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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (195156)	8/5/2006 2:53:53 AM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 281500

Hi Nadine Carroll; Re: "And when discussing a battlefield, the actual troops and reserves available to the battle seem a whole lot more relevant than big discussions of how big the population is here or there. How many Hizb. fighters are there? How many reserves do they have? Ditto for Israel? How about weapons and strategy?" Sure. Since a few years ago, the size of the Israeli army is down considerably: The Israel Defence Force (IDF) is planning extensive cuts to its ground forces. The IDF presented its amended work plan early in June 2003, which included cuts of 20% of Israel's ground forces over a five year period, the deepest cut in the past 15 years. The IDF would keep fewer old platforms [i.e. tanks] and more investment in new technology. The cuts include a gradual disposal of all the IDF's M60 main battle tanks. globalsecurity.org The size of Hezbollah is hard to estimate, but since they kicked Israel out of Lebanon once before, and since they're now considerably more popular than then, it's hard to imagine that they are having more trouble now. But the problem for Israel is not just Hezbollah. If we just analyzed Hezbollah and Israel we would be ignoring the fact that Hezbollah came into this conflict supposedly to assist the Palestinians who are also causing problems for Israel. And since the Israelis are claiming that it was Iranians who launched a missile into their ship that was bombarding Beirut, and since Israel has been going on and on about how it is Syria and Iran that are really pulling the strings, then we should probably consider the military strengths and reserves of those countries as well. The current price of oil, along with the problems in Iraq, mean that the US is not likely to be of much help to Israel in this. And of course Europe is not likely to get involved either. So Israel is just going to have to face their troubles pretty much alone. No one else has the motivation. Re: "You can talk about population trends ten, twenty years out if you like, but I'm talking about a current battle." Well Israel has both short term problems and long term problems. The short term problems are more or less manageable. It is the long term problems that are a bear. -- Carl