Israel has been fighting to take and Hizbollah is fighting to defend the city of Bint Jbail (or Bint Jbeil):
Wednesday's fighting centered on the town of Bint Jbeil, a longtime Hezbollah stronghold, and the neighboring village of Maroun el Ras, less than two miles inside Lebanon. The Israeli army had earlier said its troops were in control of both enclaves, but it later backed off, saying Bint Jbeil was not in hand.
Bint Jbeil, a town of 20,000 known as a base of fervent support for the Hezbollah, is a crucial target for Israeli forces because it is used for firing Katyusha rockets into northern Israel and because of its symbolic importance to the Shiite Muslim militant group.
Israeli army officials described running battles between Israeli infantry and Hezbollah fighters entrenched in apartment buildings and bunkers and holed up inside reinforced hide-outs.
The fighters ambushed Israeli soldiers as they edged into Bint Jbeil on foot. Military officials said the troops came under small-arms, rocket-propelled grenade and mortar fire from different directions. It took them an hour to determine the sources of the fire and shoot back.
The Israeli army confirmed that eight soldiers died in a close-quarters battle that broke out in the early morning and the ninth in a separate clash nearby that continued into the early evening. Army officers estimated that about 50 Hezbollah gunmen were killed during the hours-long fight with the Golani Brigade, which has a long-standing reputation as one of Israel's toughest units. The brigade also had fought recently in the Gaza Strip as part of the offensive there against Palestinian militants."
It was a very tough day, but our soldiers withstood it," Maj. Gen. Udi Adam, head of the army's northern command, told reporters near the border.
Israeli officials said their forces had killed about 250 Hezbollah fighters in combat along a narrow stretch of the border and destroyed communications and planning centers.
This battle appears key to the crisis. I wrote that if the Israelis could take this symbolic city and inflict heavy casualties on Hizbollah's fighters as they struggle to defend it, Israel could call it a success, agree to a cease fire, and prepare for the next round. But some of the commentary in the cited article makes little sense. One analyst quoted about Hizbollah:
"They are fighting a very effective harassment action without actually taking on the Israelis," said Goksel, a former U.N. official in southern Lebanon who has been watching border clashes for more than 25 years.
Well, no. The Israelis have sent in about 3,000 troops into Lebanon. Some smaller fraction is at Bint Jbail. And they are encountering not guerrilla resistance but an attempt to hold a small city. That is not harassment.
And on the other side:
U.S. military and intelligence officials who have been monitoring the conflict say they believe Israel has destroyed far fewer Hezbollah rockets and missiles than their public estimates, which put the toll between one-third and half of the militia's estimated 12,000 rockets.
Who cares about this metric? Or rather, I should say, the Israelis shouldn't care. The rockets should not be the objective. Enemies can get more rockets. The Soviet Union had lots of rockets when they went belly up. Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, too, had plenty of weapons when they surrendered. Hizbollah is still shooting rockets. The ones firing them and the ones supplying them are key objectives.
And a Lebanese professor said:
"This is not a classical fighting force," said Hamzeh, a longtime professor at the American University of Beirut who now teaches in Kuwait. "They are not lined up in row after row, one behind another. They fight in groups of five or 10 maximum."
Well that is a purely stupid thing to say. Fighters haven't lined up in row after row since the mid-19th century. Modern infantry units fight in groups of 5 or 10 (fire teams and squads). And as Strategypage notes, Hizbollah has organized two brigades of infantry.
Small arms, RPGs, mortars, and in other reports, Sagger anti-tank missiles are all signs of an organized defense of Bint Jbail. And it is no surprise that dedicated light infantry can hold a town and make an attacker pay to take the terrain. Recall that the jihadi defenders of Fallujah in November 2004 inflicted about the same casualties on our forces and held out for about the same time as did the entire Iraqi military against our invasion in March 2003.
Our advantage (and Israel's) is greatest over other conventional militaries. When enemies just have to sit in place and die while inflicting as many casualties on the enemy as possible, our advantage dwindles. It is still good, as we showed in city fighting during the Iraq War conventional operations and at Fallujah, but city fighting gives our enemies the least disadvantage in fighting us. As I noted at the time of taking Fallujah, a regiment of infantry would have done a far better job of defending the city against us than the hopped up death cultists who hunkered down waiting for our Marines and soldiers to arrive.
Bint Jbail seems to have an organized defense by pretty dedicated light infantry-type troops. So it is not shock that the Israelis are taking casualties. Especially since the Israelis haven't surrounded the city or sent massive force to take it. The Israelis have fought on the enemy's ground and reduced the already smaller advantage they have over Hizbollah by fighting head on without overwhelming troop strength.
I said yesterday that Israel has limited time to do something. Bint Jbail had best be it. Some say Israel's strategy is to attrite Hizbollah in weeks of small-scale ground fighting. This would be ill advised even if Israel had the time. By failing to hammer the enemy and just run them through a meat grinder, Israeli troops have to do the grinding and they suffer more casualties than if the Israelis hit hard and big. And Israel doesn't have the time.
Recall that in our Civil War, General Grant launched the Army of the Potomic against Lee's army and vowed to engage the Confederates and fight it out all summer. Well, he had to fight a year of this grinding frontal war of attrition. And he wouldn't have gotten that year if General Sherman hadn't taken Atlanta and revived Union hopes for victory in time to re-elect President Lincoln who backed giving Grant the time to kill enemy soldiers.
There is no Israeli Sherman and there is no Middle Eastern Atlanta, so Israel's Grant won't get the time to win.
So to salvage a real tactical win and prepare for the next round, Israel needs to surround Bint Jbail and kill every Hizbollah fighter in it before agreeing to a cease fire. And do it now.
But Israel seems to have blown even this chance at a limited win:
Israeli troops pulled back from a Lebanese border town Saturday after a weeklong battle with Hezbollah, the bloodiest ground fighting of the 18-day Israeli offensive. ...
The battle for Bint Jbail has symbolized Israel's difficulty in pushing guerrillas back from the border, whether by air bombardment or ground assault. Hezbollah on Friday escalated its cross-border attacks, firing longer-range missiles deeper into Israel than ever before. ...
Israeli troops launched their assault on Bint Jbail on July 23, entering houses inside the town in heavy fighting. The military suffered its worst losses of the entire campaign Wednesday, with nine soldiers killed in ground fighting in and around the strategic town.
Taking Bint Jbail — the largest town near the border — would be a strong blow to Hezbollah, depriving it of a key stronghold and forcing it to find shelter in more vulnerable villages in the area. The mainly Shiite town is significant for Hezbollah: It is nicknamed "the capital of the resistance" for its vehement support for the Shiite guerrillas during the 1982-2000 Israeli occupation of the south.
The enemy has not been hit hard enough if they are counter-attacking like this. And with Israel pulling back without at least taking the "capital of the resistance" and killing as many Hizbollah regular forces as they can, Israel is failing to get even a tactical victory.
Israel will now rely on the UN and a new peacekeeping force to salvage some sort of success. Lotsa luck.
UPDATE: And Israel lowered the bar on the pending ceasefire:
"Disarming Hizbollah will not be part of the mandate for the (peacekeeping) mission for now," a senior Israeli Foreign Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters.
"However it is supposed to strengthen the Lebanese army, the responsibility of which will be to implement U.N. Security Council 1559 which calls for disarming Hizbollah eventually."
Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said Israel saw the full implementation of resolution 1559 as "the only real way to solve the problem in Lebanon."
Their faith in the UN is almost touching. I guess the Israelis are passing that "international test" we used to hear so much about.
