Is this threat a sign that Israel will go air power postal on Hezbollah and punish Lebanese civilians for tolerating the Hezbollah presence?
Israel accused Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas on Wednesday of putting "thousands" of bases in residential buildings and said it would destroy these in a future conflict, even at the cost of civilian lives.
The unusually explicit threat by air force chief Major-General Amir Eshel appeared to be part of an effort by Israeli officials to prepare world opinion for high civilian casualties in any new confrontation with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
I don't believe that Israel plans an air campaign to knock out Hezbollah's rocket and missile arsenal.
One, there are too many rockets and missiles to destroy this way. Israel has too few anti-rocket munitions to defend against the attacks while the Israeli air force hits the launch sites in Lebanon.
That first article linked says that Hezbollah now has over 100,000 rockets and missiles.
Two, this is what Israel tried to do in 2006. And it failed to deter Hezbollah from launching rockets and failed to compel the Lebanese to take down the Hezbollah launch sites (or prevent Hezbollah from rebuilding a much larger and capable force).
If Israel had minimized non-Hezbollah casualties and emphasized information operations to highlight their focus, most Lebanese would probably have been content to have Israel hurt Hezbollah without complaining too much.
Worse, the 2006 Israeli air campaign simply frittered away the Sunni Arab world support for Israel taking apart an Arab but Iranian-backed Shia organization that Hezbollah is:
Lebanese civilian losses from air attacks are losing Israel the time it needs to hurt Hizbollah. Remember that even the Arab League was mad at Hizbollah and Israel blew this tacit support to hurt Iran's proxy Hizbollah.
And the end of the war didn't change my mind:
I stand by my assessment that Israel screwed the pooch on this one. Hizbollah survived the war more or less intact though hurt, and so can rebuild. We provided Israel with four weeks and they dithered. Major Sunni Arab states backed Israel and Israel failed to focus on Hizbollah, losing that support. The damage Israel inflicted on Lebanon's infrastructure achieved nothing and may have made winning the post-war more difficult.
So if Israel goes after Hezbollah, it will be with a big ground campaign (supported by air power) that presses all the way to Baalbek deep inside Lebanon.
Israeli freedom of action will be enhanced by Syria's inability to interfere, by fighting a main pillar of Assad's regime that Sunni Arab states would like to see destroyed, by avoiding Lebanese civilian casualties as much as possible, and by finishing the operation as quickly as possible.
So notwithstanding Israeli Air Force talk of repeating the 2006 strategy, I think this is just to lull Hezbollah into a false sense of security in order to strike a major ground blow against Hezbollah (and Iran and Assad).
And if Iran is off the table as a target for Israel because of the interim nuclear deal, and if Syria is off the table because of the ridiculous chemical arms deal, Hezbollah might be the only acceptable target that Israel can hit if Israel wants to hurt their enemies a bit and demonstrate their military capabilities.
UPDATE: Blogging for me is always tough as I try to guess what someone else would do and what I would do (and what actually will happen, of course) and balance those out.
My bias is for a land solution. So I see signs that Israel will seek a land solution, assume this signals intent, and project what they'd do.
But does Israel think another round of air attacks--executed more effectively--would work this time? Strategypage writes:
What really shocked the Israelis was that although they could spot and track these Hezbollah moves they could not get artillery, aircraft or ground troops moved quickly enough to take out a lot of identified targets before the enemy managed to change position. All the different levels of Israeli headquarters and combat units could actually communicate with each other, but not fast enough to hit a target that had been identified and located but was not staying put long enough for the completion of all the procedures and paperwork required to get the strike order sent to the unit best able to carry it out.
The solution was new technology and procedures. Over the last eight years Israel has built a new communications system that is faster and able, according to Israeli claims, to hit five times as many targets as the 2006 era forces could manage.
Is this really what Israel learned from their 2006 failure? That they need to hit targets with firepower faster? Does this mean that the IAF threat was a straight-forward warning of actual intent?
Good Lord. Air power is great. But separating air power from the ground or naval power it must support is folly:
After all, says Wylie, air forces can destroy from the air but not control. The man on the scene with a gun is the final arbiter of control.
Mankind dwells on land. That’s where military questions are settled. That basic insight should be the north star for airmen – as for seafarers.
Juat what did Israel learn from Lebanon in 2006?
