Author: Helena

I have been amazed at the provincial, bubble-like reaction of editors and commentators in major US media who have been presenting the news that the US and France agree on a resolution concerning Lebanon as if that means the “problem” there is resolved!
Seems like these editors and journos have zero understanding of these facts about today’s world:

(1) The US and France have been coordinating closely on all matters Lebanese since the summer of 2004. That they do so now– after a short disagreement over the timing but not the content of the resolution proposed at the Security Council– is not “news”.
(2) The veto-wielding governments of west-European heritage– the US, Britain, France– don’t control the whole world, however much they might like to think they could (and should.) Crucially, in the present context, they don’t control the UN Security Council, where two other governments also hold veto power along with those three, and where the non-veto-wielding powers need also to be taken into consideration. (For Tony Blair’s intricate involvement in pushing the US-Franco project, see this AP report.)
(3) Not many people in the world take seriously the present claims of the Bush administration and its close ally, Tony Blair, that the need for a ceasefire is now urgent, “on humanitarian grounds”. These two leaders have been working very hard throughout the past three weeks to delay a ceasefire, even as hundreds of Lebanese civilians were dying and their country’s vital infrastructure was being smashed to smithereens. Right now, the rate at which Lebanese civilians are dying is actually, blessedly, a little lower than it was two weeks ago. But now, it’s the Israelis who are becoming militarily and politically bogged down. So the claims of Bush and Rice that their present call for a ceasefire is motivated by purely “humanitarian” concerns ring very hollow indeed.
(4) The Euro-Heritage Three still need to understand the dynamics on the ground in Lebanon and the Middle East a whole lot better than they have shown themselves capable of doing so until now. Did they completely fail to notice the need to involve both Lebanon and Syria as full partners in the peace diplomacy in order for it to have any relevance or chance of succeeding?

Today, both the Syrian Foreign Minister and the politically crucial Speaker of the Lebanese Parliament announced their opposition to the US-Franco draft resolution.
It is worth quoting that latter news story, from AP’s Bassem Mrouwe in Beirut, at some length. He wrote that the Speaker, Nabih Berri,

said Lebanon would not accept any terms that did not include a government plan calling for an immediate cease-fire and withdrawal of Israeli troops.
“Lebanon, all of Lebanon, rejects any talks or any draft resolution that does not include the seven-point government framework,” Berri said at a news conference in Beirut.
Prime Minister Fuad Saniora first offered the plan, later adopted by his Cabinet, during the Rome crisis summit July 26.
The seven-point proposal calls for a mutual release of prisoners held by Israeli and Hezbollah and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon. It foresees the Lebanese government taking control of southern Lebanon with the help of an international force.
The U.S.-French proposal, which was expected to go to the floor of the U.N. Security Council early this week, calls for Hezbollah to stop all military operations [actually, the text says “attacks”, which could be interpreted as still permitting acts of legitimate resistance against the Israeli troops inside Lebanon. ~HC] and for Israel to stop its offensive drive against Lebanon. The proposal would allow Israel to strike back if Hezbollah were to break a cease-fire.
The draft resolution does not require an immediate Israeli withdrawal to its side of the common border.
“We always spoke about an immediate cease fire. We never spoke about ending military operations because this is in a way like legitimatizing the occupation, as if the war is being legitimatized,” Berri said in fiery remarks before opening the floor to questions.
He said the U.S.-French draft resolution was fundamentally tilted in favor of Israel.
“If Israel has not won the war but still gets all this, what would have happened had they won” the war, Berri asked.

