August 18, 2006

Israel’s Strategy for Hezbollah: Use a “Small War” to Jump-Start Diplomacy?

An excellent comment came in on yesterday's post titled, What GWB and Condi are Thinking re: The U.N. Resolution on the Israel-Hezbollah War:

The post says: "First, for some reason, GWB and Condi seem to think Lebanon really is going to disarm Hezbollah. Where they're getting this from, I have no idea, but it's evident they haven't given up on it yet."

I think this is Israel's idea - to try diplomacy first and then resort to a massive military campaign.

The Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs gives their rationale.

The MFA web page says, "The purpose of the Israeli operation was two-fold - to free its abducted soldiers, and to remove the terrorist threat from its northern border.

Israel understood from the outset that although military operations were necessary to defend its citizens by neutralizing the threat posed by Hizbullah's terrorist infrastructure, the eventual solution would indeed be diplomatic.

The components of such a solution were as follows:

• the return of the hostages, Ehud (Udi) Goldwasser and Eldad Regev;
• the effective deployment of the Lebanese army in all of southern Lebanon;
• the expulsion of Hizbullah from the area, and
• the fulfillment of United Nations Resolution 1559.

[.....]

• the preservation of IDF gains in removing Hizbullah from the border region
• the elimination of the Hizbullah long-range missile threat
• the prevention of Hizbullah's re-arming by closely monitoring of the possible routes into Lebanon from Syria or elsewhere (an arms embargo)."

Also StrategyPage has an article on the trade offs:

The Hizbollah attack left Israel with two options. They could either launch a massive invasion, and overrun all of Lebanon and Syria, or do what they did (to encourage the Lebanese and UN to deal with Hizbollah.) The trouble with the second ( "small war" ) option is that it takes longer, and that leaves Hizbollah intact for longer. But the first ( "big war" ) option would leave thousands of Israeli soldiers dead, and involve the occupation, for months, if not years, of Lebanon and Syria."
...
There's always risk, it's a question of which one you estimate will do you the most good. Israel still has the "big war" option available, and Lebanon and Syria know it. If the small war option doesn't work out, Hizbollah, Lebanon, Syria and Iran know what comes next.

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Categories: Iran, The Mid East, The U.N.

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