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Strategies & Market Trends : World Outlook -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Les H who wrote (43697)	9/27/2024 11:11:50 AM
From: Les H	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 49039

One Year Into Israel-Hamas War, Far-right Agenda Has Infiltrated the IDF and Netanyahu's Bureau The past 10 days have completely turned the tables but both Israel and Hezbollah have good reasons to avoid further escalation ¦ In Gaza, the IDF is currently weighing morally problematic moves ¦ And after another Netanyahu U-turn, one can only imagine the fury in Washington Amos Harel, Haaretz For almost 24 hours, from Wednesday evening until Thursday afternoon, there was a falloff in the intensity of the firing on both sides of the border between Israel and Lebanon. The slight respite was broken by another Israeli air attack on the Dahiyeh neighborhood of Beirut, which apparently targeted another high-ranking Hezbollah figure. The events on the ground are closely connected to the other developments: the American-French cease-fire proposal, which was presented on Wednesday; Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to New York to address the United Nations General Assembly; and the tantrum thrown by the far-right members of his coalition at the mere mention of a truce. The Israeli defense establishment deployed for scenarios of a far more severe response. But for the moment, at least, it appears that the blows to Hezbollah's chain of command do not fully account for the organization's relatively restrained response. As of Thursday evening, Nasrallah was being quite wary of sliding into a full-scale conflict. Hezbollah's fire so far hasn't been aimed at the centers of big cities in Israel. He seems to be saying to himself that, as long as he refrains from the mass killing of Israeli civilians, Israel will spare Dahiyeh, the Shi'ite neighborhood in south Beirut, where Hezbollah is based. In 2006, he authorized Karaki to fire a rocket at Haifa, which killed civilians. Israel responded with additional bombing of Dahiyeh. (Two years later, Gadi Eisenkot, then the head of Northern Command, introduced the "Dahiyeh doctrine" of heavily bombing a neighborhood where one of Israel's enemies is based and which threatened the destruction of Hezbollah's bastions). It's possible that Nasrallah doesn't want to repeat that mistake. The relative restraint that the secretary general has shown so far came as a surprise to the Israeli side. It might attest to the true scale of the blows that the organization has taken, and reflect the fear of its Iranian patron that intensifying the fire will bring about the final loss of their great project: the vast arsenal that they built for Hezbollah after the 2006 Lebanon War, whose main aim was to deter Israel from attacking Iran's nuclear facilities. Israel, too, is not pounding Lebanon with its full force. After the major offensive at the beginning of the week, the air force scaled down its attacks. And the call-up of the reserves to the north remains quite limited – two infantry brigades and a few relatively small additions. And while the possibility of a ground maneuver in south Lebanon is repeatedly raised in TV studios, it's worth mentioning that only two reserve brigades have been called up to date. Despite the obvious differences, there are certain parallels between the wavering now and the first days of the 2006 confrontation. Back then, Israel attacked medium-range missiles that Hezbollah had hidden in houses in Lebanon, in reaction to the abduction of two reserve soldiers. After a few days of fighting a dilemma arose about the use of another plan, called "Ice Breaker," which some of the generals, among them Eisenkot and Moshe Kaplinsky, recommended to the government and to IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz. Under the plan, a short, heavy aerial offensive would be followed by an opportunity for a cease-fire, and in the absence of a cease-fire forces would enter Lebanon for a ground offensive. In practice, Ehud Olmert's government didn't strive determinedly for a diplomatic solution, Hezbollah chose to continue firing, and the operation evolved into another month of hesitant and indecisive ground combat, until the intervention of the powers that imposed a cease-fire. This time, the scale of the damage and the casualties inflicted on Hezbollah are immeasurably greater. There's also another variable in the equation, to which journalists who monitor the adventures of the Netanyahu family attach considerable weight: the demand of the prime minister's wife to extend the couple's stay in New York for the entire weekend, and the hell with the civilians and the soldiers. Netanyahu the husband has a personal interest in keeping things calm for at least another two days. On top of this, the reception he'll get at the United Nations depends on the intensity of the attacks. archive.ph