Under these circumstances, it seems clear that it will not be plain sailing for the US-Franco draft resolution.
Personally, I think the best way to proceed would be to seek an immediate and complete cessation of the hostilities (and all their attendant death and suffering), with that ceasefire to be monitored by an empowered UN truce-observation force, such as already exists along the Israel-Lebanon border (UNTSO plus UNIFIL), but further beefed up and empowered. This ceasefire should also include a promise– to Lebanon, to all other regional powers, and to the world community– that within a specified, short period of time (two weeks?) the United Nations will convene an authoritative international peace conference to resolve all the outstanding strands of the Arab-Israeli conflict on the basis of all the outstanding Security Council resolutions (242, 338, 1559)– terms that would include the conclusion of robust peace agreements between Israel and, respectively, Lebanon, Syria, and a free-at-last Palestine; Israel’s withdrawal of troops and settlers from the territories occupied in 1967; and the demobilization of all non-state armed formations. This approach could and should be followed, and is the best way I can see to end the suffering and hostility that have festered in the ever-volatile Israeli-Arab region for far too long, of which the present Israeli-Lebanese fighting is just the latest manifestation.
However, I am not the government of Lebanon. The government of Lebanon, which along with Israel is the crucial deciding party in the present instance, is standing up for its right to be free from foreign military presence on its land, and from foreign military operations against its land and people. I can certainly see the logic of their point of view, which is every bit as valid as Israel’s equally understandable desire to be free of the threat of Hizbullah’s rocket force.
Thus far, however, the Euro-Heritage Three seem to see only the Israeli position as “logical” and “valid”, while denying any equal acknowledgement of the validity of Lebanon’s position… Well, actually, it seems as if they haven’t been listening to Lebanon very much at all over the past horrendous month. Instead, they’ve all three of them been treating Lebanon as some sort of inferior colonial holding that is not entitled at all to the same dignity, concern, and security that they seek for Israel.
Let’s hope the US-Franco draft marks the last gasp of colonial thinking regarding this portion of the Middle East. The peoples of the region have suffered for far too long from such thinking.

I am now, finally, back home, and intend to focus like a laser over the coming days on the strategic (as well as humanitarian) aspects of what is unfolding in Lebanon. Obviously, the balances in Lebanon, regionally, and internatinally will all be affecting the diplomacy over the newly introduced draft for a Security Council ceasefire resolution.
I make the following comments on the basis of my 30-plus years of close following of political trends inside and concerning Lebanon, marked by (among other writings) my despatches from Lebanon to the Christian Science Monitor and other publications, 1975-81; my 1985 book The Making of Modern Lebanon; various chapters of my 1991 book The Superpowers and the Syrian-Israeli Conflict; chapter 7 of my 2000 book The Israeli-Syrian Peace Talks: 1991-96 and Beyond; my spring 2005 Boston Review article on the history of Hizbullah; and various JWN posts about Lebanon.
Here are some preliminary notes to an analysis of the present situation:
Note 1: Israel getting bogged down (already) in Lebanon
The veteran Israeli peace activist and former Member of Knesset Uri Avnery had it completely right when he wrote on August 5,

We are conquering South Lebanon as flies ‘conquer’ fly-paper. Generals present maps with impressive arrows to show how Hizbullah is being pushed north. That might be convincing – if we were talking about a front-line in a war with a regular army, as taught in Staff College. But this is a different war altogether. In the conquered area, Hizbullah people remain, and our soldiers are exposed to attacks of the kind in which Hizbullah has excelled from its first day.

Actually, the whole of Avnery’s analysis there is very informative, especially his compilation of the shifting (and ever-diminishing) list of political “goals” that Israeli PM Olmert has declared for this military assault on Lebanon.
Ze’ev Schiff captured some of the same political dynamic that Avnery described– and pushed its geopolitical implications even further– when he wrote this:

The IDF must …do everything possible to avoid the modus operandi it used during its protracted stay in Lebanon after the 1982 Lebanon War. Israel must not remain in southern Lebanon. It must not base its operations and deployment there on supply convoys, or on transporting soldiers for furloughs in Israel and then back to their bases in Lebanon, or even on permanent military bases in Lebanon, even if they are fortified. These are convenient targets for guerrilla fighters, and this is the kind of situation that Hezbollah anticipates.
A problem will arise if no international peacekeeping force can be found to which the IDF can hand over the territory that it now occupies in southern Lebanon. In such a scenario, Israel will be faced with a dilemma: Stay in southern Lebanon, or withdraw, even if Hezbollah returns to set up bases there? If confronted with this question, Israel must choose withdrawal – in order to avoid again finding itself waist-deep in the Lebanese quagmire.

