Not to be trifled with [Rich Lowry]
Was just talking to an Israeli official. He was saying what a tough adversary Hezbollah is, a fairly sophisticated force that can't be taken lightly. He points to three indications of Hezbollah's seriousness—the successful attack on the Israeli ship; the longer-range rockets it's been able to unleash on Israel; the fact that when Israel clashes with it on the ground, the IDF takes casualties (that's what this post was about). As an indication of how difficult Hezbollah has been to deal with, he notes that the terror group is still, even now, able to hit Israel with rockets.
On a ground invasion, he says that the lesson from 1982 has been learned and that Israel wants to avoid it. The idea was to be very fluid, and go in and out with lighter forces. But that Hezbollah is responding effectively to these raids might force a change in strategy. Still doubts there will be a big ground invasion, however.
He emphasizes that there isn't a purely military solution, and that Israel will not be able to totally neutralize Hezbollah. But he expects a major diminishment of its rocket capabilities—at least the longer-range stuff. The shorter-range rockets are harder to get. The trick is getting from the military stage to a workable diplomatic stage.
He says Israel obviously doesn't want a ceasefire that leads to truckloads of materiel coming to Hezbollah from Syria again. That would just be kicking the can down the road, creating the conditions for another conflict.
He maintains that the strikes in Southern Beirut are going after Hezbollah headquarters and command-and-control, and that the IDF has been spreading leaflets there telling people to leave to try to minimize civilian casualties.
He's not sure that the idea of having Arab governments pressure and isolate Syria will actually work, but thinks it's at least a good diplomatic goal. He gives the sense that Israel was a bit taken aback by all this. The government thought it had established a reasonably workable arrangement with Hezbollah over the years (a view that was reflected in this misguided column I wrote from Israel two weeks ago after talking to a bunch of Israeli officials and journalists). Also, he says there was a feeling that Syria was beginning to respond to Israeli pressure on the Gilad kidnapping right before the Hezbollah attack. So there has been some speculation that Hezbollah was playing a spoiler role. He still thinks Syria is a weak link, and it makes sense to try to separate it from Hezbollah and Syria.
In the meantime, there's more work to do against Hezbollah and it continues apace... |
