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April 12, 2008 On January 31, 2008, when the Winograd
Commission submitted its final report on the Second Lebanese War
of July 2006, this was a first in Israeli history: a report on
why the Israeli military had failed in a war.
The Winograd Commission offers a quite honest appraisal of some
aspects of the July 2006 War. [1] It acknowledges that it was “a
serious missed opportunity.” Israel had “initiated a long war,
which ended without its clear military victory (italics added).”
The 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.” Nothing could reverse Israel’s handicaps: not even
a massive ground offensive launched in the last days of the war.
Yet, after this clear-headed assessment, the Commission
stumbles. It blames Israel's military setback on “serious
failings and flaws” in decision-making, preparedness,
coordination between the civilian and military leadership, and
strategic planning.[2] In other words, the Israeli military’s
poor showing in July 2006 was not the result of any fundamental
shift in the balance of forces. These failures were the result
of a few bad judgments, inadequate preparation and
less-than-optimal coordination between different branches of the
Israeli military: all of them errors which can and will be
easily corrected in a rematch with the Hizbullah.
We cannot credibly blame the Israeli defeat on failures in
decision-making. Israel had many years to destroy the Hizbullah
during its long occupation of southern Lebanon; but it withdrew
unilaterally in April 2000, with the Hizbullah claiming victory.
In July 2006 too, the Israeli military fell far short of
matching its earlier easy victories over Arab armies: but this
was not because of failures of leadership, the failure to use
sufficient firepower (which it did), or the failure to launch a
timely ground offensive (it would get grounded the way it had
before).
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.
In the past, Arab armies had handed easy victories to Israel.
Repeatedly, the Arab states chose to fight conventional wars:
these backward, recently decolonized countries sent their poorly
trained, poorly led, poorly motivated military to fight against
the best, most determined military force the developed West
could put together. Israel's victories against the Arab armies
is overrated: it always remained an unequal match. The
Palestinians chose to fight a guerilla war in Jordan in the late
1960s, but they did so prematurely, without preparing the
political conditions for their success. They were defeated
because they were forced to fight on two fronts: against Arab
enemy states and the Israelis.
The Israelis only deceive themselves when they use alibis – bad
decisions or inadequate preparation – to ‘explain’ their
military failures. Ever since their withdrawal from southern
Lebanon in April 2000, the Israeli leadership had prepared for
the occasion to deal a knockout blow to Hizbullah. Indeed, when
the Israelis launched their latest invasion of Lebanon on July
12 2006, they had had more than six years to prepare; and they
had had more than two decades to study their adversary.
The Hizbullah too had prepared. Without fanfare, but with
dedication, discipline, skill, and cunning, the Hizbullah
leaders assembled an arsenal of low-tech rockets as well as more
advanced missiles; they built secret bunkers; they laid out
defensible communications; they acquired capabilities in
electronic warfare; they used drones and eaves-dropping
equipment to gather information; they placed spies inside
Israel; they studied their enemy; and, most importantly, they
had planned and trained, while maintaining the highest
secrecy.[3] In a word, the small bands of Arab guerillas in
southern Lebanon were prepared and ready.
Israel executed its long-planned offensive against Hizbullah on
July 12, 2006, using the excuse of a border skirmish to launch a
full-scale and devastating war against Lebanon. They launched
massive air and artillery strikes against Lebanon’s civilian
infrastructure – targeting Beirut and sites as far north as the
port city of Tripoli. Israeli ground forces crossed the Lebanese
border the same day, and continued to expand their ground
invasion in stages throughout the war. 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.
In all its wars against Arab armies, the Israelis had achieved
clear victories within days. In 1956, they had captured nearly
all of the Sinai in about seven days. In June 1967, they
crippled the Egyptian air force within two hours: and the war
against the three front-line Arab armies was over in six days.
In October war of 1973, the Israelis recovered from their
initial losses to cross the Suez Canal ten days after the start
of the war, and five days later they had encircled the Egyptian
Third Army, a mere 40 miles from Cairo. On the Syrian front, the
Israelis had advanced to within ten miles of Damascus. Since
1973, Israel has many times violated the sovereignty of Arab
states with impunity.
In contrast, Israel's full-scale war against Hizbullah’s small
guerilla force of some 3000 fighters had lasted for 33 days,
without giving the Israelis the satisfaction of claiming
victory.[6] 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.
In July 2006, agility and cunning favored the Hizbullah.
Consider the victories that Israel failed to score against this
tiny but agile foe: it 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]
Contrary to Israeli denials, 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.”[9] For a change, the Hizbullah had brought the
war to Israel.
Moreover, the Hizbullah scored several clear victories over
Israel’s military. According to an IDF Report Card published in
the Jerusalem Post, Israel had deployed some 400 Merkava MK-4
tanks – its safest and deadliest tank – in Lebanon: 40 of these
were hit by Hizbullah’s anti-tank weapons, 20 of them were
destroyed, and 30 tank crewmen were killed.[10] According to a
report published by The Washington Institute for Near East
Policy, “Hizbullah's success with antitank weapons during the
July War reflects many years spent training on these weapons as
well as a good plan to use these weapons once the battle began.”
Hizbullah’s infantry or ‘village units’ – deployed along the
border to slow down the advance of Israeli ground forces – “made
the IDF pay for every inch of ground that it took. At the same
time, crucially, Hizbullah dictated the rules of how the war was
to be fought.” It is worth noting that 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.”[11]
The Hizbullah scored its most impressive military victory in the
area of intelligence. Israel's electronic warfare systems are
amongst the most advanced in the world; they are war-tested and
developed in cooperation with the United States. Indeed, the
Israeli commanders were certain at the outset of the war of
their ability to jam Hizbullah communications. They were wrong.
