Hezbollah tried to kill the crew of an Israeli armored vehicle along the Lebanon-Israel border:
Israel said Friday it shelled a position belonging to the powerful Shiite movement Hezbollah inside Lebanon, in response to a blast targeting its troops along the border. ...
Military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner told reporters that an "armoured vehicle on patrol adjacent to the Israel-Lebanon border near Har Dov (Israel's term for the disputed Shebaa Farms) was attacked with an explosive device".
Israeli troops "responded by shelling Hezbollah positions and other suspicious locations," Lerner said.
Hezbollah is still interested in killing Israelis despite their heavy (and unpopular) commitment to fighting for Assad. If Assad looks like they are going to win their war, the temptation to deal with Hezbollah before Hezbollah can withdraw from Syria and before Syria can afford to intervene on behalf of Hezbollah in Lebanon will be great.
And if Israel wants to really deal with Hezbollah to knock them back for a long time before Syria can think of offering protection again, a ground invasion that goes all the way to Baalbek is the way to do it.
Recent Israeli army reforms seem to support this type of mission:
Just a year ago, Israel’s Artillery Corps was crafting a new mission statement and doctrine to transition from its traditional role of fire support to the leading ground force provider of standoff attack. Its Fire2025 master plan aspired to one-shot, one-target accuracy at increasingly long ranges, with saturation fire relegated to second-tier status.
At the same time, the Armored Corps was championing its own agenda to sustain outyear production of main battle tanks, mitigate downsizing and preserve its capacity for conventional war.
As an aside, I may wonder about our Air Force's commitment to ground support, but the Israeli army's own artillery was attempting to be an air force that doesn't fly? Really? Inter-service rivalry is better than intra-service rivalry any day.
The army artillery change is that the artillery will remain committed to army ground support even as it is allowed a parallel effort to gain market share at the expense of their air force's deep strike missions:
For years, artillery proponents, including Riftin, had envisioned network-enabled ground-based systems as an option to airpower for a spectrum of scenarios demanding precision standoff attack.
And for the armor corps, instead of maintaining pure armor for large-scale conventional operations, they will seek to improve their ability to operate against semi-conventional forces like Hezbollah that fight like infantry with their own capable anti-tank missiles:
By the end of 2016, each active-duty armored battalion will have its own organic specialty company composed of reconnaissance, observation and mortar platoons. An identical plan will be implemented later for the reserve force, Olansky said.
New combat support specialty companies will replace older-model tank companies slated for retirement. They’ll be trained to operate “shoulder-to-shoulder” with main battle tanks as an integral part of armored forces optimized for maneuvering in urban and heavily forested arenas.
To me, this signals that Israel won't try to repeat their disastrous strategy in Lebanon in 2006 where they tried to bombard their way to victory. The artillery corps was trying to enter the air force market for this mission while the armored corps wanted to stay out of it while preparing for the big one against Egypt or Syria.
Artillery will support ground troops as a priority and Israel's armored battalions will lose one of their tank companies in exchange for a company equipped with recon, radar, and mortar capabilities that can counter Hezbollah advanced anti-tank weapons.
Teamed with mechanized, airmobile, and parachute infantry trained to defeat entrenched enemies, the armored units with artillery in direct support will be able to lead an advance deep into Lebanon rather than flounder around as they did in 2006 with poorly executed small-scale frontal assaults that achieved nothing.
If Assad looks like he will win the war, Israel could strike Hezbollah before Assad is ready to confront Israel again. Heck, if Assad loses his war, Israel should definitely strike Hezbollah to exploit that Assad/Iran/Hezbollah defeat.
Heck, just ripping up Hezbollah that far north could allow Syrian rebels to regroup within Lebanon to regain ground they've lost in the mountains across the border in Syria to recent Syrian-Hezbollah offensives (the post has other information on the fight, too).
For as much as Hezbollah is unhappy with shipping off their fighters to die for Assad, Hezbollah might actually be most secure while that fight remains in doubt. But can Hezbollah pull out to focus on resisting Israel without alienating Iran and risking alienating Assad if he defeats the rebellion?
Yeah, you're listening to the world's tiniest violin playing, I know.
