IRIS Blog

In 1996, "Operation Grapes of Wrath" was one of the extended campaigns that the IDF periodically carried out in southern Lebanon. Then, as today, the IDF operated against the terror infrastructure in the region. That operation was halted after misdirected artillery fire killed over 100 civilians. Israel had to apologize and stop the operation prematurely. Israel also had to absorb great international criticism that made the military effort even more complex to carry out.

A similar event happened Sunday morning, again in Kafr Kana. This time an Israeli air force jet fired missiles at a building there. Several surveillance photos showed that Hizbullah rocket launcher crews had fired from the site, then ran inside the building to hide, using children and uninvolved civilians for cover.

When targeting the terrorists in the building, Israel had no intention of harming the innocent. Now the question is whether Israel will stop Operation Change of Direction. Will Israel change direction, after unintentionally harming civilians?

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni are facing a dilemma now - whether to listen to the harsh public reaction, or stick to the line taken thus far, according to which there will be no stopping the military operation until all goals are met.

I would not like be in their shoes right now, but in my opinion, Israel must continue its military actions.

It seems that any other decision would be a wrong one. It might be easier for us internationally in the short term, but the long-term implications might be disastrous.

Israel launched this operation with an internal consensus and based on the most profound international understanding that we had ever enjoyed. Israel, which had withdrawn to the international border in May 2000, coordinated its steps with the United Nations.

Hezbollah exploited the six year period since then to arm itself to the teeth. The continuous bombardment of Israel in the last three weeks is unprecedented in our history. The deep strikes on the home front and the threat to our personal safety are heavy blows which we must not tolerate. It's reasonable to assume that Hezbollah hasn't utilized its entire arsenal and it's likely that it is hiding different kinds of long-range weapons, some of which are perhaps yet to be used.

However, alongside making the right decision to continue the operation, Israel needs to start a campaign of wide public diplomacy.

We must act quickly, thoroughly and with complete confidence in the belief that accidents happen in every war, and in this one, too. But this kind of accident should not divert attention from the main challenge we face: a democratic, Western country which acts according to moral standards faces a fundamentalist terror organization that acts against and from within the civil population, intentionally and brutally. We must present and market these facts, repeatedly and persistently.

What other country, when attacked in an unprovoked aggression across a recognized international frontier, is then put on a countdown clock by the world, given a limited time window in which to fight back, regardless of whether it has restored its own security? What other country sustains 1,500 indiscriminate rocket attacks into its cities - every one designed to kill, maim, and terrorize civilians - and is then vilified by the world when it tries to destroy the enemy's infrastructure and strongholds with precision-guided munitions that sometimes have the unintended but unavoidable consequence of collateral civilian death and suffering?

When the U.S. was attacked at Pearl Harbor, it did not respond with a parallel "proportionate" attack on a Japanese naval base. It launched a four-year campaign that killed millions of Japanese, reduced Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki to cinders, and turned the Japanese home islands into rubble and ruin. When one is wantonly attacked by an aggressor, one has every right - legal and moral - to carry the fight until the aggressor is disarmed and so disabled that it cannot threaten one's security again.

Did Britain respond to the Blitz and V-1 and V-2 rockets with "proportionate" aerial bombardment of Germany? Of course not. Churchill orchestrated the greatest air campaign and land invasion in history, which flattened and utterly destroyed Germany, killing untold innocent German women and children in the process. In perhaps the most blatant terror campaign from the air since the London Blitz, Hizballah is raining rockets on Israeli cities.

On July 29, 2006, the London Arabic daily Asharq Al-Awsat reported on assistance extended to Hezbollah by Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

According to a high-ranking Revolutionary Guards officer, Hezbollah has a diver unit and a naval commando unit.

He further claims that Revolutionary Guards officers assisted Hezbollah in the July 14, 2006, firing of a C802 missile at an Israeli Navy ship, and had also helped Hezbollah construct underground facilities - including command and control rooms - which are being operated by Revolutionary Guards officers along with Hezbollah fighters.

In addition, Iranian news agencies have published a number of reports about groups of Iranian volunteers sent to Lebanon to aid Hezbollah in its fight against Israel.

23 years later, the attack remains the deadliest on Americans overseas since World War II.

On the morning of October 23, 1983, a suicide bomber - smiling, according to one survivor, and widely believed to have been dispatched by Hezbollah - smashed his yellow Mercedes truck through the barbed wire fence of the US Marines compound near Beirut International Airport and detonated some 5,400 kilograms of explosives in the lobby of the four-story headquarters building.

