The Second Lebanon War

240 Pages·2007·1.21 MB·English

The Second Lebanon War:
Strategic Perspectives
Institute for National Security Studies
The Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), incorporating the Jaffee
Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, was founded in 2006.
The purpose of the Institute for National Security Studies is, first,
to conduct basic research that meets the highest academic standards on
matters related to Israel’s national security as well as Middle East regional
and international security affairs. Second, the Institute aims to contribute
to the public debate and governmental deliberation of issues that are – or
should be – at the top of Israel’s national security agenda.
INSS seeks to address the strategic community in Israel and abroad,
Israeli policymakers, and opinion-makers, and the general public.
INSS publishes research that it deems worthy of public attention, while
it maintains a strict policy of non-partisanship on issues of public policy.
The opinions expressed in this publication are the authors’ alone, and do not
necessarily reflect the views of the Institute, its trustees, boards, research
staff, or the organization and individuals that support its research.
The Second Lebanon War:
Strategic Perspectives
Edited by
Shlomo Brom and Meir Elran
:היינשה ןונבל תמחלמ
תויגטרטסא תוכלשה
:םיכרוע
ןרלא ריאמו םורב המלש
English editor: Judith Rosen
Graphic design: Michal Semo-Kovetz
Cover design: Yael Kfir
Printing: Meah Productions
Cover photo: GettyImages/Imagebank
Institute for National Security Studies
40 Haim Levanon Street
POB 39950
Tel Aviv 61398
Israel
Tel. [phone]
Fax. [phone]
E-mail: [email protected]
http:// www.inss.org.il
© 2007
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-965-7425-02-2
Contents
Introduction 7
Part I: Israeli Dimensions
Chapter 1: Political and Military Objectives in a Limited War
against a Guerilla Organization
Shlomo Brom 13
Chapter 2: The Decision Making Process in Israel
Giora Eiland 25
Chapter 3: Deterrence and its Limitations
Yair Evron 35
Chapter 4: A Test of Rival Strategies: Two Ships Passing
in the Night
Giora Romm 49
Chapter 5: The Military Campaign in Lebanon
Gabriel Siboni 61
Chapter 6: Intelligence in the War: Observations and Insights
Aharon Ze’evi Farkash 77
Chapter 7: Israeli Public Opinion and the Second Lebanon War
Yehuda Ben Meir 87
Chapter 8: The Civilian Front in the Second Lebanon War
Meir Elran 103
Part II: Regional Dimensions
Chapter 9: “Divine Victory” and Earthly Failures: Was the
War Really a Victory for Hizbollah?
Yoram Schweitzer 123
Chapter 10: The Battle for Lebanon: Lebanon and Syria in the
Wake of the War
Eyal Zisser 135
Chapter 11: After the War: Iranian Power and its Limitations
David Menashri 151
Chapter 12: July-August Heat: The Israeli-Palestinian Arena
Anat Kurz 163
Chapter 13: The Regional Setting: Statehood vs. Anarchy
Asher Susser 175
Chapter 14: Regional Implications: From Radicalism to Reform
Yossi Kuperwasser 187
Chapter 15: The Impact of the War on Arab Security Concepts
Ephraim Kam 197
Chapter 16: The International Dimension:
Why So Few Constraints on Israel?
Mark A. Heller 209
Appendices
1: Shab’a Farms
Amos Gilboa 215
2: Observations on Hizbollah Weaponry
Yiftah Shapir 223
3: UN Security Council Resolution 1701,
August 11, 2006 233
Contributors 238
Introduction
The Second Lebanon War embodied a type of military confrontation
different from the many other clashes that Israel has engaged in since its
establishment. This confrontation belongs to the category of asymmetrical
wars involving rival entities endowed with inherently different and
unbalanced attributes. In the 2006 Lebanon war, Israel, a sovereign state
with a strong, organized military, faced Hizbollah, a sub-state organization
that operated from within a failed state while controlling a relatively
small guerilla force. Size notwithstanding, the force boasted considerable
military abilities and was well deployed for this type of confrontation.
Hizbollah presented Israel with a stiff challenge that, built on years of
painstaking preparation and close Iranian support, displayed a strategic
concept that maximized its abilities and compensated for its weaknesses
in the face of a stronger rival. Although in this kind of confrontation it is
difficult to identify victor or victory definitively, it is clear that in view of
the expectations, the perception in Israel, the Arab world, and the global
community is that Hizbollah scored prominent and tangible achievements,
while Israel emerged from the confrontation bruised and disappointed.
Beyond the military aspect, the war between Israel and Hizbollah
reflected a number of strategic processes essential to understanding the
general regional picture: the strengthening of Islamic radicalism and its
evolution into an active anti-status quo power; the weakening of the Arab
states; the growth of non-state actors that exploit the weakness of the state
system; and the difficulties faced by the international community, led by
the United States, in coping with these processes.
Among the Israeli public, the Second Lebanon War was grasped as
an event with crisis proportions, and the war and its results are still the
subject of intense public debate. Fundamental questions revolve around the
weaknesses of high level decision making exposed in the war, civil-military
I
 Introduction
relations, the role of the IDF in Israeli society, the transformation of the
home front into a battlefield, and Israel’s approach to regional processes.
