometimes
penetrated by the latest antitank missiles. They are not
invulnerable, and they did well in limiting Israeli
casualties. The small Katyusha rockets are also just not
powerful enough to justify the expenditure of billions of
dollars for laser weapon systems the size of football
fields.
Many commentators said that Hizbullah fighters fought much
more bravely than the regular soldiers of Arab states in
previous wars. However in 1973, after crossing the Suez
Canal, Egyptian infantrymen by the thousands stood their
ground against advancing Israeli battle tanks.
Later, near the Suez Canal, Israel lost more soldiers against
the Egyptians in a single day and night than in a month of
war in Lebanon.
Even in 1967, the best Israeli troops lost 37 killed in four
hours to take Jerusalem's Ammunition Hill. The defending
Jordanian infantry kept fighting until the end, even though
they were greatly outnumbered and encircled from the
start.
Hizbullah certainly did not run away and did hold its ground,
but its mediocrity is revealed, says Luttwak, by the
casualties it inflicted, which were very few.
When an IDF company in Bint Jbail lost eight men in one
night, that number was perceived in Israel — and
broadcast around the world — as a disastrous loss.
However in the Allied 1943-1945 Italian campaign, though the
Germans were clearly on the decline, attacking forces
suffered 150 percent casualty rates when a second, third or
fourth assault wave was needed to take a small village.
Hizbullah, on the whole, did not fight as fiercely as the
Egyptians in 1973 or the Jordanians in 1967, as Israeli
casualty figures demonstrate.
Luttwak also claims that there was a fully developed plan to
swiftly reach deep behind the front, and then destroy
Hizbullah positions one by one from the rear. He says that
the plan was not implemented because of the lack of
casualties among Israeli civilians. Hizbullah distributed its
rockets to village militias that were incapable of launching
them effectively. Israel was losing one or two a day, and
even after three weeks the total was less than in some
suicide bombings.
The planned offensive could have cost the lives of dozens of
soldiers, and would have had an expectation of more
casualties than Hizbullah was inflicting with its
bombardments.
Hassan Nasrallah is not another Yasser Arafat, say Luttwak.
Nasrallah has a political constituency in southern Lebanon.
Nasrallah has directed Hizbullah to focus on rapid
reconstruction, right up to the Israeli border. He cannot
start another round of fighting that would quickly destroy
everything again. Yet another result of the war is that
Nasrallah's power-base in southern Lebanon, having
experienced the suffering of war, is a now hostage for
Hizbullah's good behavior.
