[AGL] troops ready, but israel bets on air power

[michelemason]

Read and considered.  Thank-you for a balanced observation. I assure 
you, its always the truth that I'm after.  Michele

On Jul 22, 2006, at 2:49 PM, Michael Eisenstadt wrote:

> Troops Ready, but Israel Bets on Air Power
> STEVEN ERLANGER Published: July 23, 2006
> JERUSALEM, July 22 - On Israeli intelligence maps of southern Lebanon, 
> the
> stronghold of the Hezbollah militia, there are numerals in circles that
> overlap many villages. One is marked "8," others "7" or fewer.
>
> The figures represent the number of rockets fired toward Israel from 
> each
> village as registered by Israeli surveillance planes and radar. The
> villages, whose names cannot be published under Israeli Army censorship
> regulations, stretch north to roughly the Litani River, some 15 miles 
> from
> the Israeli-Lebanese border.
>
> "This is where Hezbollah has most of its 10,000 rockets," said a senior
> Israeli commander, who would not allow his name to be used because he 
> has
> access to sensitive information. "And these villages are where most of 
> the
> rockets are kept, with their launchers, and where they're fired. This 
> is
> where the command and control is located, and the weapons storehouses."
>
> After two days of fighting in the area, Israeli troops entered Maroun 
> al-Ras
> in Lebanon on Saturday. Near there, above the northern Israeli town of
> Avivim, Hezbollah has built an underground warren of metal-lined 
> tunnels,
> barracks and rocket-storage facilities, the officer said, showing
> photographs of an entrance disguised by a metal lid covered with 
> leaves and
> branches, visible only from the ground.
>
> For the last three days, Israel has been telling the residents of 
> southern
> Lebanon, through leaflets, radio broadcasts, taped telephone messages 
> and
> conversations with the local authorities, to leave these villages and 
> move
> north.
>
> But the preparation now seems to be less for a ground invasion than 
> for more
> punishing airstrikes to try to eliminate Hezbollah military assets and
> stockpiles, which the Israelis say are distributed and hidden through 
> the
> civilian population, in houses, garages and apartments.
>
> "We want the freedom to attack these places," the officer said. "I 
> believe
> in air power. I believe in our ability to destroy Hezbollah without 
> going
> into Lebanon again the way we did in 1982. And the only way to do it 
> is to
> attack any movement we detect, any launch or any activity aimed at 
> hitting
> Israel - especially from the villages we see."
>
> The overall aim, Israel says, is to weaken Hezbollah sufficiently so 
> that
> the international community can help the Lebanese government to carry 
> out
> United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559 and exercise its 
> sovereignty
> all over Lebanon, expelling any foreign fighters and disarming 
> Hezbollah.
>
> Israel is more interested in having an international force patrol the 
> border
> than it has been in the past, officials say, especially if the force 
> has
> rules of engagement that will allow it to ensure that Hezbollah cannot
> reinfiltrate to the border.
>
> Israel wants "to change the calculus for any future kidnapper," 
> showing that
> it will respond in force and that the Israeli population is willing to
> suffer pain and casualties, undermining the theory of Hezbollah's 
> leader,
> Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, that Israeli society is "like a spider's web," 
> soft
> and easily broken.
>
> Hezbollah will not surrender, the officer said. "They won't come out 
> with a
> white flag. But at the end they should be beaten and be seen to be 
> beaten.
> It won't be a knockout, but what matters is how big the decision is on
> points."
>
> Currently, as Israeli troops and armor continue to build on the border 
> and
> commandos operate secretly and deeper inside Lebanon, Israeli infantry
> activity has been limited to operations within a mile or two of the 
> border.
>
> These operations, described by Israeli chief of staff Lt. Gen. Dan 
> Halutz as
> "limited" and "pinpoint," have focused on knocking down Hezbollah 
> outposts
> built on the border, finding and destroying camouflaged storehouses,
> barracks and rocket launching sites and defusing some of the many 
> boobytraps
> and "improvised explosive devices," which contain up to the equivalent 
> of
> one ton of TNT, the Israelis say. Israel's wider bombing campaign 
> across
> Lebanon has killed hundreds of civilians and reduced parts of south 
> Beirut
> and southern Lebanon to rubble.
>
> "We're moving very carefully" to destroy outposts, storage areas and 
> take
> control of elevated positions that provide a field of fire, the officer
> said. "We have time."
>
> Part of the aim is to ensure, as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has
> insisted, that Israeli forces never again face armed Hezbollah 
> fighters nose
> to nose across the international border. Part of the aim is to clear 
> routes
> for any larger ground incursion. The army also hopes to pull Hezbollah
> fighters out of hiding into firefights, the officer said, "so we can 
> kill
> them."
>