This analysis is interesting and significant, coming as it does from someone who (a) is extremely well connected with successive generations of the Israeli high command, and (b) was just a few days ago urging a rapid and extensive ground-force advance into Lebanon. (What happened in the interim, Ze’ev? Did you Israelis discover that your ground forces weren’t such hot stuff after all– or that the Hizbullah fighters have been able to put up a far tougher, braver, and smarter defense of their homeland than you had expected? Probably a combination of both factors?)
Note 2: Disarray and splits in Israeli decisionmaking
It seems that originally, the fairly new IDF Chief of Staff, an air force commander called Dan Halutz, thought that air power alone would be enough to realize Israel’s war goals in Lebanon (whatever they were). The widely publicized photographs of the destruction wrought throughout Lebanon since July 12, primarily by Halutz’s air force, are shocking indeed. Especially the “before and after” satellite pics of the destruction of whole blocks of densely populated areas in the south-Beirut Dahiyeh.
But air power (supplemented by the use of other stand-off weaponry) did not suffice. It did not stop Hizbullah from continuing to deploy its coordinated and disciplined squads of rocketeers in the south, or prevent Hizbullah’s territorial defenders from putting up a wily fight against the IOF’s ground incursions. More crucially still, Israel’s massive use of destructive airpower did not turn the Lebanese population against Hizbullah, as the Israeli commanders had hoped; quite the opposite.
… So it was about 10 days ago that Olmert and Halutz apparently turned toward using a ground incursion into Lebanon to try to suppress the source of the rockets’ fire– while still, of course, continuing with the use of massive standoff weapons delivered deep into Lebanon by air and sea. But all along, there seems to have been disagreement over how far the ground forces should go.
Schiff writes:

One of the IDF’s original objectives was to clear a one- to two-kilometer strip of territory north of Israel’s border and prevent Hezbollah’s return to that area. The idea was that, since its forces would not remain in Lebanon, Israel would thwart Hezbollah’s attempts to return to the border by firing from within Israeli territory.
Now a decision has been made to widen the strip to six kilometers, and Israel’s military operations seek to achieve that objective. Although important, this objective cannot offer an effective response to the network of short-range missiles in southern Lebanon.
In a recent cabinet debate on the ground operations, only one minister favored an extensive, immediate, multipronged ground campaign in southern Lebanon: National Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, who once held the defense portfolio. Justice Minister Haim Ramon backed him to an extent, proposing a multiphased ground campaign: Initially, ground operations would be confined to a strip close to the border, and only afterward would a decision be made on whether to expand them. Apparently, the basic assumption here is that the IDF still has plenty of time to achieve its operational goals. This line of thinking, along with the cabinet’s decisions, has allowed Hezbollah to fire its rockets freely from southern Lebanon. And that is precisely what is happening today.
Let us assume that the government will instruct the IDF to embark on a new phase and seize extensive territory in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah would then move some of its rockets further back, and their range vis-a-vis Israeli targets would be shortened. According to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Israel intends to hold the parts of southern Lebanon that it captures until their transfer to a new international peacekeeping force….

The also well informed Aluf Benn writes:

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz were at odds last night over the extent of the Israeli ground offensive in Lebanon.
Peretz favors expanding the incursion as far as the Litani River, with the objective of controling the area from which the short-range rockets are fired at Israel. He announced yesterday that he had instructed the army to do so.
Olmert, for his part, is not enthusiastic about the idea; he feels that holding more ground in southern Lebanon will not solve the problem of Hezbollah’s medium- and long-range rockets.

Amos Harel writes:

Will the ground operation do the trick? Defense Minister Amir Peretz announced yesterday that he instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for “a swift takeover of the entire area south of the Litani [River]” and to operate in all the rocket-launching areas.
An examination of the ground forces’ achievements to date shows that they have not hit more than ten launchers. The immediate goal of the fighting is not stopping the rockets, but eliminating Hezbollah’s southern unit, the Nasser, on the assumption that this will crack the organization’s fortitude. Hezbollah’s losses are already estimated at some 380 combatants. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is convinced that Hezbollah’s breaking point is near. The army is more skeptical.
Peretz’s aides say the rockets can be destroyed after the territorial takeover, but it is important to reach the river before a cease-fire is announced, perhaps as soon as Monday.
As for the long-range missiles, Peretz admits that Hezbollah will still be able to fire them from north of the Litani, but says that the IAF has had more success in dealing with them.
The rush to reach the Litani is controversial. Some officers fear that inadequately trained reserve units will sustain heavy losses. The death of fathers and husbands could undermine the home front’s support for the war.
In any case, Israel intends to hold the security zone as a bargaining chip until a multinational force arrives. The bargaining chip, however, could become a burden if the troops remain in Lebanon for any length of time. Over time, troops on the ground develop a routine, and guerrillas know only too well how to take advantage of this.