When the last body had finally been extricated from the rubble days later, the toll of the dead was 220 Marines, 18 US Navy personnel and three US soldiers.

Just seconds after the first blast, a similar bombing was carried out at the barracks of the Sixth French Paratroop Infantry Regiment. In this case, the bomber drove into the underground parking garage and blew up the building, killing 58 paratroopers.

The twin Beirut bombings essentially spelled the end of the last attempt to maintain a multinational force in Lebanon. Now, with US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair endorsing the idea, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is back in Jerusalem trying to begin the process of setting up another such force.

If a ceasefire comes sooner rather than later, purported "good news" for international diplomacy would likely turn out to be very bad news indeed for the international troops left to grapple with a defiant, even victorious Hezbollah.

The current international force in the area, UNIFIL, patently posed no obstacle whatsoever to Hezbollah's accruing of power. Even a genuinely robust international force, with a genuinely robust mandate, would be immensely vulnerable to anything but a Hezbollah overwhelmingly degraded by the ongoing attentions of the IDF.

For Israel, however, the concerns are still more acute. Whenever the fighting ends, it will be the task of the international force to assist the Lebanese army, a goodly part of it pro-Hezbollah, in bringing its sovereign force all the way down south, at the expense of Hezbollah. It will be the task of the international force to assist the Lebanese army in destroying what remains of Hezbollah's missile capacity. And it will be the task of the international force to deploy at key border positions and take the other necessary steps to prevent the rehabilitation of Hezbollah via military supplies from Iran and Syria.

This adds up to an extraordinarily complex mission. The precedents are grim indeed.

Without a crushing victory over Hezbollah, Israel's long-term viability will be at risk.

After two-and-a-half weeks of fighting in the north, we don't know exactly what the government and the army are looking to achieve. We, too, don't know how they plan to achieve the goals they have set ? if in fact any have been set.

We citizens need to know such things, not only because we are the ones who will pay the price, but also because that's the way democratic countries function. And especially because when goals are clear, it makes difficulties along the way bearable. Clear goals also moderate fluctuations in public opinion, as a result of reports coming from the front.

Both IDF and the political echelon are terribly naive: There is much more at stake in Lebanon than pushing Hezbollah north and dismantling and disarming the organization. This is a defining stage in the current battle in the Middle East, between radical, militant Islam and pragmatic forces, including Israel.

If Hezbollah comes out of this fight with the upper hand, Hamas, the Moslem Brotherhood in Egypt and Jordan and other jihadis in the region will look to Iran for leadership and will adopt Hezbollah's tactics. Normal life in Israel will not be possible, and in the long term Israel's existence will be at risk.

A draw will allow Hezbollah to regroup and return to battle after a short period. In practice, such an outcome would be a loss for Israel.

On the other hand, if Israel wins, the threat from the north will be emasculated for a long time. Palestinian extremists will be weakened and will seek agreement with Israel. Even Iran and Syria will be forced to re-evaluate the situation. Therefore, Israel has no choice but to win this battle.

But what, exactly, constitutes victory? On a strategic level, there is no argument between the political echelon and the IDF: the removal of armed Hezbollah forces from south Lebanon and a complete halt to Katyusha fire at Israel.

The IDF must not let up before the details of a diplomatic arrangement are clear and acceptable to all sides, including Hezbollah and its patrons. Another goal must be to prevent an extraneous armed clash with Syria. Such a diplomatic arrangement would represent a victory for Israel.

Israel went to war to remove Hezbollah's strategic missile threat on its northern border. An Israeli victory over Hizballah may offer the Lebanese people another window of opportunity to become a democratic sovereign state free from the fear and tyranny Syria and Iran, via Hezbollah, have imposed on it. Radical Islam is nurtured by its perceived successes, as it is poisoned by its perceived failures. The Israeli counteroffensive in Lebanon is one of the last stations at which the seeming runaway train of radical Islam can be stopped or certainly slowed in its tracks.

The IDF is not fighting a small guerrilla organization. It is dealing with a trained, skilled, well-organized, highly motivated infantry that is equipped with the cream of the crop of modern weaponry from the arsenals of Syria, Iran, Russia, and China, and which is very familiar with the territory on which it is fighting. In such a showdown, the going is very slow, and, sadly, you must also pay a heavy price in terms of casualties.