> The fighting has been intense, the army admits. Hezbollah has had six 
> years
> to prepare its positions, ambushes and minefields, including buried
> explosives that can destroy the underbelly of even the most modern 
> Israeli
> tank. Hezbollah forces are also well equipped with Syrian and Iranian
> infantry weapons, including laser-guided anti-tank rockets, that far
> outclass what the Palestinians can muster.
>
> Hezbollah is also believed to possess the Russian Kornet missile,
> laser-guided and with a thermal sight, designed in the mid-1990's to 
> attack
> the most modern tanks equipped with explosive reactive armor, the 
> officer
> said. Russia sold the Kornet to Syria.
>
> General Halutz asserts that the Israelis have killed at least 100 
> Hezbollah
> fighters and commanders so far, while Israel has lost about 19 soldiers
> since this part of the conflict began on July 12 with a coordinated
> Hezbollah rocket attack and raid into Israel, which ended in the death 
> of
> eight soldiers and the capture of two more.
>
> Many Israelis compare their 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon, 
> which
> began in 1982 and lasted until 2000, to the American experience in 
> Vietnam.
> Israeli commanders do not want to get sucked back into the "quicksand" 
> of
> Lebanon, as one of them described it, leading Mr. Olmert and General 
> Halutz
> to emphasize the "limited" and "temporary" nature of any Israeli raid.
>
> But if there is a major ground operation, the senior officer said, it 
> would
> be almost useless to go just a few miles into Lebanon, and necessary 
> to go
> up to the Litani River. "The Katyushas have a range of 20 to 32 
> kilometers,"
> he said, and Hezbollah also has Syrian and Iranian missiles with 
> ranges of
> 40 to 70 kilometers, or 43 miles, with a few Iranian Zelzals that can 
> go 100
> kilometers, or 62 miles.
>
> "Two to five kilometers does the outposts, that's all," the officer 
> said.
>
> He predicted that Israel would stick largely to air power for now, on 
> the
> presumption that its war against Hezbollah would not be curtailed too
> quickly by the international community, in particular the Bush
> administration.
>
> "We have no intent and no desire to go back in force into Lebanon," he 
> said.
> "But if I'm wrong, and there's not enough time and if air power proves
> ineffective, then we'll do it," he said, adding: "We're capable of 
> doing it.
> We're not afraid to do it."
>
> But ground forces won't defeat Hezbollah, which can keep retreating
> northward. "A ground maneuver won't solve the problem of the long-range
> missiles," he said. "The problem is the will to launch. We have to 
> break the
> will of Hezbollah" to confront Israel.
>
> And how will that happen? "By killing them," the officer said. "Maybe 
> many
> of their soldiers are fanatics and want to be martyrs. But the 
> leadership is
> clever, and it wants to live. They're rational guys, and they're 
> hiding."
>
> Israel needs to "restore our military deterrence against terror
> organizations, whether Hamas or Hezbollah," the officer added, "and 
> this
> goal is already achieved." Israel must show again that "Israeli 
> soldiers on
> the ground can defeat any enemy," the officer said, pointing to Gaza, 
> where
> Israel has killed about 100 Palestinian fighters since June 25 and 
> lost only
> one soldier, who was killed by another Israeli by error.
>
> General Halutz, the chief of staff, put it this way: "The restraint 
> which we
> showed over the course of years is interpreted by those among the 
> terrorists
> as weakness. On this count, they made a horrible mistake by assuming 
> that we
> would persist in holding back and restraining ourselves. Our duty as 
> an army
> was - and we did as such - to recommend a halt to this development, 
> which
> stems from a sense of us not having an answer."
>
> An international force with teeth, Israeli officials say, would help 
> deal
> with serious Israeli concerns about the loyalties of the Lebanese 
> Army, even
> after the Syrians have gone.
>
> Israelis note that the Lebanese Army, while some 50,000 men strong, has
> never been willing to try to displace Hezbollah in the south, even 
> though
> Hezbollah has many more rockets than organized fighters - perhaps 
> 6,000 of
> them, the Israelis say.
>
> "The Lebanese Army is not a strong army, and half of it is very close 
> to the
> Hezbollah," the Israeli officer said, citing the large number of 
> Shiites
> from southern Lebanon who serve in the army. Asked if the army would, 
> even
> if deployed along the border, prevent reinfiltration of Hezbollah 
> fighters,
> the officer said, "I look for Hezbollah to understand that any future 
> move
> against Israel will be very counterproductive and to concentrate on 
> becoming
> a real political party."
>
> Syria, he said, had far more potent and dangerous weaponry than 
> Hezbollah,
> but it has always kept to its cease-fire agreement with Israel, 
> deterred by
> the losses it knows Israel could inflict. "There's a state in Syria 
> that
> controls its territory," the officer said. "We hope the international
> community will help Lebanon become a real state and keep the border 
> calm."
>
>
>