Israel’s management of the war, both on a military and a political level, has
yet to be judged definitively by the final report of the Winograd Commission,
the government-appointed investigative committee mandated to study the
2006 conflict. The Commission is due to release its full report by the end of
2007, yet the findings that have been published thus far, particularly in the
commission’s partial report released in April, shed incriminating light on
various aspects of Israel’s conduct. This perspective is shared by a number
of books on the war.
The Second Lebanon War: Strategic Perspectives explores various
dimensions to the confrontation initiated by Israel on July 12, 2006 in
response to Hizbollah provocation. The war received an unprecedented
amount of media exposure in real time, largely because the media has come
to assume a strategic role in modern day wars. The present collection of
essays, however, adopts a different stance from other coverage and offers
a strategic overview of the war. It provides an analytical and conceptual
view of the war, on the basis of which relevant conclusions can be drawn
on the national level. The essays compiled here delve into different aspects
of the war: its background, its implications, and the lessons that can be
inferred. The essays do not tell the actual story of the war. They are, rather,
an academic attempt to explain the rationales and forces underlying this
violent clash, with a clear focus on the strategic perspective. Significantly,
some of the essays published here posit conclusions and perspectives that
do not tally entirely with the party line assessments of various aspects of
the war.
Part I of this collection examines internal Israeli perspectives and
comprises three sets of essays. The opening set studies strategic dimensions
that underlay the war. Shlomo Brom views the war as a model of a limited
confrontation with a non-state actor operating from within a failed state,
and notes the ensuing difficulty in defining – and achieving – political and
military objectives in this type of confrontation. In the essay that follows,
Giora Eiland looks at the decision making system in Israel and suggests
how inadequate civil-military relations and lapses in the inter-echelon
dynamics led to failures in the way the war was waged. Yair Evron then
offers an in-depth analysis of the impact of the war on Israeli deterrence
I
Introduction 
and draws unorthodox conclusions that depart from the popular tendency
to extract hasty, conventional assessments from a military campaign
involving Israel.
The second set of essays dwells on military aspects of the war from the
Israeli standpoint. Giora Romm examines some of the leading operational
approaches in Israel that impacted on how the war started and their
contribution to the achievements and failures of the war. His principal
argument is that the war revealed adversaries with rival strategies that did
not intersect during the war. In his essay, Gabriel Siboni focuses on an area
that became a main target of criticism during the war – the IDF’s ground
forces and their performance against Hizbollah. Aharon Ze’evi Farkash
then looks at the role of Israeli intelligence during the war on a strategic
and tactical level, and claims significant achievements in the former area,
which contrast with deficiencies in the latter.
In this war, the civilian front played a central role, and the third set of
essays addresses this arena. Yehuda Ben Meir presents the development of
public opinion during the war, its impact on the progress of the war, and its
attitudes after the war. Meir Elran examines the civilian front, which was
Hizbollah’s principal target of the war, and draws system-wide conclusions,
both with regard to the robustness of the Israeli public and the performance
of the home front defense systems.
Part II of this collection examines regional and global aspects of the
war. The first set of essays in this section includes four essays about main
regional actors that took part directly or indirectly in the confrontation
and were affected by it and its ramifications. Yoram Schweitzer analyzes
Hizbollah’s balance sheet and suggests that its post-war minus column is
quite extensive. In his essay Eyal Zisser examines the war in the context of
long term processes in Syria and Lebanon, and considers the ramifications
of the war for Lebanon and Syria in their interaction with Israel. David
Menshari analyzes the role played by Iran in the war as part of the process
whereby Iran has become a dominant actor in the region. Finally, Anat
Kurz contends that the developments in the Israeli-Palestinian were driven
by their own independent dynamic, and were not a function of the war in
Lebanon.
The second set of essays in this section addresses the wider regional
implications of the war, which far exceeded the states that participated
I
10 Introduction
directly in the confrontation. Asher Susser sketches a panoramic picture of
the Middle East, and places the war in the wider context of the prevailing
regional trends. Yossi Kuperwasser ties the war to the problematic
question of the Arab state as a responsible political element. Ephraim Kam
assesses the possible impact of the war on the Arab security doctrines
and differentiates between the public perceptions of the war on the Arab
street, and the impact of the war on the Arab defense establishments and
the ensuing conduct of the Arab states. The final essay of Part II, by Mark
Heller, analyzes the involvement of the international community in the war
and the relative freedom of action it granted Israel during the weeks of the
confrontation.
Three appendices complete the collection of essays. The first, written
by Amos Gilboa, tells the fascinating story of Shab’a Farms, cast by
Hizbollah as a main reason for the continued conflict with Israel. In the
second appendix, Yiftah Shapir reviews the rocketry and other weapon
systems used by Hizbollah in the war that proved the main component of
its operational capability. The third appendix is Security Council resolution
1701, which was adopted at the end of the war.
Most of the essays presented here were written by members of the
research staff of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS); others
were written by leading academic experts. INSS engages in practical and
theoretical research on strategic issues, aiming to contribute to Israel’s
public debate and offer recommendations for policymakers. Predictably,
then, this publication bears a similar nature: it combines analyses of the
war’s strategic issues with insights that can serve as a basis for discussion
and future thinking on the processes that are taking shape in Israel and the
region – and Israel’s role in these latter processes. This idea is based on the
assumption that as in the Second Lebanon War, in the future too, Israel and
its policies will play a crucial role in defining the contours, topography,
and relief of the regional map.