Today's Situation

Between winning and losing Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Condoleezza Rice’s statement yesterday that hostilities should end in days, not weeks, has added urgency to the IDF operations, which are now concentrated on the ground in southern Lebanon, where Israel is trying to clear out Hizbollah forces ahead of the deployment of an international force. Her remarks came after she met with Shimon Peres, who delivered a somewhat contradictory message in Washington -- that a ceasefire would begin the minute Hizbllah ceases shooting rockets into Israel, and the war would go on for at least a few more weeks.

The commando raid, of course, won the big headlines in Israel, where the media has been grousing for weeks about how the air force raids and pinpoint infantry raids have not produced the dramatic defeat of Hizbollah that the government seemed to promise when the war began after the cross-border kidnapping of two soldiers 21 days ago.

The defeat of Hizbollah is viewed by the Right and Center in Israel as a necessary step in the overall global war against Islamic jihadism. The Left is, as usual in the last six years, ever since Ehud Barak declared there is ‘no partner’ on the Palestinian side, silent or befuddled.

The general consensus, from Right to Left, is that Hizbollah might couch its rhetoric in local terms, but it is an Iranian proxy. IDF forces are finding that the Hizbollah fighters in south Lebanon are using IDF supplied uniforms and flak jackets provided to the former South Lebanon Army, Israel’s proxy for years against first the PLO and then the Hizbollah, in south Lebanon. But the munitions in the hands of the Hizbollah are all either Iranian or Syrian.

In any case, the debate has already begun in Israel if it is winning or losing. The Arabs, particularly those who back Hizbollah, already are claming victory, say the Israeli commentators. Among Israelis, Rightist ideologues are also worried that Israel has lost the war because it fought it with hesitation and only belatedly has started sending large numbers of soldiers into the campaign, using Israel’s advantage. On the Left, if there is criticism of the Israeli management of the war it is focused on the pointlessness of trying to defeat a guerilla group with a large, cumbersome army.

There is also a debate underway between the Mossad and IDF Military Intelligence over just how damaging the Israeli assaults against Hizbollah have been to the organization, which runs a major economic empire in Lebanon, deriving income ranging from $50-$200 million a year from Iran, according to Haaretz’s well-respected Zvi Bar’el, many millions in donations from the Shiite Lebanese Diaspora in Latin America, and tens of millions in revenues from business in Lebanon, including one of the country’s largest construction contracting firms.

If there is a clear sign that something is turning sour for Hizbollah, it is in its propaganda efforts. One of the main points that Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah made when the war began was that he was much more credible than the Israeli leadership -- for Israelis. If he said Hizbollah was going to do something, it did it. The best example was a speech he gave via Hizbollah’s al Manar TV station saying his people were about to sink one of the IDF missile boats off the Lebanese coast. Minutes later, a missile indeed crashed into one of the ships, killing four sailors, but not sinking the ship.

But since then, Hizbollah’s claims have become increasingly false - and bizarre. Among other things, it claims to have sunk a ship with 50 sailors on board, that all the wounded and dead Israelis were shot in the back because they were running away from combat, 35 Israeli soldiers were killed yesterday (instead of three), and Hizbollah has succeeded at downing several IDF helicopters. This morning, Hizbollah said that the commandos had not captured anyone from the organization on the Baalbek operation.

The Hizbollah victory claims, say military sources, are a sure sign that the organization is losing its self-confidence. Maybe. While the Hizbollah claims have lost credibility, Israeli claims that some kind of decisive victory is at hand have given way to more realistic promises by the prime minister that ‘every day that goes by with Israel pounding them, weakens them.’

In other words, the goal is now to weaken Hizbollah enough to enable the weak Lebanese government, backed by the international force, to do what Lebanese Prime Minister Fu’ad Siniora says he wants to do, disarm Hizbollah, the last of the many Lebanese militias that thrived during nearly 30 years of civil war. Perhaps. Trouble is, that the more the Israelis ‘pound’ the Hizbollah, the more sympathy the organization wins among Lebanese and the more hatred is sown for Israel. For many years, it was said that Lebanon would be the second Arab country to make peace with Israel, but when Anwar Sadat did so, going to Jerusalem in 1977, Lebanon was deep in the civil war and its government was unable to do what had seemed so logical only a few years earlier. This week, Siniora said that Israel and Lebanon had an opportunity to reach a political agreement, but if Israel misses this chance, Lebanon would be the last of the Arab countries to sign a peace treaty with Israel. Right now, Israel is taking the same approach toward Siniora as it does toward Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas -- he’s a nice guy, but too weak to do business -- rejecting the idea that doing business with them both will strengthen them.

By the way, Palestinian sources are saying that Israel has agreed in principle to releasing aged, women and young Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails in exchange for Corporal Gilad Shalit. Israeli official policy remains that there will be no deals for the release of its captured soldiers but it does reserve the right to consider prisoner releases as part of a wider political process, after the Palestinians (and Lebanese) return the captured Israelis -- if the Palestinians also end terrorism against Israel. Qassam rockets landed in the western Negev this morning and yesterday, a woman and a teenager were killed by Israeli shelling of ‘Qassam launching areas’ in northern Gaza.

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