Bunkered down for a war of
attrition By Sami Moubayed
DAMASCUS - Israel entered the war in
Lebanon to liquidate Hezbollah. If it can free its
two captive soldiers (seized on July 12), this
would be a plus for the Israelis. But the real
objective of the war is to destroy Hassan
Nasrallah and his Hezbollah.
Israel
succeeded in expelling Yasser Arafat from Lebanon
in 1982 and it believes that with military might,
it can do the same today to Nasrallah. The war has
dragged on into its 10th day and looks as if it's
going to be a long and deadly war of attrition -
at the expense of innocent Lebanese and Israeli
civilians dying on both sides.
Both
Nasrallah and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
have cornered themselves into difficult positions,
making an exit
strategy at this stage
extremely problematical. Surrendering now without
concrete gains for Lebanese and Israeli public
opinion would be political suicide for Nasrallah
and Olmert.
The Israeli premier entered
this war and promised the Israelis he would
liberate the two Israeli soldiers and crush
Hezbollah. Not only has Olmert failed to achieve
both targets, but Hezbollah missiles have landed
on Israeli towns such as Safad, Acre, Haifa,
Tiberias, Kiryat Shmona and the biblical city of
Nazareth.
Hezbollah has managed to kill 29
people in Israel, 14 of them soldiers. These
attacks have greatly embarrassed the Israeli
government. Nasrallah finds himself in a similar
situation. He entered this war promising his
people to release Lebanese prisoners from Israeli
jails and liberate the Israeli-occupied Sheba
Farms. Not only has he failed to achieve both
targets, but Israel is literarily destroying
Lebanon.
At the time of writing,
casualties in Lebanon are 330 dead and more than
500,000 displaced people. After suffering so much
for this war, the Lebanese would not accept
anything less than complete victory. If Nasrallah
surrenders now, his people will ask: "Why did you
go to war in the first place if this was going to
be the result?"
Meanwhile, a bone-breaking
battle continues between Israel and Hezbollah. On
Wednesday, Israel launched its strongest offensive
into Lebanon, with 200 air strikes, killing at
least 70 Lebanese. The following day witnessed
more Israel assaults by jets and gunboats on south
Lebanon and the Shi'ite district in the suburbs of
Beirut. This neighborhood, known as al-Dahiyyieh,
has been flattened by continuous bombing at an
interval of every 10 minutes since July 12.
Previously safe places, such
as the village of Choueifat and the Christian
Ashrafiyyieh neighborhood of Beirut, suffered
attacks in recent days. Israel landed 23 tons of
explosives on a bunker near Burj al-Barajneh,
which it claimed Nasrallah was using as a command
base.
Hezbollah denied that Nasrallah was
there and he gave an interview to the Doha-based
Al-Jazeera TV on Thursday, refuting all claims
that he had been wounded. Using defiant
language to lift the moral of his followers,
Nasrallah said, "If the entire universe came [to
pressure Hezbollah] it will not bring back the
Israeli soldiers unless through indirect
negotiations and a prisoner swap."
Israeli elite units crossed the border to
launch ground offensives against Hezbollah, but
according to Hezbollah's Al-Manar television, they
were driven back by Hezbollah fighters. Al-Manar
showed equipment that its warriors had captured
from the Israelis. They had pushed as far as 32
kilometers inland from the Mediterranean, but came
under Hezbollah fire and were stopped when an
Israeli tank hit a land mine.
In addition,
nine Israeli soldiers who had penetrated into
Lebanon were ambushed by Hezbollah within Lebanese
territory near the village of Maroun al-Rais. One
Israeli strike at the village of Srifa near the
border flattened 15 homes and killed a total of 17
civilians. Israel has also hit the cities Tyre and
Baalbak. Israel bombed the offices of the Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General
Command that is loyal to Syria, and also hit the
Baalbak-Homs Road, severing all transportation
routs to Syria. Shortly after the war
began, Israel hit and damaged the Damascus-Beirut
Highway and the Homs-Tripoli Road. With all their
airports out of service because of Israeli
bombing, and with a sea blockade of Lebanon, the
Lebanese only had one travel route through Syria
to escape the hell that had broken out. It has now
been sealed off. Hezbollah has responded by
hitting northern Israel with more than 100 rockets
and, for the first time, landing missiles on
Nazareth. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) command
of northern Israel, located in Safad, was also hit
by Hezbollah missiles.
