Something ain't right with Hezbollah's concept of deterrence. Before the 2006 summer war, Narrallah convinced a large part of the Lebanese people that his 20000 thousands missiles are the greatest deterrent to any Israeli attack against Lebanon, and stressed that Israel would never dare to attack our country as long as he had all these missiles.
Unfortunately, the war proved him wrong... not only his missiles failed to protect Lebanon, but they caused untold destruction, as Israel bombed any missile launch site no matter where it was, and used Hezbollah's missiles as a pretext to continue the war for over a month.
Now fast forward to a few weeks ago, Nassrallah tries, once again, to threaten Israel and us with a big surprise he is preparing for any invading army if they dared attack Lebanon. It seems that it failed too. Because yesterday Hezbollah, breaching UN resolution 1701, and forgoing any common sense, embarked on a large military maneuvers in the area south of the Litani river and controlled by the UNIFIL.
His reason? to send a message to Israel -and his friends!!- that Hezbollah will stop any Israel attack against Lebanon, and these maneuvers are the greatest deterrence to Israel, and will stop it from ever thinking of attacking Lebanon. Maybe threating Israel with a big surprise was not deterrent enough!
Funny thing is, during Hezbollah "divine" maneuvers, the Israeli Air force was freely flying overhead and watching, with interest, the maneuvers aimed to stop them form any further incursions or attacks...Ah irony!
Once again, Nassrallah's deterrence will fail, and will certainly have a catastrophic opposite effect. If Israel was hesitant to launch any attack against the party of god, i think this maneuver will strengthen their resolve and encourage them to launch a large scale attack against Hezbollah.
What can i say? Excellent deterrence strategy Mr. Nassrallah! Keep up the good work, especially that the last destroyed bridges from the summer war have been finally repaired. Just in time!
4 comments :
I think it’s gonna take me more time to understand really what’s going on in Lebanon! I have no clue how things could go in the next elections, I’m just worried about the situation!
It’s been now almost two months that I settled in Beirut, and I’m discovering every day a new concept in Politics ;-), as a Moroccan, I can say that it has nothing to do with what we have!
I didn’t have enough time to discover the Lebanese blogosphere, but starting from now, I’ll be around!and who knows, maybe soon, I can post more constructive comments ;-)
good to read you Bob!
Cedar 1559
thx for the article it looks pretty interesting, i will discussed in further detail soon.
and i would be glad if you could add your comments on the article too...
Mo
Once again, for the millioneth time plz refrain from personnal attacks and insults.
And again i do not hate Hezbollah, i criticize them yes! i object to what they do, yes! I dislike their credo and principles, YES! I do not want Lebanon to become a theocracy, yes yes and a million yes!
Now you wanna rephrase your comment and discuss the article and my piece be my guest, other than that if you want to keep making silly and unfounded personal attack, then keep them to yourself.
PS: HA attacks on Israel resulted in more civilian casualties than military. The numbers were around this 40 or 50 soldiers to 100 civilians. and the irony was most of these civilians were arab and some of them were even children!!!
cedar
well the article looked intresting at first galnce but it is somehow unblaanced.
It is true that HA had to accept the a stronger UNIFIL presence and the return of the Lebanese army for the first time in 30 years to the south, and HA had to withdraw north of the litani, their whole higher com and structure was intact. Not one high official (from the region commanders to the whole command infrastructure, till Nassrallah the SG) was killed.
Second HA didi achieve some tactical advances, lke th eheavy use of lastest generation anti tank missiles in a coordinates and effective method, in addition to the anti sea missiles that almost destroyed the ship and put it out of commission for several months.
Additionally Israel did not take every village int he south, rather a few numbers, as they purposely did not invade villages (Except a few) to avoid house to house fighting that usually leads to high casualties.
I can go on, but in conclusion the article makes the same mistakes the IDF chief of Staff made, belittling HA abilities and inflating his own. Usually this leads to unfavroble results.
In the end the 2006 round results, accordingt o my humble opnion, was as such: a slight tactical advantage to HA as one has to keep in mind that denying an ennemi's goals barely qualifies as a victory...
But still HA proved to be a tough adversary of Israel and denied them the completion of Israel advertised objective ( by Olmert who declared at the end fo the war that ISrael will eradicate HA and retrieve the 2 soldiers, which was a grave mistake, setting unachivable objective) and here i agree that it was not such a unique achievement as the Egyptians accomplish a more extraordinary feat in 73 ( barring in mind Hafez Assad army's catastrophic performance) and the PLO incredible resistance during the 1982 invasion...
however on the strategic side HA was the biggest loser by being obliged to move away from the border, and Israel benefited from that.
and on both sides Lebanon was the biggest loser...
yep it seems that i mixed up my numbers, 119 IDF soldiers and 43 Israeli civilians among which 18 were arab Israeli and 5 children.
From wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_2006_Lebanon_War
PS: it is also interesting to note the numbers of Hezbollah fighters dead ( from 500 to 700 and even 1000 according to British military historian John Keegan, of course HA only claim that 250 were killed)
and about HA targets i refer you to the Human Rights watch report that proves that HA intentionally targeted civilian centers to inflict the maximum number of victims, using espically ammunition that are made of metal shrapnel that are only intended to kill as many human beings as possible, while doing minimal damage to anything armored (ie military buildings and vehicles)
http://www.hrw.org/
one more thing 1701 forbids any military activities below the litani river. A simulation or maneuver or whatever it is called is still a military operation, ie it breaches UNSCR 1701
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