As the air war in Lebanon continues into its second week, Israel's strategic quandaries in the north are becoming increasingly apparent. In May 2000 it unilaterally withdrew its forces from southern Lebanon to the international boundary. Hizbollah quickly entrenched itself along the border and built up a large arsenal of short and intermediate range missiles supplied by Iran and Syria. While the past six years saw no major military engagement along this front, Hizbollah frequently punctured the relative calm in the area with local katyusha barrages and occasional forays across the border, particularly in the area of Har Dov, near Syria.
The attack on July 12, which sparked the current conflict, involved a large scale katyusha assault on Israeli towns along the border, followed by the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers from Israeli territory and the killing of eight soldiers in the fighting that followed. Hizbollah's action seems intended to exploit the situation in Gaza in order to enhance its declining standing in Lebanon. Given its role as a proxy for Iranian and Syrian interests, it is also reasonable to construe it as an attempt by both countries to project power and influence in the region for their own purposes. It was a clear act of aggression which highlights the difficult and complex threat that Hizbollah and its sponsors pose to Israel's security.
While Israel had no choice but to respond to this violation of its border, there are good grounds for questioning the wisdom of its massive air campaign. As previous experience has shown on many occasions, it is not possible to win a decisive military victory through air power alone. This is even more clearly the case when the adversary is a mobile guerrilla army with few if any fixed installations or heavy weapons. The cost of the current air war to both Lebanon and Israel is enormous. While Israel is attempting to avoid civilian casualties by warning residents of targeted areas before attacks, the round-the-clock bombing raids are taking a very heavy toll in innocent Lebanese lives and reducing large parts of the country to rubble. Hizbollah rocket attacks on northern Israel continue unabated, killing Israeli civilians and paralyzing life throughout the north. It is not at all obvious to what extent this assault has seriously degraded Hizbollah's operational capacity.
Israel's strategy appears to be focused on destroying Lebanese civilian infrastructure in order to pressure the anti-Syrian elements in the country to constrain Hizbollah. While there is evidence of widespread disaffection among the Lebanese at Hizbollah's military adventurism, the continuation of the relentless aerial attack on the country threatens to undermine the fragile anti-Syrian coalition that it was intended to force into action. It could ultimately strengthen Hizbollah's standing in the country or provoke a renewal of civil conflict. In any case, neither the Lebanese government nor the army that it nominally commands are in a position to confront Hizbollah. The idea that Israeli military action can generate a constructive reconfiguration of political arrangements in Lebanon should have been thoroughly discredited by the misadventure of the 1982 war.
In order to dislodge Hizbollah from its position in southern Lebanon and eliminate its missile threat, Israel would have to launch a large-scale ground operation and reoccupy territory at least up to the Litany River. Such an action would repeat the disaster of the 1982 invasion, leaving the army in a static position and exposed to a renewed Hizbollah guerrilla campaign of the sort that ultimately produced Israel's unilateral withdrawal. Moreover, such an occupation would serve the interests of Hizbollah, Syria, and Iran handsomely. It would re-legitimize Syrian influence in Lebanon and revive Hizbollah's recently flagging claim to be the only effective Lebanese 'resistance' force.
What, then, is Israel to do? If unilateral withdrawal has not provided quiet on the border but only strengthened Hizbollah, Israeli occupation is a tried and proven failure, and the Lebanese army is incapable of controlling the south, all obvious options seem to have been exhausted. The truth of the matter is that there are no good choices in this case. It is necessary to find one which does the least damage, and to recognize that it will be seriously imperfect, leaving important aspects of the Hizbollah threat not fully resolved, at least in the short term.
Going for a quick ceasefire to halt the current carnage, and negotiating, through a third party, a set of new rules for Hizbollah's conduct in the border area would seem to be the most viable course of action at this point. We have done this in the past (for example, in the spring of 1996, after a Hizbollah rocket attack on the Galil, followed by an intensive air campaign). It is an entirely unsatisfactory arrangement which does not remove the basic causes of the problem. However, the alternative would appear to be an ongoing war of attrition which slowly destroys Lebanon, keeps northern Israel under continuing fire, and enhances the positions of both Syria and Iran in the region.
Last year's Cedar revolution in Lebanon saw the tentative emergence of a cross-communal democratic coalition that forced Syrian troops out of the country. In the end, this political movement is the only genuine hope for eliminating Hizbollah's role as a military threat. The chances of its success are far from certain, but it represents the best hope for democracy in Lebanon and security along Israel's border. This movement cannot be supported by large-scale external military action. Until it succeeds, we may have to live with a dangerous, messy standoff along the northern border which can be managed but not fully resolved. (Shalom Lappin, King's College London)