Analysis: Hezbollah Still Strong

On Monday, almost four weeks into the fighting, a high-ranking Military Intelligence officer said the IDF was still far from reaching its goal.

The high-ranking officer said Monday that Hezbollah had not been damaged enough and still retained enough "diplomatic power" to thwart the deployment of such a force.

"Hezbollah has not been sufficiently weakened," the officer said. "And there may be no choice but to expand the ground operation in the direction of the Litani River to achieve that goal."

According to intelligence information, the Hezbollah command-and-control array is still functioning even after nearly four weeks of fighting. So are the logistical command centers - still operating and succeeding in directing the smuggling of weapons into Lebanon from Syria.

The officer said that Hezbollah still had the ability to fire short-range rockets, of which the... group has already fired 2,500 since the beginning of the war.

The only way to stop the short-range rockets, he said, was for the IDF to deepen its incursion north to the Litani and to sweep through cities like Tyre, estimated to be the hiding place for most of the short-range 122mm Katyusha rockets.

The big question now is whether Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will give the green light for an IDF incursion up to the Litani, a move that could save Israel face and provide it with the the victory it has been seeking since the outset of a conflict that has proven to be far more difficult than initially expected.

The IDF is holding onto positions in a security zone eight kilometers deep into Lebanon. Senior officials in the Northern Command said Monday that the chances the the IDF would reach that far in the coming days were slim, since with fighting still going on in villages like Bint Jbail - where three soldiers were killed Monday - within the IDF-created security zone, the military could not move on.

"We need to first finish clearing out the security zone and only then can we move north," a high-ranking officer in the Northern Command explained.