International
inaction The international community does
not seem in a hurry to end the war. Spearheaded by
the Americans (with the notable exceptions of
Italy, Russia and France), countries have sided
with Israel in its war on Hezbollah. US Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice has announced that she
will arrive in the Middle East early next week to
press for a political solution to the crisis.
By then, the war would have entered its
14th day, with unimaginable humanitarian problems
for Lebanon. Since the world is in no hurry, the
war of attrition will start and probably last for
many weeks - long enough until either side breaks
under pressure.
United Nations Secretary
General Kofi Annan said that "hostilities must
stop", but acknowledged, in speaking to the
Security Council, that there were "serious
obstacles towards reaching a ceasefire".
Attrition warfare, by definition, is a
tactic where, to win a war, one's enemy must be
worn down to the point of collapse by continuous
losses in human life, arms and property.
A
notable example of such a war was that between
Egypt and Israel in 1968-70. Egyptian president
Gamal Abdel Nasser knew that numerically the
Egyptians outnumbered the Israelis by far and that
the Israelis were less willing than the Arabs to
suffer losses in property and human life.
Nasser's views on the war of attrition -
which very well are probably what Nasrallah is
thinking today - were described by veteran
Egyptian journalist Mohammad Hasanayn Haykal: "If
the enemy succeeds in inflicting 50,000 casualties
in this campaign, we can go on fighting
nevertheless, because we have manpower reserves.
If we succeed in inflicting 10,000 casualties, he
will unavoidably find himself compelled to stop
fighting, because he has no manpower reserves."
So far Israel's military tactic has been
to bomb entire neighborhoods where Hezbollah is
located, along with all of south Lebanon. Israel
has destroyed bridges, roads, seaports, airports
and private property. It has disrupted electricity
and caused a shortage in sugar, rice, fuel and
many other daily commodities needed for the
Lebanese to maintain their sanity.
By
disrupting the livelihood of the Lebanese, it aims
at turning public opinion inside Lebanon against
Hezbollah and getting a greater number of people
to say: "Hassan Nasrallah is responsible for all
of this. He is responsible for the Israeli attacks
that have destroyed our homes, our property and
the infrastructure of Lebanon."
This is
what happened in 1982 to Arafat, when even his
closest supporters in the Muslim community of
Lebanon were literarily begging him to leave
Beirut. If this happens today, it will create
conflict - and perhaps violence - between the
Shi'ites and the rest of the Lebanese, disrupt the
support for Nasrallah, and turn public opinion in
favor of a ceasefire, even if it were at the
expense of Hezbollah.
Some are even
fearful that secretly armed non-Shi'ite groups in
Lebanon will take the law into their own hands and
start to fight the Shi'ite guerrillas on their
own, plunging the country back into the civil-war
atmosphere of 1975-90.
This explains why
the IDF is not only targeting Hezbollah
strongholds. It wants every Lebanese to suffer so
he or she can blame Nasrallah and Hezbollah. It
has hit a church in Rashayya, landed a missile in
the Ashrafiyyieh neighborhood of Beirut, and
targeted a base for the Lebanese army, killing
seven soldiers and four officers.
On
Tuesday, Israel hit a convoy of assistance sent to
Lebanon from the United Arab Emirates, destroying
an ambulance and a truck loaded with medicine. It
later hit three trucks carrying sugar and rice
near the Christian town of Zahle - the "town of
wine and poetry".
