Peace…Or Hudna
The Great and the Good, with the blessings of Uncle Kofi, have agreed to a ceasefire in Lebanon. At the moment the Israelis are rushing troops in to consolidate the gains they have made in the last few days and extend their line as close to the Litani River as possible. No doubt their sappers will be in place blowing up whatever they can find of the Hezbollah fortifications and tunnel systems.
Hezbollah chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah has accepted, with reservations, the ceasefire:
The Lebanese leader said that Hizbullah would not cease its actions against “the Zionist enemy.” We will continue to “fulfill our national and jihadic obligations.” He promised that his organization would continue to fight until the Israeli troops left Israel.
the jerusalem post
And he is none too pleased with the arms embargo which the ceasefire resolution calls for and which the UN force is supposed to enforce.
Three weeks ago I posted on the question, Can Israel Lose? and said,
for Israel to win it needs to demonstrate once and for all that it is the toughest dog in the junkyard; but she must also demonstrate she’s the smartest as well. So far Israel has not fought tough or smart. Here’s hoping that changes….and fast.
The IDF understood this and fought as hard and well as it was allowed to. But it was not enough and last minute line straightening will do little to change that fact.
Unfortunately the Israeli political leadership was simply not up to the task of decisively beating Hezbollah and, unbeaten, Hezbollah is now treated as a legitimate actor referenced directly in the UN resolution.
What I suspect we are seeing is a version of hudna; a pause to allow Hezbollah to regroup. The rockets will stop for a while. The UN will take up their positions alongside the Lebanese army and Hezbollah will dig in nearby. Israel will pull back to its borders and an uneasy quiet will decend for a few months or, perhaps, a few years. Iran will have had its distraction and will be further along with its nuclear ambitions. More and better rockets will pour over the Syrian border. Hexbollah will crow about its success against the Israeli Army.
Which means Israel will have lost. Fortunately, the Israelis are political realists and will take the lessons of this botched war to heart. Israeli PM Ehud Olmert is likely toast. The Israelis are not going to support a man who gets into a fight he does not have the guts to finish and finish well. More importantly, the Israelis will spend some time considering their own military doctrine and how it could have strayed so far from the tactical brilliance which had characterized Israeli military history to date.
Here is a hint: occupations are bad for armies. Truly great armies are all about war not peace or a semblance of peace. The long Israeli occupation of Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank trained the IDF to act as heavily armed policemen rather than a strike force.
Here is another hint: Israel’s intelligence capacity has been severly degraded. At the outset of the war it was quite clear that the Israelis had next to no detailed intelligence as to the Hezbollah order of battle. Apparently they were surprised at the fortifications and the battle strategy of Hezbollah.
For Israel the hudna is an opportunity to rethink strategy and to create the tactical capacity to crush Hezbollah when the time comes. And there is little doubt the time is going to come:
Hizbullah’s Al-Manar TV, which continues to broadcast despite repeated Israeli air raids on its studios and transmitters, declared over the weekend “victory” against Israel, noting that the IDF had failed to score military achievements during the fighting.
The broadcasts are being launched under the banner of “We won!”, “We have defeated the invincible army” and “July-August 2006 - the shattering of the myth [of the might Israeli army].”
jerusalem post
Israel’s political class is going to be hearing the echos for years.
Written by jay on August 12th, 2006 with
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