And about that “home front” meanwhile, the Haaretz editorial on Sunday has this to say:

Over the past weeks, it has become clear that the entire pyramid of government – from the prime minister to the Home Front Command, and including ministry accountants and legal advisers – was unprepared for the massive attack that paralyzed life in the north of the country.
The lack of preparedness was reflected in all areas: Essential public buildings were not fortified; bomb shelters were not prepared in advance and proved to be unsuitable for people to live in for more than a few hours; and the food and water supply system, public transportation and support systems for families whose homes were destroyed are all collapsing under the strain of events. The army leadership now claims that they knew all along that Hezbollah had been accumulating long-range weapons that could strike large population centers, but despite the warnings of a few diehards, not even minimal investments were made in fortifying and preparing bomb shelters…
The slogan “strong in the rear, victorious at the front” rings hollow. Since January 1991, given the hundreds of terror attacks and the proven connection between war and peace, on one hand, and the socioeconomic situation on the other, Israeli governments should have known that the distinction between the rear and the front is no longer relevant. The citizens sitting in airless bomb shelters; the employees of community centers and local municipalities, hundreds of whom are still owed months of unpaid government wages; the staff of the Ministry of Education’s psychological services; and even youth movement counselors – all of these are now on the front lines, and none are receiving backing from the state.

Note 3: Territorial dimension of the ceasefire
Hizbullah has given its agreement to the seven-point ceasefire plan proposed a couple of weeks ago by Lebanese PM Fuad Siniora. That plan included an Israeli withdrawal from both the Shebaa Farms and any other parts of Lebanese territory that occupied by Israel– which at that point was not very much indeed.
The Israeli leadership seems to have concluded from that that it should try to occupy as much Lebanese land as it could before the ceasefire took effect– in order to have territorial “bargaining chips” to play with. This, it seems to me, was a flawed judgment. Because so long as Israeli forces are occupying certified-Lebanese territory– and not just the Shebaa Farms– then there is no hope that Hizbullah can be persuaded by anyone to promise not to act against those forces. (Hence, the worries Schiff and others have now articulated about the danger of Israel getting bogged down inside Lebanon.)
It is quite possible that Hizbullah might agree to a (short-term) ceasefire-in-place in which it would stop sending rockets into Israel in return for Israel not attacking any points north of the then-existing line of Israeli deployment in south Lebanon– indeed, that was the crux of the deal that Nasrallah outlined just recently. It was also, in essence, the nature of the ceasefire that was concluded in April 1996, at the end of Shimon Peres’s brutal (and politically counter-productive) assault against Lebanon titled “Operation Grapes of Wrath.” That ceasefire allowed Hizbullah to continue to enjoy the political kudos that comes, in the Arab world and the broader Middle East, from “standing up to” Israel, while it also allowed it to continue to build up its civilian political strength in central and eastern Lebanon.
So far, the Olmert government seems to have committed all the mistakes that Sharon made by invading Lebanon in 1982, in addition to all those that Peres made in 1996. Quite an ‘achievement’, Ehud!
(You can read a short account of how the 1996 operation backfired on Israel in my Boston Review piece, and a longer account in my 2000 book on Israel and Syria.)
And if no ceasefire is concluded for a while? Hizbullah can stomach that, too. Although any continuation of the active fighting promisesto be incredibly damaging to the population of Lebanon, there are absolutely no signs yet that the population there or anywhere else in the Arab/Muslim world is about to turn against Hizbullah. Quite the contrary. Israel’s leaders seem to have become so completely out of touch with the reality of the region in which they live that they haven’t come close to understanding how politically damaging their brazen displays of military force against Lebanon and Palestine have proven to be to any hopes that they can make or keep any friends in the Middle East. Instead, they seem to have been living in a self-referential, imperialistic bubble in which they imagined it was still, say, the late 1800s and they were a European colonial power “subduing” the natives of some sad African terrain with an overwhelming display of firepower…
Hullo? Earth to Ehud? The world ain’t like that any more! Now we are in the 21st century, and most people in the world believe in human equality and think that a dead Arab child is just as tragic as a dead Israeli child: they have good global communications; they see your disproportionately lethal, bullying ways and resent you deeply for it. And yes– this feeling extends far beyond the Arab and Muslim worlds.
Note 4: International dimensions of the ceasefire
Back in 1996, Hizbullah and its Syrian allies won an important political “victory” over the US-Israeli axis in that (a) they succeeded in getting the creation of a robust monitoring mechanism included in the ceasefire, which prevented Israel from launching unnoticed provocations and escalations, and (b) this mechanism included– along with the governments of Lebanon, Syria, Israel, and the US– the Government of France. France’s inclusion was seen, back in those days, as offering a crucial “counterweight” to the presence of the US in the monitoring committee.
I sincerely doubt whether France’s inclusion in a monitoring committee would be seen in the same light today! Since 1996, France has changed it position toward the US role in the Middle East– and most particularly, in Lebanon. In August 2004, it was Chirac’s government that worked closely with the Bushites to pass the highly intrusive, anti-Syrian and anti-Hizbullah resolution in the UN Security Council known as resolution 1559. (It’s still unclear what Chirac’s reasons for doing that were.)
This time around, if Syria, Lebanon, and Hizbullah are to have some reassurance that the “out-of-region” components of the monitoring process won’t be stacked against them, then France won’t credibly be in a position to play that role… Interesting, therefore, to see that the draft resolution talks of the existing UN force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, playing the ceasefire monitoring role.
Note 5: Make-up of the planned “international force”
Well, we’ve made a lot of progress from the early days of the Israeli assault, when much of the talk in the US was of a NATO force playing this role. (NATO? What were they smoking?) Now the draft text talks of forming a UN force, under Chapter VII of the Charter (i.e., a force potentially empowered to fight to protect its mandate), that would, “support the Lebanese armed forces and government in providing a secure environment and contribute to the implementation of a permanent cease-fire and a long-term solution.”
But how would such a UN force actually be constituted? No word on that yet. Potential contributors to the force want, quite understandably, to see what its mandate will be before they sign up.
In fact, having a draft resolution that talks of the UN running this force already looks like a considerable setback for Israel, which has long been very wary of (or even hostile towards) the UN, as well as wary of having any capable international force along its borders anywhere. Israel’s traditional worry has been that the presence of such a force would crimp its ability to act offensively whenever and however it pleased.
UNIFIL, which has been deployed in south Lebanon since Israel’s first sustained ground incursion into the country in 1978, was never a militarily capable force. In 1982 and on countless other occasions, Israel’s tanks and aircraft have acted offensively inside south Lebanon while completely ignoring UNIFIL’s presence (at best), or carelessly swatting some of its force members as it acted, at worst– as it did when it killed four UNIFIL members just ten days or so ago.
But the new force looks as though it is planned to be considerably more capable than UNIFIL.
The diplomacy is starting to become very interesting. But I still strongly believe that the “root causes” of all this strife in the Israeli-Arab region need to be addressed as an integral part of ramping down the presentcrisis… That is, all the remaining strands of the Israeli-Arab peace process need to be resolved, plus– I pray to God!– a regionwide disarmament regime established that will take all these very lethal weapons out of the hands of governments and non-governmental actors that show themselves so very damagingly ready to use them.
Note 6: The US role
Washington’s role in the unfolding crisis was aptly summed up by veteran strategic analyst Anthony Cordesman, in a quote he gave to the NYT yesterday:

“Far from Israel being the American proxy in a war against Iran, we’ve become Israel’s proxy in its war against Hezbollah,” he said. “Israel’s miscalculations have been so serious that its only hope for victory is to have the United States and the international community do for Israel what it can’t do militarily, which is defeat Hezbollah, assemble an international force in Lebanon and bring some sort of endgame to all this.”

What Cordesman did not spell out in detail there is that there is no way the US can achieve all these things on its own– and most especially not at a time it is itself so bogged down in Iraq. That’s why the US will need some serious help from the whole “international community” (and not just France), if it is to have any hope of getting calm restored to Lebanon.
However, the “international community” is quite likely at this point to demand that the diplomatic agenda be widened, and that the conclusion of a comprehensive, regionwide peace be placed back at the top of the international agenda. The US has monopolized Arab-Israeli diplomacy since 1974– and has brought us, under Pres. George W. Bush, to the present string of catastrophes throughout the region. Move over, Washington. It’s time for the UN to take over the diplomacy– and not just the peacekeeping.

I’m at my annual Quaker gathering in the Shenandoah Valley for most of this week. Just snuck out this morning to catch up with some mail and other vital things. This post is not particularly composed, but I did want to be able to share (and archive for myself) some of the interesting new resources that have been appearing about Israel’s assault on Lebanon.
First is this new blog, whose title in Arabic is “Samidoun”, meaning “steadfast”. Subtitle there is “Updates on the aggression against Lebanon.”
Posted there are various excellent documentary resources about the scale of the destruction, including this (PDF) map which shows the “Transport and vital sites bombed” by Israel throughout the country– but only up to July 24. It’s an excellent graphic presentation of the damage until then, and could be really useful at helping bring home to people the sheer scale of the infrastructural destruction.
Watch the blog site there for more updates (I hope!)
Second is the link for the English-language version of the website of Gush Shalom (the Peace Bloc) in Israel. The site also has versions in Arabic, Russian, and Hebrew that you can access thru the English site.
Not immediately visible on GS’s website is this very informative July 31 report on the state/fate of the Israeli peace movement, that Gush Shalom activist Adam Keller recently emailed to me.
In there, he wrote:

The streets are still full of patriotic posters, most of them put up by banks and big corporations and bearing the promoter’s logo beside the Israeli national flag and the stirring slogans “United We Will Win!”, “Israel Is Strong!”, “Everybody Embraces Our Soldiers!”. But only a few citizens seem to have taken up the call to raise the national flag over their own homes and cars.
Meanwhile, at least many in the mainstream Left who in earlier days remained silent or outrightly supported the “Justified War Against Hizbullah Aggression” have been shocked or moved by the Qana carnage. Meretz leader Yossi Beilin has at long last came to the conclusion that the “continuation of the war is useless and counterproductive” and that it should come to an end. A few hours before he made this statement, a leader of the Meretz Youth declared her resignation, feeling “sick and tired of being involved in a peace movement which supports war”. And a whole group of Meretz activists, led by former KM’s Naomi Hazan and Yael Dayan, participated in yesterday’s protest outside the Defence Ministry gates. [I was so hapy to see those two names, even ifmost of the rest of the leaders of Meretz and the — now moribund– “Peace Now” movement have been notably missing in action this time round. ~HC]
The influential dovish commentator Nahum Bar’nea wrote in today’s “Yediot Aharonot”: “Except for the lunatic fringe leftists, no one disputes that Israel had to react to the killing and kidnapping perpetrated by Hizbullah in our territory (…). I have confidence in the army’s High Command, but having confidence does not stop me from having painful questions. Didn’t the government, the army, the political system, the media, all let themselves be carried away by blind enthusiasm which serves only the enemy? I have heard Defence Minister Peretz boasting that he had “released the army from all restrictions” about harming “civilian populations which live at the side of Hizbullah militants”. We saw the results of this “release” yesterday, with the bodies of women and children taken out of the house in Qana” (…)
So, there is every reason for the anti-war movement to continue and intensify its own “offensive”. Demonstrations take place every day in various cities…

Third is this insightful analysis from the veteran (pro-peace) British strategic-affairs analyst Paul Rogers.
Rogers writes of the degree to which the actions by Hamas and Hizbullah since June 25 totaly punctured the “security doctrine” that had been developed up to then by the Israeli general staff. He described this doctrine as being one of establishing extremely “hard” security borders all around the country (and around those portions of the occupied Palestinian and Syrian territories that Israel wasd determined to keep), backed up by extensive and often forward-based hi-tech recon capabilities:

The establishment of these frontier defences has been at the core of a reorientation of the IDF described in 2006 by the chief-of-staff, General Dan Halutz. According to Defense News, Halutz “cited Israel’s sensor-fused network along the northern border as an example of how the nation is achieving ‘full situational awareness through intelligence superiority’. Halutz said Israel’s operational concept of ‘knowing first, understanding first, deciding first and acting first’ allows Israel to choose the time, place and conditions when it will act'” (see Barbara Opall-Rome, “Raid Reveals Hole in Israeli Net”, Defense News, 17 July 2006 [subscription only]).
Such an approach is accompanied by an extensive reconnaissance capability designed to provide near-total information superiority and a stand-off capacity to respond to perceived threats with air strikes, naval bombardment and, in some circumstances, the use of special forces. The entire approach is seen to be supremely high-tech, very modern and able to ensure Israel’s security without having to maintain expensive ground forces of a size and at a level of training that was necessary in the past. [Notably relevant in view of this week’s extensive use of ground forces for a ground invasion of Lebanon. ~HC]
Almost everything about this approach has been found wanting by the events of 25 June onwards. Hamas’s capture of Gilad Shalit was bad enough, but Hizbollah’s incursion near Za’arit on the Lebanese border on 12 July was far worse. As Defense News puts it: “Evading dozens of eyes trained on computer screens in the base’s combat information center, the operatives disabled at least one camera, penetrated a so-called dead zone of the border fence, and ambushed reservists despatched to investigate alarms.”
A number of senior retired Israeli military officers are now deeply critical of the IDF’s embrace of technocentric warfare, and profess the belief that this has been achieved at the expense of what is often termed “basic soldiering”. There is also recognition that the Hizbollah militia have become far more competent in their understanding of the Israeli moves towards high-tech warfare and have recognised some of the weak points in the entire system.
This, moreover, is in addition to Hizbollah’s other intelligence surprises of the past three weeks, including the attack on the missile corvette (see “Israel, Lebanon, and beyond: the danger of escalation”, 17 July 2006) and the ability of Hizbollah to maintain its missile attacks in the face of repeated Israeli air strikes.
For the moment, concerns within the Israeli military establishment express themselves in a firm belief that Israel must remember the “old ways” of doing things, and when necessary launch major ground-force attacks on the model of the six-day war of 1967 (even though the IDF failures in Lebanon in the early 1980s offer caution to this view).
Whatever happens in the coming weeks, the doubts over and criticisms about Israel’s military course will be a core part of a developing controversy, as Israel traps itself in a protracted and dangerous conflict that is hugely costly to communities across Lebanon, and ultimately even to Israel itself.
The stage where Israel begins to recognise that it cannot maintain security through military power and has to achieve negotiated settlements if it is to live in peace has not yet been reached (see “Israel: losing control”, 20 July 2006). But it will eventually come, and it is just possible that the current arguments over Israel’s evolving military posture are an early signal of a new way of thinking.

