It was Hezbollah’s ‘B Team’ that defeated Israel – an analysis

Has Israel Finally Met Its Match? The Meaning of Hizbullah's Big Win
M. SHAHID ALAM

Israeli Winograd Commission notes that a militia "of a few thousand men resisted, for a few weeks, the strongest army in the Middle East, which enjoyed full air superiority and size and technology advantages."

The Israeli military offensive of July 2006 had failed because Israel was fighting a war that did not play to its advantages in size and technology. Israel had finally met its match ­ a foe that was prepared to fight, that knew how to fight on its own terms, a foe that was elusive and cunning, skilled and daring, ready to adapt its methods to neutralize Israel's technical superiority, that controlled its terrain, and, most importantly, was backed by Iran and Syria. For the first time in its history, an Israeli invasion had been reversed by a cunning guerilla resistance.

Israel executed its long-planned offensive against Hizbullah on July 12, 2006...During the 33-day war, the Israeli air force flew more than 15,000 sorties and struck 7000 targets in Lebanon; the Israeli navy imposed a blockade on Lebanon, and bombed 2,500 Lebanese targets; and, all told, the Israelis destroyed 15,000 homes, 900 commercial buildings, 400 miles of roads, 80 bridges, and Lebanon's international airport. Lebanon's human toll at the end of the war consisted of 845 dead, including 743 civilians, 34 soldiers and 68 Hizbullah guerillas.[4] In addition, close to a million Lebanese were forced to flee their homes.[5] The intent of these genocidal attacks was to turn the Lebanese against the Hizbullah. The Israelis failed in this objective too.

On July 12 2006, Israel had started a full-scale war against Lebanon, convinced that it could destroy Hizbullah or greatly diminish its military force within a few days ­ and do it with air power alone. Israel's decision to end the war 33 days later, even as Hizbullah kept up its barrage of Katyusha rockets into Israel, was a dark chapter in Israel's military history. Israel's military might had been neutralized by a seemingly Lilliputian adversary.

Israel failed to destroy or jam Hizbullah's communications network; to knock out Hizbullah's television and radio stations; to kill or capture Hassan Nasrallah; or to dent Hizbullah's ability to launch Katyusha rockets into Israel. Hizbullah was firing Katyusha rockets at the rate of 100 a day during July, doubled this rate in early August, and, in the last few hours before the ceasefire came into effect, fired 250 rockets.[7] On the day of the ceasefire, the Hizbullah still had 14,000 rockets in its arsenal, enough to continue the war for another three months.[8]

The daily barrage of Katyusha rockets took a heavy toll on the Israeli economy. Altogether, a quarter of the 4000 rockets Hizbullah launched during the war hit urban areas: they "paralyzed the whole of northern Israel, its main port, refineries, and many other strategic installations. Over one million Israelis lived in bomb shelters and about 300,000 temporarily left their homes and sought refuge in the south." For a change, the Hizbullah had brought the war to Israel.

The fighters Hizbullah deployed in southern Lebanon were not its best. "One of the war's ironies," Andrew Axum writes, "is that many of Hizballah's best and most skilled fighters never saw action, lying in wait along the Litani River with the expectation that the IDF assault would be much deeper and arrive much faster than it did."

The Hizbullah had blocked the Barak anti-missile system on Israeli ships; hacked into Israeli battlefield communications in order to monitor Israeli tank movements; and, they monitored cell phone conversations in Hebrew between Israeli reservists and their families. They intercepted Israeli military communications on battlefield casualties and announced them on their media network.[12] They successfully employed decoys to hide the location of hundreds of bunkers they had built in southern Lebanon to store weapons and shelter their fighters. As a world leader in weapons technology and communications, Israel had held a decisive advantage in electronic warfare in its wars with Arab armies. In July 2006, the Hizbullah had neutralized this advantage.

The Israeli setbacks in the July War of 2006, then, represents a paradigm shift.

Hizbullah fights in small groups, it is evasive, it is secretive, it owns its terrain, it trains, it has high morale, and it enjoys complete popular support amongst Lebanon's Shi'ites.

What the world witnessed in Lebanon in July 2006 were events that contain the potential for shifting the balance of power in the Middle East. Earlier, the Iraqi insurgents had demonstrated that they can make an occupation ­ even by the world's greatest power ­ very costly. Now, the Hizbullah had shown that a disciplined guerilla force, with access to advanced missiles, can repel the most powerful invading army.

In the late nineteenth century, the advanced Western nations had opened a lethal weapons gap with their automatic weapons: this gave them a quick, nearly costless colonization of Africa and Southeast Asia. When that gap began to close in the interwar period, it gave an impetus to resistance movements in Indonesia, Vietnam, Kenya and Algeria. Already weakened from fighting their own fratricidal wars, the Western colonial powers retreated: and the Third World was born.

Will the twenty-first century herald the dawn of another era of gains for movements of resistance across Asia, Africa and Latin America?

Full article by M. Shahid Alam in Counterpunch