Many in Lebanon are
becoming increasingly disgruntled with the
attacks, but are not yet blaming Hezbollah. This
needs time because at this stage the Lebanese are
still saying: "This is not a war against
Hezbollah. If it were, why are we being attacked?
This is a war on Lebanon."
Israel is
waiting for public opinion to turn in its favor -
and this happens when human loss and misery become
unbearable. Hezbollah is also investing in time,
waiting until enough damage is inflicted on Israel
to force Olmert to stop his attacks.
Both
parties are waiting until public opinion in each
other's country starts saying no to bloodshed.
This has not happened yet in Israel, and according
to a recent poll published in the London-based
Al-Hayat, 81% of Israelis want to continue war and
58% want the war's final outcome to be the
destruction of Hezbollah.
Morale among
Nasrallah's men is also still very high.
Destroying Hezbollah from a distance is too
difficult for Israel. Its fighters are fortified
in secret hiding places, tunnels and bunkers under
the Lebanese capital that they have been preparing
for years.
To date, according to Hezbollah
media, only a handful of its members have been
killed by Israeli bombs. The rest of the
casualties have been civilian. Hezbollah can
sustain distant missile attacks for a long period
- longer than Israeli public opinion is likely
able to tolerate bombs falling on Haifa, Safad or
Acre.
According to Israeli Deputy Prime
Minister Shimon Peres, in a recent interview with
Sky News, Hezbollah has a total of 12,000
missiles. It has only fired 1,500 of them on
Lebanon. At this rate, with 1,500 missiles a week,
this war would last for another eight weeks -
unless Iran manages to send more arms to
Hezbollah.
Israel realizes that
eliminating Hezbollah from afar is difficult - if
not impossible. Thus Israel will be forced to
launch a ground invasion into south Lebanon to
root out Hezbollah. On Wednesday, Defense Minister
Amir Peretz said Israel would be willing to invade
to achieve this end. While touring sites hit by
Hezbollah missiles in northern Israel, he said,
"If we need to carry out action which will make
clear that we can reach anywhere, we will carry
out those actions without hesitation."
But
this also is very difficult for Israel in terms of
logistics, and worldwide public opinion. If the
IDF does cross the border into Lebanon, it will
have to fight the Shi'ite guerrillas in the
suburbs of Beirut and in the south. Hezbollah is
good with street warfare, especially in its own
territory.
The fighters also know the
mountains, the roads and the underground. Israel
would be fighting a war in completely unfamiliar
territory and would suffer massive loss of life if
it engaged in ground combat and street warfare
with Hezbollah.
The only factor that could
turn the tables in Israel's favor is if it kills
Nasrallah in combat. The morale of the Hezbollah
resistance would be greatly shaken and its command
would suffer a dramatic setback. But it looks as
if Nasrallah is well protected and certainly he
will not make himself an easy target.
Therefore, destroying Hezbollah by war is
very difficult. On the other hand, destroying
Israel is also impossible for Hezbollah. It will
get the upper hand in war only if Iran enters the
battle, and Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad
has said that he will only be dragged into war if
Israel attacks Syria.
Olmert, fighting the
Palestinians at home and Hezbollah in Lebanon,
would not want to drag himself into more war and
open fronts with Damascus and Tehran. The United
States, being Israel's No 1 ally, also will not
allow Hezbollah to defeat Israel - or even force
it to agree to a ceasefire on Hezbollah's terms.
Washington will continue to support this
war of attrition until casualties and humanitarian
disaster ruin the lives, morale, finances and
psychology of the Lebanese people. Then they will
push Hezbollah back into the Lebanese heartland,
and lobby for UN peacekeeping troops on the
Lebanese-Israeli border.
With that done,
Hezbollah would have no battleground from which it
could launch a war on Israel. Its arms would be
useless. It would have no choice but to transform
into a 100% political party in the Lebanese
political system, with no military agenda. If the
US continues to place full support behind Olmert,
this very well might be the last military battle
of Hezbollah.
Sami Moubayed is a
Syrian political analyst.
(Copyright
2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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