The first Lebanon war in 1982 achieved its goal: the Palestine Liberation Organization's removal from Lebanese soil.

Let's face it: Aside from fighting for themselves, the Israelis are also fighting for us. For the Iranians, Israel is the first front in the war against the West, and they supply Hezbollah to do their fighting for them. The introduction of easily launched rockets and more advanced long-range missiles across the borders of Israel is an augury of what other countries could soon face internally: India, for example, and Russia, too. One day, and soon, ethnic and sectarian terrorists - operating out of relatively self-contained regions or smaller population centers - will catapult projectile weapons into adjoining cities and areas. The countries so attacked will not respond any more gently than Israel has.

Some insist on distinguishing between Hezbollah and Hamas. While Hezbollah is an operational extension of the Shia Iranian revolution, Hamas, they argue, represents the national aspirations of the Palestinian people. In fact, Hamas represents the undoing of Palestinian national aspirations. For Hamas, a Palestinian state is merely a means to an end: the resurrection of the medieval caliphate and the transformation of the Middle East into a single Islamist state. In rejecting mere nationalism, Hamas is returning the Palestinians to their pre-national consciousness, when Palestinians were part of an amorphous Arab or Muslim identity. The first casualty of the jihad, then, has been a viable Palestinian national identity, and, with it, the possibility of a viable Palestinian state.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has agreed to a US plan calling for the deployment of an international peacekeeping force along Israel?s border.

Following an almost two-hour meeting in his Jerusalem residence with US Secretary of State Dr. Condoleezza Rice on Saturday night, the prime minister agreed to the US plan, calling for the deployment of a multinational force between Israel and Lebanon and Syria. It was announced that France and Lebanon would take part in the force, but other details have yet to be decided upon.

According to reports following the high-level meeting, the size of the force and the timing for such a move must still be agreed upon, but Olmert has given his approval to the idea of such a force being positioned between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.

Secretary Rice will leave for Lebanon on Sunday, and she will return to Israel following talks with officials in Beirut as she continues her shuttle diplomacy mission in the hope of actualizing a ceasefire.

The US-brokered plan includes yet another land withdrawal by Israel ? stipulating the international ?stabilization force? will position itself between Israel and southern Lebanon in exchange for an Israeli retreat from the Har Dov area, also known as Shab?a Farm. The area today has a vital strategic significance, permitting IDF troops to man outposts along the border area.

The prime minister has indicated a willingness to consider an additional land withdrawal. This despite Israel?s compliance with the demands of the international community in its May 2000 withdrawal from southern Lebanon, a move that even earned the recognition of the United Nations. Nevertheless, Olmert signaled a possible willingness to such the move in line with Lebanese demands, despite the fact that Har Dov was liberated from Syrian occupation, not Lebanon.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met Saturday night with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, as diplomatic efforts to reach an overall agreement in Lebanon intensified and Thursday loomed as a possible deadline for the IDF to meet its military objectives.

Diplomatic sources in Washington said that the US will attempt to hammer together a cease-fire deal and the deployment of a multinational force in Lebanon and present the plan to the UN Security Council on Wednesday. A vote is expected Thursday.

"Thursday is a very important bus stop," a senior diplomatic official in Jerusalem said when asked if this day would likely mark the end of the large-scale military operations.

Brokering the cease-fire deal, which is different from the immediate cease-fire that many international leaders are clamoring for, is the overarching goal of Rice's visits, her second to the region within a week. Rice is slated to meet Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Amir Peretz in separate meetings on Sunday. As of Saturday night it was not yet clear whether she would make another trip to Beirut or return to Washington following her Sunday talks in Jerusalem.

According to US officials, Rice's talks will focus on the terms in which a cease-fire can take place, and the conditions under which the international force would operate, once deployed in Lebanon.

US President George Bush set the parameters of an overall agreement during a press conference Friday following a meeting in Washington with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The overriding goals include extending the authority of the Lebanese government throughout Lebanon, deploying an international force and disarming Hezbollah.

President Bush said Thursday: "The Middle East is littered with agreements that just didn't work. And now is the time to address the root cause of the problem. And the root cause of the problem is terrorist groups trying to stop the advance of democracies. Hezbollah attacked Israel. I know Hezbollah is connected to Iran. And now is the time for the world to confront these dangers."

"My goal is...to hopefully end this as quickly as possible, and at the same time, making sure there's a lasting peace - not a fake peace, not a fake, you know, kind of circumstances that make us all feel better, and then, sure enough, the problem arises again."