Paying the Price

What has Israel been waiting for?

If the Lebanese had not been so foolhardy as to reject the proposed Security Council resolution, the option of a wider land offensive would have been closed. But they did, and so Israel has been given a second chance to avoid defeat.

None of this is to say that the decision to send in many more thousands of ground troops and move deeper into a land we desperately want nothing to do with is an easy one. No one, except perhaps Hezbollah, wants Israel to be stuck in Lebanon again. We can expect that more ground forces will probably mean more casualties among our soldiers, even if such an operation succeeds in significantly reducing the barrages of short-range missiles that are terrorizing the north.

On balance, however, the price Israel will have to pay to degrade Hezbollah further will be considerably lower than the one it will pay in the future if it ends this war now. As things stand at present, Hezbollah is politically triumphant and militarily capable of living to fight another day, with its strategy of indiscriminate rocket fire into Israel, from behind the human shield of Lebanon's citizenry, largely unanswered.

The prospect that in the end Israel will be handing over this territory to an ineffective international force may heighten fears of the IDF's getting stuck in Lebanon, but it even more strengthens the case that Israel dare not rely on anyone but itself to defeat Hezbollah.

It is in the supreme interest of the free nations of the world to ensure that Hizbullah is completely disarmed and never allowed to be rebuilt again. That said, it is a fantasy to believe that any international force that ultimately deploys will, regardless of its mandate, go house to house and root out whatever remains of a force that Israel does not succeed in eliminating. The most that can be expected of such a force is that it, together with the Lebanese army, will make it more difficult for Hezbollah to rebuild and, by reporting such efforts, keep the pressure on Lebanon to complete Hizbullah's disarmament, as required by UN Resolution 1559.

Now Lebanon has promised to send its forces south to the border, as Israel and the international community have long demanded. Olmert yesterday called this proposal "interesting." What seems most interesting about it, however, is that Hezbollah is supporting it.

Hezbollah knows that what matters is not promises made now about the south, but whether it is will be a heavyweight political player and a military force in Lebanon after the war. This is the real measure of victory or defeat. Israel must do what it takes to win, and Israel is not there yet.