Did Israel lose its war with Hezbollah?  Following the war, a number of analysts, observers and pundits declared the answer was yes. 

Today we sat in on a briefing by retired Major General Yaakov Amidror.  Amidror is the former head of assessment for Israeli military intelligence.  For years, he analyzed the national threats to the state of Israel and presented his findings to the Israeli government. Officials depended on his analysis and with the security of Israel at stake; his views were no small matter.  

Now retired, but still actively involved with the think tank, the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a packed room of reporters and diplomats came to hear his views on the recent conflict.   
   
He painted a mixed but more optimistic view than the catastrophe some analysts believe Israel suffered.  He prefaced his remarks with the understanding that the recent conflict was a unique phenomenon.  It wasn’t a war between two sovereign states, but a conflict between Israel and an organization that was more than a guerilla movement but less than a state.  In many ways Hezbollah acted simply as an extension of a sovereign state (Iran) backed by two sovereign states (Iran and Syria).  

Successes and Failures:
One Israeli success Amidror mentioned was its ability to eliminate the long range missile threat of Hezbollah.  Within the first few hours of the war, Israel destroyed most of Hezbollah’s long range missile launchers.  Following its initial strike, the Israeli air force developed a system that when a long range missile was launched, the launcher would be destroyed within five minutes.  Amidror finds no equivalent in modern military history.  This success eliminated the ability of Hezbollah to hit cities deep in the heart of Israel like Tel Aviv. 

However, Israel was unable to stop the threat of Hezbollah’s shorter range Katusha rockets.  Up to the last day of the war Hezbollah shot more than 200 of these shorter range rockets into northern Israel.  This was a huge failure for the Israeli military.  It kept one million Israelis under the shadow of this Katusha umbrella and left northern Israeli basically paralyzed.  

I remember driving through northern Israel during the war and most if not all the towns were nearly deserted.  These ghost towns had no commerce, no activity, no tourism nor any normal life.  Tiberias was especially eerie to see.  This usually bustling tourist town shut down to all but a few hearty (or foolish) pedestrians.

Amidror maintains the only way to control the shorter range Katusha rockets was to have troops inside Lebanon controlling the ground.  When Israeli troops came into areas within south Lebanon, it did minimize the effectiveness of the Katushas.  Air power – unlike with the threat of longer range missiles – is no answer for these easy to hide, easy to shoot rockets.  In fact, some Katushas were shot off from kitchens and many homes in southern Lebanon were prepared for that. 

Amidror pointed out that after Israel pulled out of south Lebanon in May of 2000 and before the recent war, for six years both Israelis and Lebanese built extra rooms on their homes.  On the Israeli side, many Israelis put on extra rooms to use as a “bed and breakfast.”  On the Lebanese side, many Lebanese put on extra rooms as storehouses for Katusha rockets, all financed by Iran.  Amidror sees this inability or unwillingness to put troops on the ground to eliminate this shorter range rocket threat as one of Israel’s biggest failures of the war.  

In the next part, we’ll discuss the value of additional U.N. troops will be in southern Lebanon and the damage Hezbollah suffered as a fighting force.