Hizbullah’s command and control system remained operational
throughout the war; they evaded Israeli jamming devices by using
fiber optic lines instead of relying on wireless signals.
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.[13] 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.
Israel claims that it killed 400-500 Hizbullah fighters. Crooke
and Perry insist that these numbers are exaggerated. “It is
impossible for Shi'ites (and Hezbollah),” they argue, “not to
allow an honorable burial for its martyrs, so in this case it is
simply a matter of counting funerals. Fewer than 180 funerals
have been held for Hezbollah fighters - nearly equal to the
number killed on the Israeli side.”[14]
The Israeli setbacks in the July War of 2006, then, represents a
paradigm shift – not something that can be pinned on careless
errors in decision-making. Unlike the Arab armies in the past,
the Hizbullah had fought a people’s war. It neutralized Israel's
technological superiority by deploying its mobile, elusive,
disciplined and skilled guerilla detachments – not a
centralized, conventional army – to fight the Israelis.
The 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. It can launch thousands of low-tech rockets which
rendered sophisticated anti-missile defenses useless. It has
also acquired and learned to use with great effectiveness
anti-tank missiles that make Israel's most advanced tanks
vulnerable. They have successfully targeted even Israeli
warships.
If the Hizbullah can extend these advantages, if it can add
shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles to its arsenal and bring
down a few Israeli helicopters and jets, Israel could quickly
lose its unchallenged control over Lebanese skies. Israel’s
daily and wanton violations of Lebanese airspace would also come
to an end.
The Hizbullah offers Israel a new kind of asymmetric warfare: it
combines low-tech guerilla tactics with sophisticated missile
and communications technology. Understandably, the Israelis find
these Hizbullah achievements hard to digest. 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.
It appears that the weapons gap that had opened up in recent
decades between Western powers and the weaker, technologically
backward nations may be closing. How rapidly this happens will
depend on the willingness of Russia, China, North Korea, Iran –
with other countries getting ready to join them – to make these
weapons available to movements of resistance. Alternatively, if
these countries hesitate, the arms smugglers will step in to
provide this service. Once anti-tank, anti-ship and
shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles can be bought on the
world’s illicit arms markets as readily as AK-47s, this will
begin to alter the fortunes of resistance movements battling
great powers.
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.[15] 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?
* Professor of economics at Northeastern University, Boston.
He is the author most recently of Challenging the New
Orientalism (IPI: 2007). You may email him at
alqalam02760@yahoo.com
References:
[1] It would be naïve to expect the Winograd Commission to
censure Israel for unleashing a war of destruction against
Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure – for bombing villages,
apartment blocks, ambulances, dairy plants, bridges, roads and
the Beirut airport. With the unconditional support of Western
nations – and the US taking the lead – over the past sixty
years, Israel's wars of aggression against Arabs, its ethnic
cleansing of Palestinians, its assassinations of Palestinian
leaders, its bombing of civilian infrastructure, its torture of
prisoners, its siege of civilian areas – have been excused as
‘security’ measures against ‘terrorism.’
[2] Summary of the Winograd Commission Report. International
Herald Tribune (January 31, 2007).
<www.iht.com/articles/2008/01/31/africa/31winogradsum.php?page=1>
[3] David Eshel, “Hezbollah’s intelligence war,” Defense Update.
<www. defense-update.com/analysis/lebanon_war_1.htm>
[4] Sergio Catignani, The Israeli-Hezbollah rocket war: A
preliminary assessment (Global Strategy Forum: September 26,
2006): 2-3. <www. globalstrategyforum.org/upload/upload26.pdf>
[5] On July 24, Jan Egeland, Under-Secretary General for
Humanitarian Affairs, UN, called for aid to help 800,000
Lebanese displaced by the war. “Timeline of the July war 2006,”
The Daily Star (Lebanon).
<www. dailystar.com.lb/July_War06.asp>
[6] Efraim Inbar, “How Israel bungled the Second Lebanon War,”
Middle East Quarterly 14, 3 (Summer 2007).
<www.meforum.org/ article/1686>
[7] Sergio Catignani, The Israeli-Hezbollah rocket war: 2.
[8] Alastair Crooke and Mark Perry, “How Hezbollah defeated
Israel, Part II: Winning the ground war,” Asia Times Online
(October 13, 2006). <www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HJ13Ak01.html>
[9] Efraim Inbar, “How Israel bungled the Second Lebanon War,”
Middle East Quarterly 14, 3 (Summer 2007).
<www.meforum.org/ article/1686>
[10] Yaakov Katz, “IDF report card,” Jerusalem Post (August 24,
2006).
[11] Andrew Exum, Hizballah at war: A military assessment
(Washington Institute for Near East Policy: Policy Focus No. 53,
December 2006). <www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC04.php?CID=260>
[12] David Eshel, “Hezbollah’s intelligence war,” Defense
Update. <www. defense-update.com/analysis/lebanon_war_1.htm>;
Iason Athanasiadis, “How high-tech Hezbollah called the shots,”
Asia Times Online (September 9, 2006). <www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HI09Ak01.html>
[13] Alastair Crooke and Mark Perry, “How Hezbollah defeated
Israel, Part I: Winning the intelligence war,” Asia Times Online
(October 12, 2006). <www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HJ12Ak01.html>
[14] Alastair Crooke and Mark Perry, “How Hezbollah defeated
Israel, Part II.”
[15] Philip D. Curtin, The world and the West: The European
challenge and the overseas response in the age of empires
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000): 27-32. |