Do these last conclusions look like wishful thinking? I think (and certainly hope) not. We are in a period of rapid transition in international affairs. Even the “mighty” US of A is busy being (re-)taught some wrenching lessons in Iraq about the tight limitations on the political utility of military power… Plus, as I wrote in my most recent CSM column, the ability of the US– Israel’s prime sponsor in the world– to maintain the dominant role it has played in international affairs since 1945 has started eroding very rapidly over the past three years…
Israel’s citizenry did, of course, have one very educational prior opportunity to learn about the tight limitations on the political utility of military power, during their ground forces’ previous 18- (or 22-) year military occupation of great chunks of Lebanon. But it seems that– pumped up by the rhetoric they heard from Washington? (but unable to recognize the horrendously failed nature of the US undertaking in Iraq?)– the current crop of Israeli leaders wilfully chose not to learn those lessons.
It almost makes me wish that Ariel Sharon was not now lying in a vegetative state in some longterm care facility in Israel, but that he was still at the helm in that country. He at least proved– after the disaster of 1982– that he did have a learning curve regarding the utility of military power. He at least, so long as he was at the helm in Israel, showed himself willing to negotiate some realistic and fairly extensive prisoner-swap deals with Hizbullah…
But there he lies now, edging toward his fateful encounter with his Maker… And meantime, these callow, militarily untested but testosterone-driven children have taken over the whole edifice of Israeli “strategic” decisionmaking. What a terrible, terrible prospect for everyone involved…

Human Rights Watch has issued an excellent statement about Sunday’s massacre at Qana.
Here’s an excerpt:

“Today’s strike on Qana, killing at least 54 civilians, more than half of them children, suggests that the Israeli military is treating southern Lebanon as a free-fire zone,” said Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch. “The Israeli military seems to consider anyone left in the area a combatant who is fair game for attack.”
This latest, appalling loss of civilian life underscores the need for the U.N. Secretary-General to establish an International Commission of Inquiry to investigate serious violations of international humanitarian law in the context of the current conflict, Roth said. Such consistent failure to distinguish combatants and civilians is a war crime.
A statement issued today by the IDF said that responsibility for the Qana attack “rests with the Hezbollah” because it has used the area to launch “hundreds of missiles” into Israel. It added: “Residents in this region and specifically the residents of Qana were warned several days in advance to leave the village.”
On July 27, Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon said that Israel had given civilians ample time to leave southern Lebanon, and that anyone remaining could be considered a supporter of Hezbollah. “All those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah,” he said, according to the BBC.
“Just because the Israeli military warned the civilians of Qana to leave does not give it carte blanche to blindly attack,” Roth said. “It still must make every possible effort to target only genuine combatants. Through its arguments, the Israeli military is suggesting that Palestinian militant groups might ‘warn’ all settlers to leave Israeli settlements and then be justified in targeting those who remained.”
Even if the IDF claims of Hezbollah rocket fire from the Qana area are correct, Israel remains under a strict obligation to direct attacks at only military objectives, and to take all feasible precautions to avoid the incidental loss of civilian life. To date, Israel has not presented any evidence to show that Hezbollah was present in or around the building that was struck at the time of the attack.

Because I’ve been traveling, I hadn’t seen that outrageous statement from Haim Ramon. There is one sad, sad guy.
Here is a page on the HRW site with links to lots of other rights-focused resources on the Israli assaulkt on Lebanon.

This post, as it was published here by me in error and stayed up here for about 24 hours, was a clone of the Qana post that follows. I would have taken it down completely but it attracted what I think was quite a sweet (if off-topic) comment.
(Also, the other Qana post had some bad mistypings and a couple of HTML coding errors. I shall now go and try to correct them This is the problem of trying to blog through uncertain wifi connections and while hurrying, e.g. at airports.)

It is almost beyond belief that Israel’s military has once again, in its massively disproportionate assault against Lebanon, hit a large group of very vulnerable Lebanese civilians who had sought shelter at Qana.
The last time that happened was in the crucial war of 1996, which was the turning point that (four years later) led to Israel’s unilateral (and ignominious) withdrawal from Lebanon.
I believe that Ehud Olmert, an untested leader eager to show his military “mettle”, ordered the present drastic over-reaction to a (relatively small) Hizbullah provocation as a way to demonstrate to his people that he is not “soft” on the Arabs. Also, to try to turn the tide of politics in Lebanon decisively against Hizbullah. It seems he had understood nothing of what occurred in the battle of 1996, and is still determined– at huge and quite unacceptable cost to Lebanon– to repeat almost all the same grisly strategic mistakes that Israel (when the militarily untested Shimon Peres was PM) made that year.
Just as the assault ordered by Peres in 1996 turned out to be a strategic defeat for Israel, so too does Israel’s present action in Lebanon appear to be turning out the same way.
In Haaretz today, veteran israeli strategic analyst Zeev Schiff writes (and sorry, no link) that Condi Rice,

needs military cards, and unfortunately Israel has not succeeded to date in providing her with any. Besides bringing Hezbollah and Lebanon under fire, all of Israel’s military cards at this stage are in the form of two Lebanese villages near the border that have been captured by the IDF.
If the military cards Israel is holding do not improve with the continuation of the fighting, it will result in a diplomatic solution that will leave the Hezbollah rocket arsenal in southern Lebanon in its place. The diplomatic solution will necessarily be a reflection of the military realities on the ground.

I find these words interesting from a number of perspectives. First, Schiff is admitting that– for all the destruction Israel has rained on the Lebanese citizenry over the past 17 days– still, they have been able to take and hold only two Lebanese villages. (I note that he seems to measure “military cards” almost wholly in terms of facts established on the ground, an analytical judgment that I agree with.)
Second, he seems clearly to be urging the Israeli military command to establish more “facts on the ground” than they already have.
Third, he is writing from the clear premise that there is close coordination between the Bush administration’s diplomacy and Israel’s military actions. In one sense, we all know this to be true at this point. The Bushites have clearly been holding up the attempts to get a ceasefire as a way of giving the Israeli assault more time to continue. But Schiff is saying something a little different from this. He is saying not so much that American diplomacy has been buttressing Israel’s military interests as that Israel’s assault has been serving the Bushites’ broader diplomatic interests (even if, from his perspective, they have not yet done so enough.)
Schiff is a very smart and well-informed person, but on occasion he acts a bit as a mouthpiece for the Israeli military’s propaganda. Is the Israeli military now trying to tell the world that they have been doing everything they’ve been doing over the past 17 days as a “service” to the Bush administration?
Anyway, as I’ve written before, for every day this fighting continues, the death and suffering will continue. In Qana, elsewhere in Lebanon and Palestine, and in Israel (though on a far smaller scale). The idea that all this suffering does anything to “serve” the interests of the US citizenry is outrageous.

(I’m enroute back to the US, currently overnighting in London. This slaughter in Qana, once again, is deeply disturbing. I’m still trying to get my head around it. I do know that Shimon Peres and his commanders were never ever held accountable for the Qana slaughter of 1996. I interviewed him in 1998 and asked him about it. He tried to blow off all responsibility for it, saying something to the effect that “We told the Lebanese to leave south Lebanon on that occasion so everything we did after that was quite legal and okay.” They’ve used this “warning people to leave their homes” PR maneuver again this time. It does not exculpate the Israeli commanders and leaders one iota and certainly provides no excuse under international law for their actions. It’s an outrage: people– including vulnerable young families, elders, and the sick, should be ordered away from their homes on the whim of a foreign military? And then, how on earth are they supposed to leave in safety if no safe access is afforded them? The whole argument is deeply manipulative and dishonest.)